E-FREE TRANSLATION.COM • More 'Wag' Quotes from Famous Books

... away at top speed, though I tried to restrain myself, to show that I was nothing more than an uncle to her. I talked to distract her, to distract us both; I let my tongue wag—I could hear it buzzing. What could I say? A little of everything—a great deal, ...

— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun

... midnight, and contrived to make his six or eight shillings a week. I have often sat with him in the darkness that his "cruizey" lamp could not pierce, while his mutterings to himself of "ay, ay, yes, umpha, oh ay, ay man," came as regularly and monotonously as the tick of his "wag-at-the-wa'" clock. Hendry and he were paid no fixed sum for their services in the Auld Licht kirk, but once a year there was a collection for each of them, and so they jogged along. Though not the only kirk-officer of my time Hendry made the most lasting impression. He was, I think, the ...

— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie

... have drunk the bitter cup to its dregs feel and know its death, death, double death! These afflicted ones die daily and the graves to them seem pleasant and delightful. The sufferings of the deaf and dumb are myths—but a drop in the ocean compared to what I endured! And who cared for me? Who? I wag the laughing stock, a subject of scoffing and ridicule, often. I could fill an octavo with the miseries I endured from early childhood till ...

— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue

... would hear how you think that I can manage a disputation. For the fellow is the sturdiest rogue with a yard of tongue to wag.' ...

— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... death will make thee die. 22. Those legs that now can nimbly run, Shall then with faintness fail To take one step, death's dart to shun, When he doth thee assail. 23. That tongue that now can boast and brag Shall then by death be tied So fast, as not to speak or wag, Though death lies by thy side. 24. Thou that didst once incline thine ear Unto the song and tale, Shall only now death's message hear, While he, with face most pale, 25. Doth reason with thee how thy days Hath hitherto been spent; And what have been thy deeds ...

— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... the features were still discernible. A merchant, travelling with the kafila, suddenly exclaimed, "That was my slave I left behind four months ago, near this spot." "Make haste! take him to the fsug (market)," said an Arab wag, "for fear any body else should ...

— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... French in Tescheron after all, for he waved his arms and danced about like a man whose tongue won't wag fast ...

— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... to her the fact that these bitter-tongued women whom she despised had dared to assail her—her, the Burra Mem, the Great Lady of their little world. Had dared to? She could not silence them. And what would they say of her, how their tongues would wag, if she ran away from her husband! And they would have a right to talk scandal of her then. The ...

— The Jungle Girl • Gordon Casserly

... battered by shell fire. Our barn got touched once and a large splinter of a concussion shell which fell there was used as a weight for a wag-of-the-wall clock in the farmhouse. The village was crowded with troops, new men, who wore clean shirts, neat puttees and creased trousers. They had not been in the trenches yet, but were going ...

— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... rouse with Dunois," said Crevecoeur, "wag the world as it will. But we heard that both he and the Duke had fallen into disgrace, ...

— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott

... that a certain Conde de ——, who had lately been decorated, was a most notorious rogue; in consequence of which, some wag chalked up on his door in large letters, during the night, the following lines, which, of course, were in everybody's mouth soon after ...

— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray

... link that connects me with my babyhood. It wag around my neck when Scharfenstein picked me up. Open it and look at ...

— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath

... garden he went, through the orchard. Half-way across the meadow beyond the orchard he came upon Custard dining at second table, and too busy to do more than wag a welcome. ...

— Patricia • Emilia Elliott

... couched the lordly stag, The dreaming terrier's tail forgets its customary wag; And plodding ploughmen's weary steps insensibly grow quicker, As broadening casements light them on towards home, ...

— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.

... a large dog lying on the sunny grass beneath raise its ears as if about to bark, and then smoothing them back, announce, by a wag of the tail, that some one approached whom it did not consider a stranger. Mrs. Linton bent forward, and listened breathlessly. The minute after a step traversed the hall; the open house was too tempting for Heathcliff to resist walking in: most likely he supposed that I was inclined to shirk ...

— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte

... tail, anyway; but one can always give a dog the benefit of a doubt, and she believed that it began to wag more happily. Thus it was settled between them. All the affection which his nature held, which his rearing in a large kennel of other dogs had not permitted him to bestow upon any one master, now ...

— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris

... CHILD. Away, wag; what would'st thou make an implement of me? 'Slid, the boy takes me for a piece of perspective, I hold my life, or some silk curtain, come to hang the stage here! Sir crack, I am none of your fresh ...

— Cynthia's Revels • Ben Jonson

... was much addicted to cards, particularly at the games of triumpho and primero, on which circumstance one of Guzmans friends played him the following trick to hold him up to ridicule. The civilians at that time wore gowns with loose hanging sleeves, into one of which some wag contrived to convey a pack of cards, so that when Torre was walking across the great square of Mexico in company with several persons of quality, the cards began to drop from his sleeve, leaving a long trail behind him as he walked along. On discovering ...

— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr

... novelty, that I could not at first deliver my grandfathers message. The moment I had done so, I rushed back to the breakfast room, and in a loud voice proclaimed to the company what I had seen. My tale produced all the effect I had anticipated, but mainly in the shape of amusement. One wag - my uncle Henry Keppel - asked for details, gravely declaring he could hardly credit my statement. Every one, however, seemed convinced by the circumstantial nature of my evidence when I positively asserted that their ...

— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke

... Muromachi magnates and the Kamakura chiefs brought two sets of rulers upon the same stage, and naturally intrigue and distrust were born, so that, in the end, Muromachi was shaken by Hosokawa, and Kamakura was overthrown by Uesugi. An animal with too ponderous a tail cannot wag it, and a stick too heavy at one end is apt to break. The Ashikaga angled with such valuable bait that they ultimately lost both fish and bait. During the thirteen generations of their sway there was no respite from struggle between family and ...

— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... Gregorio at Valladolid, where he had the companionship of his devoted friend Ladrada and the support of an important community of his Order. Fray Rodrigo, who also acted as confessor to his old friend, would seem to have been something of a wag, as it is related of him that when the Bishop had become somewhat deaf, the confessor might be heard admonishing his penitent: "Don't you see, Bishop, that you will finish up in hell because of your want of zeal in defending the Indians whom God has ...

— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... It's up-the-spout and Charley-Wag With wipes and tickers and what not! Until the squeezer nips your scrag, Booze and the blowens ...

— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... majestical would put him out; 'For' quoth the King 'an angel shalt thou see; Yet fear not thou, but speak audaciously.' The boy replied 'An angel is not evil; I should have fear'd her had she been a devil.' With that all laugh'd, and clapp'd him on the shoulder, Making the bold wag by their praises bolder. One rubb'd his elbow, thus, and fleer'd, and swore A better speech was never spoke before. Another with his finger and his thumb Cried 'Via! we will do't, come what will come.' The third he caper'd, and cried 'All ...

— Love's Labour's Lost • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... hand an unsympathetic wag and dropped it. He did not say a word but just stood. In my trouble I could not think of anything to say, I merely wanted to resign. There was an awkward pause, a dreary pause, a horrible pause. Then I thought of something, and looked up into that unyielding ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... dialogues of Lucian which Charles Cotton wrote and published late in the seventeenth century under the title of 'Burlesque upon Burlesque, or the Scoffer Scoft.' 'We bring you here,' said Cotton, 'a fustian-piece, Writ by a merry Wag of Greece'—'a piece of raillery writ,' as he went on to say, ...

— By-ways in Book-land - Short Essays on Literary Subjects • William Davenport Adams

... first given about the year 1780, and in the first year, I presume, out of respect to the memory of the donor, no subject was given for Epigrams. It has occurred to me, that perhaps some wag on that occasion sent the lines ...

— Notes & Queries, No. 50. Saturday, October 12, 1850 • Various

... the few remaining oxen could not last them long. There was a dog with the Bennett wagons; he had followed them all the way from Iowa; and in this time of dire extremity some talked of killing him. But even in his starved condition he was able to wag his tail when the children came near him; sometimes he comforted them by his presence when their mothers could not. The men had not the heart ...

— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt

... hoary-bearded deacon, it was only by the most careful self-control that the former could refrain from uttering certain blasphemous suggestions that rose into his mind, respecting the communion supper. He absolutely trembled and turned pale as ashes, lest his tongue should wag itself, in utterance of these horrible matters, and plead his own consent for so doing, without his having fairly given it. And, even with this terror in his heart, he could hardly avoid laughing, to imagine how the sanctified old patriarchal deacon would have ...

— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... measure carried the audience by storm. Looking down from her platform Claire could see the indifferent faces suddenly lighten into interest, into smiles, into positive beams of approval. At the second verse heads began to wag; unconsciously to their owners lips began to purse. It was inspiring to watch those faces, to know that it was she herself who had wrought ...

— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... not my Lord The veryer Wag o'th' two? Pol. We were as twyn'd Lambs, that did frisk i'th' Sun, And bleat the one at th' other: what we chang'd, Was Innocence, for Innocence: we knew not The Doctrine of ill-doing, nor dream'd That any did: Had we pursu'd that life, And our weake Spirits ne're been higher rear'd ...

— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... not? Then you had better stop your ears, my dear, for as long as my tongue can wag. ...

— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... about one hundred and twenty. He had been in her husband's house, who was an officer in the Spanish service, when she married, and first came here half a century back, and was then considered past labour. The old boy was quite a wag; cracked several jokes, as well as his want of teeth would let him, upon one of the company about to be married; and, on being shown a lump of fine Cavendish tobacco he had asked for, his eye sparkled like ...

— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power

... John Brown, of Edinboro', who once spoke in sincere sympathy of the man who "led a dog-less life." It was Mr. "Josh Billings" who said that in the whole history of the world there is but one thing that money cannot buy, to wit: the wag of a dog's tail. And it was Professor John C. Van Dyke who declared the other day, in reviewing the artistic career of Landseer, that he made his dogs too human. It was the Great Creator himself who made dogs too human—so human that sometimes they ...

— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton

... to a larger mansion at the south-west corner of Stratford Place, Oxford Street. A carved stone lion stood on guard at the entrance—a fact which incited some wag to affix to the door the following lines, generally ...

— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook

... deferentially near the ground. Seeing the friendliness of their intentions, Finn wagged his tail at them, whereat they all leaped from him in sudden alarm as though he had snapped. Finn's jaws parted in amusement, and his great tail continued to wag, while he gave friendly greeting through his nostrils, and made it quite clear that he entertained no hostile ...

— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson

... soothed Tad, patting the wounded beast, which the hound acknowledged by a feeble wag of its tail. ...

— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin

... made such strong alliances above, That 'twere profaneness in us laity To offer earthly aid. I tell thee, Mufti, if the world were wise, They would not wag one finger in your quarrels. Your heaven you promise, but our earth you covet; The Phaetons of mankind, who fire that world, Which you were sent ...

— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... in the grand ballet, where all the dancers performed intricate manoeuvers under changing lights. Every time the wheeling figures brought her round to the footlights, there was a greeting from the front, and, despite warnings, she could not suppress a responsive wag of the head or a friendly ...

— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... bit of sport above measure, & had some pretensions to the lady besides as being but a cousin once removed,—clapped & halloo'd them on; and as fast as their indignation cooled those mad wag's, the Ember Days, were at it with their bellows, to blow it into a flame; & all was in a ferment: till old Madame Septuagesima {who boasts herself the Mother of the Days} wisely diverted the conversation with a tedious tale of the lovers which she could reckon when she was young; ...

— A Masque of Days - From the Last Essays of Elia: Newly Dressed & Decorated • Walter Crane

... hostess, and entourage, could he possibly have been less? Rumor's hundred tongues wag with the announcement, that his Excellency is no longer inconsolable for his wife's death; and desires to testify to the happiness of conjugal relations, by a renewal of the sweet bondage; a curiously subtile compliment ...

— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson

... was apparently an extrauterine pregnancy gradually diminished. On August 17, 1873, after a labor of eight hours, she gave birth to a healthy fetus. The hand in the uterus detected a tumor to the left, which wag reduced to about one-fourth the former size. In April, 1874, the woman still suffered pain and tenderness in the tumor. Hodgen believed this to have been originally a tubal pregnancy, which burst, causing much hemorrhage ...

— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... than ye can mak to through; As for your Priesthood, I shall say but little, Corbies and Clergy, are a shot right kittle: But under favour o' your langer beard, Abuse o' Magistrates might weel be spar'd: To liken them to your auld-warld squad, I must needs say, comparisons are odd. In Ayr, wag-wits nae mair can have a handle To mouth 'a citizen,' a term o' scandal; Nae mair the Council waddles down the street, In all the pomp of ignorant conceit; Men wha grew wise priggin' owre hops an' raisins, Or gather'd lib'ral views in bonds and seisins, If haply Knowledge, on a random tramp, ...

— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... sympathy, or but slight, in your favour. The case would be thought very hard, to be sure; but that would be all. Not so, should you triumph in the Greek cause. Transcendent glory would not only crown but protect you. No minister would dare to wag a finger—no, nor even Crown lawyer a tongue—against you; and, if they did, the feeling of the whole English public would surround you with an impenetrable shield. Fines would be paid; imprisonment protested and petitioned against; in short, I am convinced the nation ...

— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald

... woody vale they found, High raised of stone; a shaded space around; Where mountain wolves and brindled lions roam, (By magic tamed,) familiar to the dome. With gentle blandishment our men they meet, And wag their tails, and fawning lick their feet. As from some feast a man returning late, His faithful dogs all meet him at the gate, Rejoicing round, some morsel to receive, (Such as the good man ever used to give,) Domestic thus the grisly beasts drew near; They ...

— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope

... him in the 'seventies. I was a small boy then, and I did him the honour of playing truant—"playing wag" we called it. I felt that the occasion demanded it. To have the god of my idolatry in my own little town and not to pay him my devotions—why, the idea was almost like blasphemy. A half-dozen, or even a dozen, from my easily infuriated master would ...

— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... informed her parents of the dissolution of her engagement to lord Gartley. The mother was troubled: it is the girl that suffers evil judgment in such a case, and she knew how the tongue of the world would wag. But those who despise the ways of the world need not fret that low minds attribute to them the things of which low minds are capable. The world and its judgments will pass: the poisonous tongue will one day become pure, and make ample apology for its evil speaking. The tongue is a fire, ...

— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald

... Colonel Macphail, If I had but a tail I would wag it this morning with joy, At your having provided My car that's one-sided With ...

— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... INCOMPRIS, only more or less concerned for the mischance; all trying wrongly to do right; all fawning at each other's feet like dumb, neglected lap- dogs. Sometimes we catch an eye - this is our opportunity in the ages - and we wag our tail with a poor smile. "IS THAT ALL?" All? If you only knew! But how can they know? They do not love us; the more fools we to squander life ...

— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... this, but he mockit the Heelandman by a' manner of means, shooting out his tongue at him, spitting at him, and girning at him wi' his queer outlandish physiognomy. Then he would tak haud of his tail in his twa hands, and wag it at Donald, and steeking his nieves, he would seem to threaten him wi' a leatherin'. A'thegither he was desperate impudent, and eneuch to try the patience of a saunt, no to spak o' a het-bluided Heelandman. It was gude for sair ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 275, September 29, 1827 • Various

... bread, butter and tea and the soothing aroma of innumerable pipes, other public heroes arose and ousted this upstart of the night. Meanwhile, the latter began to show signs of abating energy after twelve hours' work. Soon some wag had caught him having a private nap, a whispered signal was passed round and the unfortunate hero was startled into life with a rousing "Rise and shine!" in which all past ...

— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... visitor to Casa Felice, and presently it was whispered that he was actually living there with Lady Holme, and that Lord Holme was going to apply to the Courts for a divorce. Thereupon many successful ladies began to wag bitter tongues. It seemed to be generally agreed that the affair was rendered peculiarly disgraceful by the fact that Lady Holme was no longer a beautiful woman. If she had still been lovely they could have understood it! The wildest ...

— The Woman With The Fan • Robert Hichens

... enemy having thus been blinded, so to speak, there came a regiment of fresh troops, swinging down the street for all the world as though the German Army was safely drinking beer in Munich. They passed Rene, standing open-mouthed in the doorway, and one wag of a Belgian boy, out of sheer joy of spring, did the goose step as he passed the little sentry and, head screwed round in the German salute, crossed his ...

— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... before me the oldest man I had ever come upon in my whole life. He was so old I was astonished when his drawn lips opened and he asked if I was the lawyer from New York. I would as soon have expected a mummy to wag its tongue and utter English, he looked so thin and dried and removed from this life and ...

— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... Cowasji Jehangir Readymoney, an Indian baronet, who inherited immense wealth from a long line of Parsee bankers. They have adopted as a sort of trademark, a nickname given by some wag to the founder of the family, in the last century because of his immense fortune and success in trade. Mr. Readymoney, or Sir Jehangir, as he is commonly known, the present head of the house, was accompanied by his wife, two daughters, their governess, and his son, who had been ...

— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis

... for it!" she remarked. "The Acid Drop's going to treat you to some jaw-wag. What have you ...

— A Patriotic Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... wish," said Gard, with a gloomy wag of the head. "Your Sark men are difficult—very difficult, and the others who ought to know better, and who do know better"—with more than a touch of warmth—"go on as though ...

— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham

... lost on Jim, for he was already bending over Bull, patting his poor old mangled head and calling him all the endearing names he could think of. Finally, seeing that Bull was either too weak or too ashamed to get up and could only wag his stub of a tail, he picked him up very tenderly and ...

— Lucile Triumphant • Elizabeth M. Duffield

... moon is made of bacon, or the Brazilian tribes who think that an eclipse consists in an attempt on the part of a monstrous jaguar to swallow the sun—have as much right to their opinion as he has, he would consider the person who advanced such an argument either a wag or a fool. Only a wag or a fool, again, would argue that a Fijian has just as much right as we have to his opinions on medical matters, or on the morality of polygamy, infanticide, and cannibalism. Yet when we come across a dirty, malodorous savage, so stupid that he cannot count ten, who ...

— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... hand, and remained for some time in a melancholy reverie, with his eyes fixed upon the tail, which lay before him—that tail, now a "bleeding piece of earth," which never was to welcome him with a wag again. What passed in Vanslyperken's mind during this time it would be too difficult and too long to repeat, for the mind flies over time and space with the rapidity of the lightning's flash. At last he rose, took up the dog's tail, put it into his pocket, went on deck, ordered his ...

— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... enough for any one who has a taste for natural beauties," replied Rose. "I haven't; I never had. There is nothing I hate so much as Nature! I'm a born cockney. I'd rather live in one room over Jordan and Marsh's, and see the world wag past, than be the owner of the most romantic villa that ever was built, I don't care ...

— What Katy Did Next • Susan Coolidge

... party to the play. He used to travel with a night-cap in his pocket, and having occasion for a handkerchief at the theatre, made use of his cap for that purpose. In one of his reveries, however, it fell from the side-box, where he was sitting, into the pit, where a wag, who picked it up, hoisted it upon the end of a stick, that it might be claimed by its rightful proprietor. Judge of the consternation of a large party of ladies of rank and fashion, when George Harvest rose in the midst of them, and ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various

... began was a great relief to him, for under cover of it he could wag his foot and no one heard the creak thereof; and when they stood up to sing, he was so sure that all the boys were looking at him, he was glad to sit down again. The good old minister read the sixteenth ...

— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various

... his poor head with a wag of wisdom, and for a moment his clouded and stupefied brain ...

— The Eternal City • Hall Caine

... England, not a peer of the realm, who has got a single drop of a certain famous vintage which has perished from the face of the earth. Sometimes he has purchased, with a friend, a few last left dozens from the cellar of a deceased potentate, at a price so exorbitant that he can only wag his head and decline mentioning it; and, if you ask his friend, that friend will wag his head, and decline mentioning it also. Sometimes he has been at an out-of-the-way country inn; has found the sherry not drinkable; has asked if there is no other wine in the house; ...

— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins

... laugh at my own folly that could have rested brow and lips on those hands, and let the world wag. "Another time," I said. "Rest in the sunshine now, and think that all is well. All will be well, ...

— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... growl and a pathetic wag was all the answer he could make to these tender inquiries; for never would the story of his wrongs be known, and never could the glory of his doggish beauty be restored. Betty was trying to comfort him with pats and praises, when a new face appeared at the gate, and Thorny's authoritative ...

— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various

... his maisteris pre-eminence; and that thare should be no superioritie in that behalf, to the ground gois boyth the croces. And then begane no litill fray, but yitt a meary game; for rockettis war rent, typpetis war torne, crounis war knapped,[387] and syd gounis mycht have bene sein wantonly wag from the one wall to the other: Many of thame lacked beardis, and that was the more pitie; and tharefore could not bukkill other by the byrse, as[388] bold men wold haif doune. Butt fy on the jackmen that did nott thare dewitie; ...

— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox

... on Jessup," said the client, with a confident wag of his head. "Jessup's all right. He'll do the square thing. Why, he left Susanville just to keep people from talking about Mrs. Billings. But she followed him up, and now, of course, he'll stick to her. ...

— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... 'bout hounds?' Old man Uriah asked, turnin' from de house and followin' Marse Tom to where de dogs was. Marse Tom set down. De whole pack come to where he was, sniffed and smelt him, and wag deir tails in a friendly way. Marse Tom say: 'What is de name of dis dog? Ring Smith, did you say, Doctor? An uncommon fine dog he seems to me. If dere be any truth in signs, he oughta be a good strike.' De old man reply: ...

— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration

... picture of a well-ordered household I'm drawing you. Indeed it's a mystery how we ever get along at all; but we do, somehow; and no one the worse. Fortunately there seems to be something about us that people like. They just wag their heads and laugh and exclaim, 'Oh, the Blands!' and don't expect anything better of us. Conversations are started when some one comes in saying: 'Have you heard the latest about the Blands?' I'm sure they would ...

— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... are not always happy. Thus, though the humours of Truga may have been suggested by the character of Dipsa in the Jealous Lovers, she is probably introduced into Cowley's play as the counterpart of Dorylas in Amyntas. Randolph trod on thin ice in some of the speeches of the liquorish wag, whose 'years are yet uncapable of love,' but censure will not stick to the witty knave. On the other hand, Cowley's portrait of incontinent age in Truga fails wholly of being comic, and appears all the loathlier for the fact that the author himself was still a mere schoolboy—though ...

— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... Rover there. He is never nervous, never cross, never snaps or snarls, and is ready, the moment after the grossest affront, to wag the tail of forgiveness,—all because kind Nature has put his dog's body together so that it always works harmoniously. If every person in the world were gifted with a stomach and nerves like his, ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... dignity of the red man, remained silent, waiting for more. Not so Little Tim. That worthy, although gifted with all the powers of courage and endurance which mark the best of the American savages, was also endowed with the white man's tendency to assert his right to wag his tongue. ...

— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne

... met her own. Then the eyeglass dropped from its place, the jaw fell, with a wag of the fair beard, and a look of stony astonishment and blank disappointment came into all the great features, while Madame Bonanni broke into a peal of ...

— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... (Evidently looking on him as tiger No. 2, I suppose.) In about three months Mr. A. was quite cured, and after that the dog lost all interest in him, and returned to his master; and if he met Mr. A. by chance, merely acknowledged him by the faintest wag of his tail. A year afterwards this dog, happening to meet the doctor, whom he had not met since, at once flew at him and seized him by ...

— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot

... wiggled again as it had on the steps of the machine. A tail to wag wasn't really necessary, Stern decided, when there was so ...

— Martians Never Die • Lucius Daniel

... ventured to let such dangerous neighbours into the group, had there not been still more imposing mysteries connected with the Peak, into which they were not initiated. Even young Ooroony wag kept in ignorance of what was to be found on that dreaded island. He saw vessels going and coming, knew that the governor often went there, saw strange faces appearing occasionally on the Reef, that were understood to belong to the unknown land, and probably to a people ...

— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper

... nap' is now a word without dignity; while yet in Wiclif's Bible it is said, "Lo he schall not nappe, nether slepe that kepeth Israel" (Ps. cxxi. 4). 'To punch', 'to thump', both of which, and in serious writing, occur in Spenser, could not now obtain the same use, nor yet 'to wag', or 'to buss'. Neither would any one now say that at Lystra Barnabas and Paul "rent their clothes and skipped out among the people" (Acts xiv. 14), which is the language that Wiclif employs; nor yet that "the Lord trounced Sisera and all his host" as it stands in the Bible of 1551. ...

— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench

... and played rowdy games like a pack of children. Nothing was too silly for us to attempt. While a one-step was in full swing some would-be wag suddenly turned off all the lights. It was then that for a moment I caught sight of a pair of glowing, fiery eyes shining through the darkness. Instantly my thoughts flew back to that meeting at ...

— Uncanny Tales • Various

... Brute!" he said, wagging away, so that with each wag the lenses of his spectacles caught the light of ...

— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... poetry of words. Thus to wheedle is to wag the tail and to patter is to hurry through one's prayers (paternoster). What a picture of the frailty of men even in their holiness flashes on us from that word patter! Breakfast is the breaking of the fast of the night. ...

— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor

... lectures were over, they would invariably catch sight of young Huxley's dark head at a certain window bent over a microscope while they amused themselves outside. The constant silhouette framed in the outlines of the window tickled the fancy of the young fellows, and a wag amongst them dubbed it with a name that stuck, "The Sign of ...

— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... seems to be always a wag or clown among each group of animals,—some one species in which the amusing or the grotesque is prominent. Among these clownish fellows I should class the black vulture, or john-crow. He is not a crow at all, but gets that name probably because so historic ...

— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various

... says anything of the kind he shall soon find himself in Hades, spinning round on a wheel for all eternity. That will keep him busy! And serve him right; not for falling in love—I see no great harm in that—but for letting his tongue wag. ...

— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata

... a true revolutionary movement, a turning upside down, in comparison with which the Revolution of 1776 becomes a revolt against the King. Recognising the revolutionary action of annulling one frame of national government by adopting another, a wag wrote ...

— The United States of America Part I • Ediwn Erle Sparks

... taken a cup of coffee and some cold meat and bread, and led the horses down to the stream while the Kaffirs were loading up the packets and bundles, they mounted at five o'clock and set off at a trot, Jack and Japhet, a name suggested by Field, who was the wag of the party, were allowed to ride on two of the horses that carried the lightest burdens. All the lads were provided with compasses, but these were not necessary, as both the natives were well acquainted with the country, which ...

— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty

... By Elbert Wells. Mr. Wells has perfected a method of signalling by means of wig-wag, light, smoke, or whistle which is as simple as it is effective. The fundamental principle can be learnt in ten minutes and its application is far easier than that of any other code now in use. It permits also the use of cipher and can be adapted to almost any imaginable conditions of weather, ...

— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt

... from which the long days glowing with sunshine send down streams of water at whose touch the deserts bloom. The eye is refreshed as we make a closer acquaintance of the mountains. Where water flows and trees "wag their high tops" there is hope of homes. There are canyons that cause one to smile at remembrances of what were considered the dizzy gorges of the Alleghenies. There is a glow as of molten lead in one corner of a misty valley far away. It is Salt Lake, ...

— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead

... moderate use of great men in person should suffice anyone. Your real friends ought to be people with whom you are entirely at ease, not people whom you reverence and defer to. It's better to learn to bark than to wag your tail. I don't think the big men themselves often begin by ...

— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... from me was as nothing to my remoteness from them. The impression they produced was that of having in common one memory so deep and dark that nothing that had happened since was worth either a growl or a wag. ...

— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... doggedly self-approving the lad looks! I thought he was fit to die with shame, and there he sits grinning smiles, as good as to say, 'Let the world wag as it will, I've the philosopher's stone in my waist-coat pocket, and the elixir of life in my cupboard; I'm independent of both ...

— The Professor • (AKA Charlotte Bronte) Currer Bell

... The wag who even fails may claim Indulgence for his cheerful aim; We should applaud, not hiss him; This is a pardon which we grant, (The Latin gives the rhime I ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 335 - Vol. 12, No. 335, October 11, 1828 • Various

... Jupiter with his crooked counsels, terrible to everyone; or old Pan with his hubbubs; or smutty Vulcan half covered with cinders; or even Pallas herself, so dreadful with her Gorgon's head and spear and a countenance like bullbeef? Why is Cupid always portrayed like a boy, but because he is a very wag and can neither do nor so much as think of anything sober? Why Venus ever in her prime, but because of her affinity with me? Witness that color of her hair, so resembling my father, from whence she is called the golden Venus; and lastly, ever laughing, if you give any credit ...

— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus

... serve to account for that phenomenon—being, beyond all comparison the most faithful, attached, and affectionate animal that I have ever known; and that is saying much. He seems to think it necessary to atone for his ugliness by extra good conduct, and does so dance on his lame leg, and so wag his scrubby tail, that it does any one, who has a taste for happiness, good to look at him—so that he may now be said to stand on his own footing. We are all rather ashamed of him when strangers come in the way, and think it necessary ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various

... taken by some 38th men, and got a lump of home-made Boer soap, in exchange for some English tobacco. It has a fatty smell, but makes a beautiful white lather. They had all sorts of household things, and a wag was wearing a very piquante piece of female head-gear. In the afternoon I got leave away, and washed in the muddy pool aforesaid. It seems odd that it can clean one; but it does. On the way back found a nigger ...

— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers

... alliance with Mr Dott, the midshipman, who followed Captain Delmar about, just as Bob used to follow me, and generally remained in the shop or outside with me, when his captain called upon my mother. He was a little wag, as full of mischief as myself, and even his awe of his captain, which, as a youngster in the service, was excessive, would not prevent him from occasionally breaking out. My mother took great notice of him, and when he could obtain leave (which, indeed, ...

— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat

... quite an humorist," Lightmark suggested in an impartial manner. "What a wag it is! Keep it up, my boy. By the way, Mrs. Grumbit has been talking about your 'goings on,' as she calls them: she's apparently very much exercised in her mind as to the state of your morals. She told me she had to take you in with the matutinal milk three times last week. ...

— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore

... doesn't," and a convincing wag of the head, as who should say, "Let no man accuse my friend, Mr. Jardine, of bathing in olive-oil, ...

— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell

... companion in misfortune. I'm going to stand by you and see you through this trouble. Just count on me to shield you in every possible way. I don't care what the world thinks of me, but never a tongue shall wag against you again, or there will be a heavy score to settle with me. Van and I have been good friends, but he's on ticklish ground now. He'll find he can't play fast and loose with two such women as you and Jennie Burton. Curse it all! ...

— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... Wes ain't much at institutes; Don't like to make a public talk, And demonstrate with board and chalk. No, he ain't much on sich disputes; But Wes at school gits down and roots: Up here Wes Banks is jist a wag, With ...

— The Loom of Life • Cotton Noe

... and State Senator until 1808. Although looked up to by multitudes as the political leader of his time, Peck was noted at Albany for his shabbiness of dress. He wore coarse boots, which he never blackened. On one occasion, on the eve of an important debate, some wag at the tavern blackened one of Peck's boots. Peck, in dressing for the fray, did not recognize the shining boot, and having put on one began to search high and low for the other. At last, enlightened by the laughter ...

— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... scene for awhile. As Cressida said, if she had not brought Julia, she would have had to bring Georgie, or some other Garnet. Cressida's family was like that of the unpopular Prince of Wales, of whom, when he died, some wag wrote: ...

— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather

... vy you abuse us?" asked the Maypole, protruding her gaunt head and shoulders through the carriage window. "Ve only gom for all your goots." "And for all our chattels, too, —— you!" came the stinging retort from a wag in ...

— Love Romances of the Aristocracy • Thornton Hall

... pain. To-morrow our principal tools shall repair To this spot, to implore you to stay where you are: Little Jancourt, you know, has a tear at command, The rest shall have muslin-wrapp'd onions in hand; An expedient which you, my good Consul, must try, For a drop never yet wag observ'd in your eye! And therefore I think 'twould be better for you The largest to pluck from the beds of St Cloud. When these fellows appear, they shall fall at your feet, Portalis shall pen a few words to repeat; ...

— Poems • Sir John Carr

... moment the Greek scholar was standing on one of the upper rounds of the ladder, with his head and shoulders well above the window-sill. Little Douglas was delighted to see him, and, taking hold of his outstretched forefinger, gave it a good wag. ...

— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton

... I'm quite willin' to marry ye all off at the same time, and will gif ye as much baccy as ye can smoke in wan night; an' we'll hev a glorious feast on the back o't, an' a dance that'll keep my fuddler's fingers goin' as long as they can wag.—Now, Tonal', if ye tell them all that, ye're a cliverer man ...

— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne

... when tongues of golfers wag, Talking their dreadful shop Of rotten luck and stymies laid And chip-approaches, TAYLOR-made— Oh, then I want a standard gag To make the ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various

... it'll have a powerful effect on him." Bill opened the pup's mouth an' poured in a tol'able stiff swig, an' by cracky, the pup opened his eyes, an' when he saw Bill bendin' down over him, he tried to wag his ...

— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... house. If—there's always some if! But I'll tell you why I mentioned it to you," he continued, nudging Mary's elbow and glancing covertly first at her and then at his house on the far side of the garden. "Ladies that are—getting on a bit in years, you know—like my wife, are apt to let their tongues wag, and between you and me, I shouldn't wonder if Mrs. Folliot has repeated what Mrs. Deramore said—eh? And I don't want the doctor to think that—if he hears anything, you know, which he may, and, again, he might—to think that it originated here. So, if he should ever mention ...

— The Paradise Mystery • J. S. Fletcher

... do this"—here Dr. Veiga held up a pared and finished finger and wagged it to and fro with solemnity—"you can't do this without moving your finger ... You were aware of this great truth? Then why are you upset because you can't wag your finger without moving it?... Perhaps I'm being too subtle for you. Let me put the affair in another way. You've lost sight of the supreme earthly fact that everything has not merely a consequence, but innumerable consequences. You knew when you married that ...

— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett

... accompanied with a slight, a very slight, pucker of the nose and a gleam of dazzling ivory—ha! no enemy ever saw this last piece of canine language without a full appreciation of what it meant. Then as to the tail—the modulations of meaning in the varied wag of that expressive member! Oh! it's useless to attempt description. Mortal man cannot conceive of the delicate shades of sentiment expressible by a dog's tail, unless he has studied the subject—the wag, the waggle, the cock, the droop, the slope, the wriggle! Away with description—it ...

— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne

... killed in cold blood. Eight of us, five convicts and three sailors, said that we would not see it done. But there was no moving Prendergast and those who were with him. Our only chance of safety lay in making a clean job of it, said he, and he would not leave a tongue with power to wag in a witness-box. It nearly came to our sharing the fate of the prisoners, but at last he said that if we wished we might take a boat and go. We jumped at the offer, for we were already sick of these bloodthirsty doings, and we saw that ...

— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various

... exerted all the arts of her vigorous nature to ensnare his attention. She would keep back some piece of news during dinner to be fired off with the entrance of the supper tray, and form as it were the LEVER DE RIDEAU of the evening's entertainment. Once he had heard her tongue wag, she made sure of the result. From one subject to another she moved by insidious transitions, fearing the least silence, fearing almost to give him time for an answer lest it should slip into a hint of separation. Like so many people of her class, she was a brave narrator; ...

— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... on the mountains wild and bar'!' Put yo' crook around our necks, John, an' lead us home with our tails behind us, so as our Bo Peeps'll know us when we come an' gladden us with their soft black eyes! Ain't that the way the poetry runs?" snickered a drunken wag, dropping on the post-office steps and gazing up with a befuddled air at Fairfield, who had removed his ...

— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... los Tulares [spelling unchanged] Tshokoyem vocabulary [vobabulary] especially in that of the Ruslen." [close quote invisible] A-cho-m[^a][']-wi, Powell ... (vocabs. [open parenthesis missing] A corruption of the Algonkin word "nadowe-ssi-wag," [close quote missing] Waukash, waukash, is the Nootka word "good" "good." [both repetitions in original] Humboldt Bay as far south as Arcata [text unchanged: Arcata is at the extreme north end of Humboldt Bay] a change in the semantic content ...

— Indian Linguistic Families Of America, North Of Mexico • John Wesley Powell

... the 8th Territorial; with the sonorous speech, rolling on the syllables as if over cobblestone, that the 144th pours out upon us; with the dialect blown from those ant-like clusters that the Auvergnats so obstinately form among the rest. I remember the first words of that wag, Tirette, when he arrived—"I, mes enfants, I am from Clichy-la-Garenne! Can any one beat that?"—and the first grievance that Paradis brought to me, "They don't give a damn for ...

— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse

... cedar-work. This is the joyous city that dwelt carelessly, that said in her heart, 'I am, and there is none besides me!' How is she become a desolation, a place for beasts to lie down in! Every one that passeth by her shall hiss, and wag his hand." ...

— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... Dr. Kitchiner's, on a very wet night, after several messengers, whom he had despatched for a coach, had returned without obtaining one; at last, at "past one o'clock, and a rainy morning," the wag walked himself to the next coach-stand, and politely advised the waterman to mend his inside lining with a pint of beer, and go home to bed; for said he, "there will be nothing for you to do to night, I'll lay you a shilling that there's not a coach out." "Why, will ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various

... observed the fiddler's tilt with the manager and the royal exit of the ragged fellow with much amusement. "A merry wag! Who is that?" he asked, as Strings's voice ...

— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.

... something of the philosopher under the garb of a wag. His quaint sayings and doings were frequently quoted with great relish among this rural population. He had a way of his own of shooting facts and truths into the uncultivated understandings of these laborers,—facts ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... one of the most valiant captains in the army, was so diminutive in size, that, when mounted, he seemed almost lost in the high demipeak war-saddle then in vogue; which led a wag, according to Brantome, when asked if he had seen Don Pedro de Paz pass that way, to answer, that "he had seen his horse and saddle, but no rider." Oeuvres, tom. ...

— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott

... so. The dogs began to wag their tails, and followed Petru as they follow a master returning home from the fields at night. Petru said "good evening" as he entered, laid his hat on the oven, and when Holy Friday invited him to sit down took his place on a bench ...

— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various

... of this expression is unknown. Some wag of the day allayed public curiosity in regard to its source with the information that it is from the ballad of Robin Roughhead in Murtagh's "Collection of Ballads (1754)." It is needless to say that Murtagh is a verbal phantom, and the ballad of Robin Roughhead first appeared in an American ...

— Familiar Quotations • John Bartlett

... and romped and played rowdy games like a pack of children. Nothing was too silly for us to attempt. While a one-step was in full swing some would-be wag suddenly turned off all the lights. It was then that for a moment I caught sight of a pair of glowing, fiery eyes shining through the darkness. Instantly my thoughts flew back to that meeting at the station, when I had fancied that Ethne had her dog ...

— Uncanny Tales • Various

... the Count burst out laughing. "Come, come, Max!" he cried. "You always were a bit of a wag, and I see you haven't improved. But be serious now, I beg you, and tell me what made you come to-night and what you have been doing all these years? Why, it must be sixteen years, if a day, since last I ...

— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell

... with the fact of young and old animals displaying their feelings in the same manner that we hardly perceive how remarkable it is that a young puppy should wag its tail when pleased, depress its ears and uncover its canine teeth when pretending to be savage, just like an old dog; or that a kitten should arch its little back and erect its hair when frightened and ...

— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park

... was a remarkably awkward horseman, so much so, as generally to attract notice. Some years after this, he was riding along the turnpike road, in the county of Durham, when a wag, approaching him, noticed his peculiarity, and (quite mistaking his man) thought the rider a fine subject for a little sport; when, as he drew near, he thus accosted Mr. C. "I say, young man, did you meet a tailor ...

— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle

... blood." But his disposition shewed itself still more clearly on his attaining the imperial power, and even in the beginning of his administration, when he was endeavouring to gain the popular favour, by affecting moderation. Upon a funeral passing by, a wag called out to the dead man, "Tell Augustus, that the legacies he bequeathed to the people are not yet paid." The man being brought before him, he ordered that he should receive what was due to him, and then be led to execution, that he might deliver the message to ...

— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... perchance—if they have human institutions, reasonable aspirations or finite intelligences. We take temperatures, make blood counts and record blood pressure, reckon the heart-beats, and think we are wondrous wise. But wig-wag as we may, signal with what mysterious wireless of evanescent youth-fire we still hold in our blood, we get nothing but vague hints, broken reminiscences, and a certain patchwork of our own subconscious chop logic of middle age in return. There is no real communication between the worlds. ...

— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White

... FRAME, in which al things Are now containd, found any being-place, Ere flitting Time could wag* his eyas** wings About that mightie bound which doth embrace 25 The rolling spheres, and parts their houres by space, That high eternall Powre, which now doth move In all these things, mov'd in it selfe by love. [* Wag, move.] [** ...

— The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5 • Edmund Spenser

... badly battered by shell fire. Our barn got touched once and a large splinter of a concussion shell which fell there was used as a weight for a wag-of-the-wall clock in the farmhouse. The village was crowded with troops, new men, who wore clean shirts, neat puttees and creased trousers. They had not been in the trenches yet, but were going ...

— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill

... sir," she answered; "I have thought over the matter. To-morrow our great Duke is to unveil before the eyes of his admiring worshippers the mighty statue he has erected to his own honour. Men's thoughts and tongues will wag different ways, I suspect, at the spectacle; but all will be eager to show themselves present—magistrates and people, soldiers and civilians. The streets will be empty, and many a strong post left unguarded. It is a pity the Prince of Orange has not a few thousand men ready to rush in ...

— The Golden Grasshopper - A story of the days of Sir Thomas Gresham • W.H.G. Kingston

... have learned to whittle the Eden Tree to the shape of a surplice-peg, We have learned to bottle our parents twain in the yolk of an addled egg, We know that the tail must wag the dog, as the horse is drawn by the cart; But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old: "It's clever, ...

— Modern British Poetry • Various

... such strong alliances above, That 'twere profaneness in us laity To offer earthly aid. I tell thee, Mufti, if the world were wise, They would not wag one finger in your quarrels. Your heaven you promise, but our earth you covet; The Phaetons of mankind, who fire that world, Which you were sent by preaching but ...

— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden

... the slightest bit, but it was eloquent, and she noted it. "Oh, I don't mean that he did it intentionally— he's too decent a chap for that—but anybody's tongue will wag to a beautiful girl! My lady Malotte ...

— The Spoilers • Rex Beach

... Though envy wag her scorpion tongue, The march of Time shall find his fame; Where Bravery's loved and Glory's sung, There children's ...

— War Poetry of the South • Various

... the distributors of holy water, an old fellow with a rubicund, joyous, wine-bibbing face, seeing Frances approach the little font, said to her in a low voice: "Abbe Dubois is not yet in his box. Be quick, and you will have the first wag ...

— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue

... gruesome tales o' the gallows an' the last prayer, an' whispers o' the quicklime that ended it all. Sammy Scull could go nowhere in Newf'un'land an' escape the shadow an' shame o' that rope. Let the lad grow t' manhood? No matter. Let un live it down? He could not. The tongues o' the gossips would wag in his wake wheresoever he went. Son of John Scull o' Hide-an'-Seek Harbor! Why, sir, the man's father was hanged by the neck at St. John's for the murder o' Mean Michael Mitchell o' ...

— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... same Pennsylvania delegation there were two members named Charles O'Neill and Leonard Myers, who were very short in stature. For some reason or other, some wag dubbed them "Kelley's ponies." They heard of it and became very angry, and on every occasion, when there was half a chance, they watched to see how Judge Kelley voted and ...

— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom

... extreme distress, I hear a rumor that Gertrudis is to become your wife. I assure you that neither she nor I blame you in the least for this unfortunate report; but since busy tongues will wag upon the slightest excuse, we feel it best that no further occasion for gossip should be given, I am sure you will ...

— The Ne'er-Do-Well • Rex Beach

... him, that was his scholar, an unhappy wag, called Christopher Wagner, to whom this sport and life that he saw his master followed, seemed pleasant. Faustus loved the boy well, hoping to make him as good or better seen in his hellish exercises than ...

— Mediaeval Tales • Various

... clockmakers of the Eighteenth Century made many of those jolly little wall clocks called Wag-on-the-Wall. These clocks may be still picked up in out-of-the-way towns. In construction they are very much like the old cuckoo clock which has come to us from Switzerland, and the tile clock which comes from Holland. These clocks with long, exposed weights and pendulum, have not ...

— The House in Good Taste • Elsie de Wolfe

... forty years. It was a conviction of Mr. Ramsay's that there was a conspiracy on foot to purchase his house, and accordingly he took every opportunity to declare that he would never part with an inch of his land while he was in the flesh. A wag in the neighborhood had expressed the opinion that the old gentleman waxed hale and hearty on his own bile. He was certainly a churlish individual in his general bearing toward his fellow-beings, and violent in his prejudices. For the last ten years his favorite prophecy ...

— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant

... to weep and wag her silly head. Prosper made to go, having no time to waste; but, "Stop," she quavered, "and hear me out. Though the Abbot Richard was murdered at his prayers, yet withal he got his deserts, for he hatched a worse wrong than ever Galors did. The child was chained ...

— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett

... said, wagging away, so that with each wag the lenses of his spectacles caught the light of ...

— Widdershins • Oliver Onions

... but in the midst of it, the priest said out aloud, 'Oh I forgot,' and turning round to us began to wag his grey head and white beard, throwing his head right back, and sinking his chin on his breast alternately; and when we saw him do this, we presently began also to knock our heads against the wall, keeping time with him and with each other, till the priest ...

— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris

... they like to find out what everybody else is doing, and how they do it. Their tongues wag lively when they get to talking about what has happened and what they expect will happen; who was cried the Sunday before, and who probably will be ...

— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin

... Sultana," whispered Lansing, "and she's making sign-language at you. Wig-wag her, Phil. Oh . . . good-evening, Mrs. Greeve; did you wish to speak to me? Oh!—to Captain ...

— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers

... was, in the author's time, the principal depot for the cotton and cloth trade of Northern India. Although the East Indian Railway passes through the city, the construction of the railway has diverted the bulk of the trade from Mirzapur, which is now a declining place. The population, which wag 70,621 in 1881, fell to 32,332 in 1911. The carpets made there are ...

— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... Natheless, they are sure to die, being sons of Adam, as well as of thee, dame. But die when they will, 'twill cost them nothing, the burial fees being paid and entered in this book.' 'For all that 'twill cost them something,' quoth the miller, the greatest wag in the place, and as big a knave as any; for which was the biggest God knoweth, but no mortal man, not even the hangman. 'Miller, I tell thee nay,' quo' the cure. 'Parson, I tell you ay,' quo' the miller. ''Twill cost them their lives.' At which millstone conceit was a great laugh; and ...

— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... distinction between changes in our sensations and changes in things at every hour in the day. I cannot move without making things appear and disappear. If I wag my head, the furniture seems to dance, and I regard it as a mere seeming. I count on the clock's going when I no longer look upon its face. It would be absurd to hold that the distinction is a mere blunder, and has no foundation in our experience. The role it plays is too ...

— An Introduction to Philosophy • George Stuart Fullerton

... did not last long. I wonder if that grand-faced godfather of mine suffered as I suffered when he went to school and said his name was Bayard? I owe a day in harvest to the young wag who turned it into Backyard. I gave in my name as Backyard to every subsequent inquirer, and Backyard I ...

— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... running through the street-gutters. Then we would say, "O Carlo! what dirty boots!" He would hang down his head, and go off to the back-yard, and lick his feet until they were clean, when, with a bound, and a wag of the tail, he would rush back to the parlor, quite sure that ...

— The Nursery, Number 164 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... down below the horizon. During the hotter hours I took my ease in the buggy, but in the early morning, and at the end of the day I rode. The Mongols were gay young fellows, taking a kindly interest in my doings. One, the wag of the party, was bent on learning to count in English, and each time he came by me he chanted his lesson over, adding number after number until he reached twenty. The last few miles before getting into camp was the time for a good race. Then, riding up with thumbs held high in greeting, they ...

— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... only sit down and helplessly wag his head. Presently he grew calmer. It was a kindly thought, after all. Sooner or later those poems of his must be offered to the appreciation of a larger audience. He saw blind Fate working through his servitor's ...

— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace

... out of my house within the next ten minutes," said Mr. Burleigh, emphatically. "You might as well have made an allusion to my wife as to Miss Burton; and let me tell you that if you wag your wanton tongue again, I'll have my colored waiters ...

— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... it had never crossed his dull mind that the disorder of the hall and the absence of Kenneth might cause her astonishment. And so when she touched upon the matter of his wound, like the blundering fool he was, he must needs let his tongue wag upon a tale which, if no less imaginative than Joseph's, was vastly its inferior in plausibility and had yet the quality of differing from it ...

— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini

... the yellow road, up over the hill by the signal corps tents, across Wig-Wag Park to the woods beyond, and sat down on a log with his letter. He told himself that it was likely one of those fool letters the fellows were getting all the time from silly girls who were uniform-crazy. He wouldn't answer it, of course, and he felt ...

— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill

... "You are a wag, Sergeant; but hang me if I am sure you are not right. There may be sweeter things in this world, after all, than oatmeal. You have a sweet daughter, ...

— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper

... him an expedition full of danger and surprises: "The gentleman asleep with one eye open on The Chequer's doorstep! will he greet me with a friendly sniff or try to bite my head off? This cross-eyed, lop-eared loafer, lurching against the lamp-post! shall we pass with a careless wag and a 'how-do,' or become locked in a life and death struggle? Impossible to say. This coming corner, now, 'Ware! Is anybody waiting round there to ...

— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome

... brought us the young eagle, and he is to take Babette in exchange. They kissed each other in the presence of the old man, which is as good as an engagement. He was quite civil about it; drew in his claws, and took his afternoon nap, so that the two were left to sit and wag their tails as much as they pleased. They have so much to talk about that it will not be finished till Christmas." Neither was it ...

— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... worry' bout y'r auntie none. She's all hunky-dory. It's those booze birds we're goin' after, you'n'me, see. Chief's orders, kid. An' oh boy! it's goin' to be some party, believe me! Let's sit down here an' I'll wag m' jaw." ...

— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... coal-black locks, His hands so long and lean They scarcely seemed to grasp at all The keys that hung between: Both were of gold, but one was small, And with this last did he Wag in the air, as if to say, ...

— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare

... Nancy. We don't get wiser as we grow older, you see; and when we let our tongues wag, we're apt to talk nonsense. The quieter you keep your tongue, the better for yourself, in more ways than one. To a useful old woman about the place I've no objection; but a chattering old woman I will ...

— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon

... nascent navy of Spain was strangled at the birth. Alberoni, in his fury, had the persons and goods seized of English residents settled in Spain, drove out the consuls, and orders were given at Madrid that no tongue should wag about the affairs of Sicily. The hope of a sudden surprise in England, on behalf of the Jacobites, had been destroyed by the death of the King of Sweden, Charles XII., killed on the 12th of December, 1718, at Freiderishalt, ...

— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... tongues ceased to wag, tankards to clink. Every man and every dog was quietly gathering about those two central figures. Not one of them all but had his score to wipe off against the Tailless Tyke; not one of them but was burning to join in, the battle ...

— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... hunting them on land and in the water, and keep on after the boys themselves were tired. He was so fond of hunting, anyway, that the sight of a gun would drive him about crazy; he would lick the barrel all over, and wag his tail so hard that it would lift ...

— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells

... tired of this dry prose, Must play the devil again out hollow. [Aloud.] The healing art is quickly comprehended; Through great and little world you look abroad, And let it wag, when all is ended, As pleases God. Vain is it that your science sweeps the skies, Each, after all, learns only what he can; Who grasps the moment as it flies He is the real man. Your person somewhat takes the eye, Boldness you'll find an easy science, And if you on yourself rely, ...

— Faust • Goethe

... Muroc was a wag, a grim sort of fellow, black from his trade, with big rollicking eyes. At times he was not easy to please, but if he took a liking, he was for joking at once. He approved of Parpon, and never lost a chance of sharpening his humour on the dwarf's impish ...

— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... motion is to the right," Jimmie quoted from the wig-wag lesson he had learned on first becoming a Boy Scout. "It should embrace an arc of ninety degrees, starting at the vertical and returning to it without pause, and should be made in a plane exactly at right angles to the line connecting the ...

— The Boy Scout Camera Club - The Confession of a Photograph • G. Harvey Ralphson

... (in fact, for diligence in this Turk element, in this young time, the like of him was seldom seen; we knew him long afterwards as a diligent old gentleman, in French-Revolution days),—M. de Vergennes zealously supports; zealous to let loose the Turk upon Anti-French parties. The Turks seem to wag their heads, for some time; and their responses are ambiguous. For some time, not for long. Here, fast enough, comes, in disguised shape, the Catastrophe itself, ye ...

— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... smaller chamber, where mine host was speedily summoned for a flagon of stout liquor. This being supplied, they addressed themselves to the wooden utensil with right goodwill; and as the draughts began to quicken, so did the clerk's tongue not fail to wag the faster. De Poininges adroitly shifted the discourse upon the business of which he was in quest, whenever there was a tendency to diverge, no rare occurrence, Thomas being somewhat loth for a while ...

— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... your job is to hurry us up, to keep barking out, 'Mind what you are doing, such-and-such gang!' Yet there you stand-blinking over your task like an object dried stiff! It's not to blink that you're here, but to play the watchdog upon us, and to keep an eye open, and your tongue on the wag. So ...

— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... careful," he answered. "Mother said I could wade up as far as the wig-wag cut on my leg, ...

— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope

... degree-of-salt question, whose bickers were supplied from the same general preparation; and as these had usually opposite complaints to urge against the cooking, their objections served so completely to neutralize each other, that they in no degree told against the cook. One morning the cook—a wag and a favourite—in making porridge for both the controversialists, made it so exceedingly fresh as to be but little removed from a poultice; and, filling with the preparation in this state the bicker of the salt-loving ...

— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... the place, however, from the poorest fisherman's child to the wealthy widow, Mrs. Meadowsweet, wag expected to come to the Rectory to be feasted and petted, and made much of, ...

— The Honorable Miss - A Story of an Old-Fashioned Town • L. T. Meade

... daisy, de melon or de rose. Don't be what yo ain't, jess yo be what yo is, If yo am not what yo are den yo is not what you is, If yo're jess a little tadpole, don't yo try to be de frog; If yo are de tail, don't yo try to wag de dawg. Pass de plate if yo can't exhawt and preach; If yo're jess a little pebble, don't yo try to be de beach; When a man is what he isn't, den he isn't what he is, An' as sure as I'm talking, he's a-gwine to ...

— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... are a wag. But say I may be sure you'll keep an eye on this man, And let me know his slightest movement towards ...

— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... were shocked when they saw a publican with Jesus, and tongues began to wag. No one seemed to notice that Levi had stopped collecting taxes. He had been a publican once, and no one except Jesus was ready to give him a ...

— The King Nobody Wanted • Norman F. Langford

... soothing aroma of innumerable pipes, other public heroes arose and ousted this upstart of the night. Meanwhile, the latter began to show signs of abating energy after twelve hours' work. Soon some wag had caught him having a private nap, a whispered signal was passed round and the unfortunate hero was startled into life with a rousing "Rise and shine!" in which all ...

— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... torn, and chewed most awful, but what the pal said sounded so fine that I wanted to wag my tail, only couldn't, owing to ...

— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis

... be supposed, the exhibition was greeted with universal laughter, clapping of hands, and shouts of encore, to which the canine performer responded by wagging all that there was to wag of his tail, but appeared totally unable to repeat his very successful effort to ...

— Short-Stories • Various

... admission of frailty which was received with shouts of rapture by the audience. These were soon, however, renewed at the expense of the jester himself, when the insulted maiden extricated, ere the paroxysm was well over, one hand from the folds of her mantle, and bestowed on the wag a buffet, which made him reel fully his own length from the pardoner, and then acknowledge the favour ...

— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... Therefore," and his voice was cold as marble, "it would be inadvisable to run him in for such picayune crimes as twisting lead pipe round young women and throwing them overboard, or otherwise delicately quieting tongues that might be made to wag against him. And now if you are going to ...

— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... filled by strongly-visaged spinsters and mutinous wives, who twice a week were worked up by Dr. Fleabody to a full belief that a glorious era was at hand in which woman would be chosen by constituencies, would wag their heads in courts of law, would buy and sell in Capel Court, and have balances at their banker's. It was certainly the case that Dr. Fleabody had made proselytes by the hundred, and disturbed the happiness of many fathers ...

— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... records him thus: "Here sleepeth until the last Great Day, when the Trump shall sound, William Lynne, Esq., who had the honor and felicity to be the first husband of Elizabeth, Mother through the Grace of God to Oliver Cromwell." At the bottom of the inscription a would-be wag wrote, "Had he lived long enough he would have ...

— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard

... butter. French Sailor Hist, boys! let's have a jig or two before we ride to anchor in Blanket Bay. What say ye? There comes the other watch. Stand by all legs! Pip! little Pip! hurrah with your tambourine! Pip ( Sulky and sleepy.) Don't know where it is. French Sailor Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears. Jig it, men, I say; merry's the word; hurrah! Damn me, won't you dance? Form, now, Indian-file, and gallop into the double-shuffle? Throw yourselves! Legs! Legs! Iceland Sailor I don't like your floor, maty; it's too springy to my taste. I'm used to ice-floors. I'm sorry to throw cold ...

— Moby-Dick • Melville

... which thou wert a part—hast thou crushed even as the foolish child grinds the gay butterfly to powder between his fingers. And art thou, indeed, so heartless a coward, that, because men's tongues have dared to wag against the beloved of thy soul, thou durst not own him thenceforth, and hast cast him off forever! Murmur not, oh, woman! that thou art made the sport and plaything for rakes and libertines to beguile a weary hour withal. Search thine own heart; and, ...

— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 5. May 1848 • Various

... and still later with the slaveholders. Charles II. was displeased with the colonists for coining money, which he considered his royal prerogative, and intimated to Sir Thomas Temple that they must be punished, and the business stopped. Sir Thomas was considerable of a wag, and showed the king one of honest John Hull's shillings, on the reverse of which was the pine tree. The king asked him what sort of a tree that was. Upon which Sir Thomas replied that, of course, it was the royal oak, which had saved his majesty's ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... Though long my party built on me their hopes, For writing pamphlets, and for roasting popes; Yet lo! in me what authors have to brag on! Reduced at last to hiss in my own dragon. Avert it, heaven! that thou, or Cibber, e'er Should wag a serpent-tail in Smithfield fair! Like the vile straw that's blown about the streets, The needy poet sticks to all he meets; Coached, carted, trod upon, now loose, now fast, And carried off in some dog's tail ...

— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott

... lightning-like gulp, which disturbs the serenity of the surface of the pool, swallows the kicking prey. The energy of the sun's heat and light, stored in grass, transmitted to move muscles in gigantic leaps, will, in a short time, wag a caudal fin and propel the owner ...

— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various

... Kamakura chiefs brought two sets of rulers upon the same stage, and naturally intrigue and distrust were born, so that, in the end, Muromachi was shaken by Hosokawa, and Kamakura was overthrown by Uesugi. An animal with too ponderous a tail cannot wag it, and a stick too heavy at one end is apt to break. The Ashikaga angled with such valuable bait that they ultimately lost both fish and bait. During the thirteen generations of their sway there was no respite ...

— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... denominations—Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians—as a house of worship, but was made to serve as a schoolhouse. So far as petty litigation was concerned, Squire Ichabod Inchly, the wheel-wright, was prepared to hold justice-court in the open air in front of his shop when the weather wag fine, and in any convenient place when the weather was foul. "Gentlemen," he would say, when a case came before him, "I'd a heap ruther shoe a horse or shrink a tire; yit if you will have the law, I'll try and temper it wi' jestice." This was the genuine Pinetucky spirit, and all ...

— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... had been passing the Fair Grounds on his way through the county, when some wag had hailed him and induced him to enter his horse for the race. He was a little wiry man forty or fifty years old, dressed in a soiled tweed coat and a boy's ...

— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens

... Myers of the University of Cambridge, England. Of any abuses of the practice, Dr. Myers gave his readers no reason for believing that he had ever heard; and as an indication, perhaps, of an animal's eagerness to be vivisected, he tells us that "again and again dogs have been observed to wag the tail and lick the hands of the operator even immediately before the beginning of the operation." Commenting upon the singular conclusion which this fact seemed to suggest to Dr. Myers, the present writer quoted a sentence or two from an editorial which ...

— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell

... Scholar of Tyrwhitt When examined in Hebrew he sits— On a log that mysterious spirit Smokes in silence, and silently spits. And yet not alone sat the vision; There came, as he sat on his log, A wag of delight and submission From the tail ...

— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling

... very same persons would give some rough token of respect to Lieutenant Atkinson if they met him in High Street. Touching their hats was an unknown gesture in those parts, but they would move their heads in a droll, familiar kind of way, neither a wag nor a nod, but meant all the same to imply friendly regard. The ship-owners, too, invited him to an occasional dinner or supper, all the time looking forward to the chances of his turning out an active enemy, and not by any means inclined to give him 'the run of the house,' however many unmarried ...

— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell

... nor offended him. He was a philosopher—and, like so many of his kind, a laughing philosopher. When he was sufficiently recovered from his operation to get about on crutches he was the wag of the ward. He took a special delight in those practical jokes which are invented by patients to tease the nurses, and devoted the most painstaking ingenuity to their preparation. It was he who found a small hole in the lath-and-plaster wall ...

— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... young woman of strong sense, well fitted to contend with poverty, and of a pious disposition, which it is like that these misfortunes heated. Like so many other widowed Scots- women, she vowed her son should wag his head in a pulpit; but her means were inadequate to her ambition. A charity school, and some time under a Mr. M'Intyre, 'a famous linguist,' were all she could afford in the way of education to the would-be minister. He learned no Greek; in one place he mentions that the Orations of Cicero ...

— Records of a Family of Engineers • Robert Louis Stevenson

... a few who said that even a pretended observance of the decencies would have been better. Miss Alvira disagreed with them, however, and after all, as the village wag, Elias Cuthbert, said in the post-office next day, "It was her funeral." For Miss Alvira had made no pretense to God; and, what is infinitely harder, she would make none to the world. She rode to the last resting-place ...

— The Seeker • Harry Leon Wilson

... duchess, and to accompany her party to the play. He used to travel with a night-cap in his pocket, and having occasion for a handkerchief at the theatre, made use of his cap for that purpose. In one of his reveries, however, it fell from the side-box, where he was sitting, into the pit, where a wag, who picked it up, hoisted it upon the end of a stick, that it might be claimed by its rightful proprietor. Judge of the consternation of a large party of ladies of rank and fashion, when George Harvest rose in the midst of them, and claimed the night-cap (which ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 341, Saturday, November 15, 1828. • Various

... cast soft pantomime stones at Bloom. Many bonafide travellers and ownerless dogs come near him and defile him. Mastiansky and Citron approach in gaberdines, wearing long earlocks. They wag ...

— Ulysses • James Joyce

... knock-kneed shrimp? I'm going to mash your jaw so you'll never wag it again! And ...

— Radio Boys Cronies • Wayne Whipple and S. F. Aaron

... unconventional or leaves undone what custom and gossip make almost obligatory, a relation or a mere interfering neighbour is always at hand to wag her head and say there must be some reason for it. Which means, of course, one specific reason. And the worst of it is that she is ...

— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman

... two Samoans and four Fijians. The captain seemed to enjoy yelling at his men in the Fijian language, with a strong flavouring of English "swear words," and spoke about the Fijians in terms of utter contempt, calling them "d——d cannibals." The cabin wag a small one with only two bunks, and swarmed with green beetles and cockroaches. Our meals were all taken together on deck, and consisted of yams, ship's ...

— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker

... be wag'd, what Discords may we fear Among ourselves? The powerful Mohawk King Will ne'er consent to fight against the English, Nay, more, will join them as firm Ally, And influence other Chiefs by his Example, To muster all their Strength against our Father. Fathers perhaps ...

— Ponteach - The Savages of America • Robert Rogers

... Fowler," said the painter, "that is a mighty curiosity." "What might it be, sir, if I may be so bold?" "A whale's eye," replied Gainsborough. "Oh! not so; never say so, Muster Gainsborough. Laws! sir, it is a little child's skull!" "You have hit upon it," said the wag. "Why, Fowler, you are a witch! But what will you think when I tell you that it is the skull of Julius Caesar when he was a little boy?" "Do you say so!" exclaimed Fowler, ...

— Heads and Tales • Various

... the newspapers that forged notes, amounting to several millions of dollars, were flooding the street. The young man was sentenced to prison for a term of five years—one for each forged million! as remarked the wag who ...

— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin

... probable, I think, that some wag, in order to make Howard still more ridiculous than he really was, has formed the couplet as it now circulates. BOSWELL. Swift in his Poetry: A Rhapsody, thus ...

— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell

... the wall untouched, just as the American dashed for hiding behind barricade or house of Lower Town. Some of the Americans wanted to know what were the lanterns and lookouts which the English had constructed above the precipice of Cape Diamond. Some wag of a habitant answered these were the sign of a wooden horse with hay in front of it, and that the English general, Carleton, had said he would not surrender the town till the horse had caught up to the hay. Skulking riflemen of the Congress ...

— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut

... Mornac—it must be Mornac! He is the only man; he had access to everything. And now that his Emperor is a prisoner and his Empress a fugitive, the miserable hound has nothing to lose by the anarchy he once hoped to profit by. Tell me, Scarlett, does the tail wag the dog, after all? And which is the dog, ...

— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... and the public generally were completely flabbergasted some days later when Secretary Hughes and the President gave out contradictory statements as to whether the treaty included the Japanese homeland. Hughes stated to the correspondents that it did, the President said it did not. Whereupon some wag remarked that at Paris President Wilson did not let the American delegation know what he did, while at Washington the delegates did not let President Harding know what they were doing. In deference to the President's views and to criticisms of the treaty ...

— From Isolation to Leadership, Revised - A Review of American Foreign Policy • John Holladay Latane

... doubtless felt secret misgivings whenever any specially significant outburst of popular dissatisfaction occurred. But for many years they were able to present a united and brazen front, and to crush anyone who dared to so much as wag a finger against them. It was intimated on a former page that Robert Gourlay was not the first victim of Executive tyranny. The first conspicuous victim of whom any record has been preserved was Mr. Robert Thorpe, an English barrister of much learning and acumen, who in 1805 was appointed a puisne ...

— The Story of the Upper Canada Rebellion, Volume 1 • John Charles Dent

... of Rufus, had on one occasion been confined, and old Doctor—I forget his name—who officiated at the birth, had been asked to give the infant a name. Now he was a dry wag, of the kind so dear to Dr. Holmes, and expressed much gratification and gratitude at such a compliment being paid to him. "He had long been desirous," he said, "of naming a child after his dear old friend, Dr. Green." So the name was bestowed, the simple Indians not realising for some time after ...

— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... old fellow," the boy continued, "we sha'n't be here long, I hope, and then you shall go with me in the woods again and hunt the wolves to your heart's content." The great hound gave a lazy wag of his tail. "And now, Wolf, I must go. You lie here and guard the hut while I am away. Not that you are likely to have any strangers ...

— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... classes above sent showers of dust down between the cracks in the worn floor. But those boys were satisfied that they were having a perfectly blissful time, and were serenely happy in defiance of unpropitious surroundings. They were 'playing the wag,' and to be playing the wag under any circumstances is a guarantee of pure felicity ...

— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... thing to do with an adopted cat is to give it a name, and Jack Harmon, who was a bit of a wag in his way, and a great admirer of the monster elephant which was just then making such a stir in New York, ...

— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes

... readily to one singular piece of information which brought much ridicule upon them. She chanced to say to Wilson Gregg, who is something of a wag, and had just sold the Jamesons a nice little white pig, that she thought that ham was very nice in alternate streaks of fat and lean, though she never ate it herself, and only bought the pig for the sake of her mother, who had old-fashioned tastes in her eating and would ...

— The Jamesons • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... Emerson's teeth snapped angrily, and Clyde's colorless eyes shifted. "Fraser let his tongue wag, and immediately the banks closed up on me. I've tried every one in this city, in Tacoma, in Vancouver, and in Victoria, but it seems that they have all been advised of war in the canning business. Our ship was taken away from us, and although I have found another, I'm afraid to charter ...

— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach

... old fellow," said I, talking audibly to him for want of something in human shape to address, "you didn't lick my face just now when you might have done so with impunity; and when I speak to you, you don't wag that beautiful bushy tail which serves you for ornament. This reminds me that you are not like the dogs I used to know—the dogs that talked with their tails, caressed with their tongues, and were never over-clean or well-behaved. Where are they now—collies, rat-worrying terriers, hounds, ...

— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson

... not say that Van der Kemp received his faithful little servant kindly, and it was quite touching to observe the monkey's intense affection for him. It could not indeed wag its tail like a dog, but it put its arms round its master's neck with a wondrously human air, and rubbed its little head in his beard and whiskers, drawing itself back now and then, putting its black paws on his cheeks, turning his face round to the light and opening its round eyes wide—as ...

— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne

... young couple, guzzled in a wedged and weltering mass. Wizened grandfathers and stolid large-eyed children ate and panted in the suffocating heat, and gorged again. Not till half way through the repast did tongues begin to wag freely. At last the tisane of champagne—syrupy paradise to my uncultivated palate—was handed round and the toasts were drunk. The bride's garter was secured amid boisterous shouts and innuendos, and then we left the stifling room and entered the garden, the elders ...

— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... the Oxonian was at the bottom of all this oracular mystery, and was disposed to amuse himself with the general, whose tender approaches to the widow have attracted the notice of the wag. I was a little curious, however, to know the meaning of the dark hints which had so suddenly disconcerted Master Simon: and took occasion to fall in the rear with the Oxonian on our way home, when he laughed heartily ...

— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... Somehow she mistrusted him. Joe West had rather the reputation of being a wag and a ...

— Young Lucretia and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... as Mr. Lincoln's judgment was concerning men, for once he had been wholly mistaken. The scene was comical in the extreme. The two men stood gazing at each other. A smile broke from the lips of the solemn wag and rippled over the wide expanse of his homely face like sunlight overspreading a continent, and Mr. Lincoln ...

— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... Roberts said, they lacked discipline. That's why you and I are here. They're going to grind the insubordination out of us. They'll march us and sweat us to death. 'Trouble maketh a strong man, Pain maketh a true man,' so some old wag has said." ...

— The Kangaroo Marines • R. W. Campbell

... the dwarfs began to mock at the hero with their harsh voices, and to wag their horrid little heads at him, while they screamed in a fury that he was not dividing the ...

— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... a man," said the engineer, swinging his lantern far out into the darkness. But no sign, whether of the dead or of the living, was in sight,—nothing except a half-starved, collarless dog, who sat stupidly upon the grass, and who did not even wag his tail when ...

— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward

... their hopes, For writing pamphlets, and for roasting Popes; Yet lo! in me what authors have to brag on! Reduc'd at last to hiss in my own dragon. Avert in Heav'n! that thou, my Cibber, e'er Shouldst wag a serpent-tail in Smithfield fair! Like the vile straw that's blown about the streets, The needy poet sticks to all he meets; Coach'd, carted, trod upon, now loose, now fast, And carry'd off in some dog's tail at last. Happier thy fortunes! like a rolling ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various

... trenches. Gunners wager about the number of their hits, riflemen on the number of misses by the enemy. Daring spirits, before making an attack, have even been known to bet on the number of guns they would capture. "We have already picked up a good deal in the way of German souvenirs," says one wag; "enough, indeed, to set a decent-sized army up in business." The British Army, indeed, is an army of sportsmen. Every man must have his game, his friendly wager, his joke, and his song. As one officer told his men: "You are a lively lot of beggars. ...

— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick

... is quite another matter. People allow themselves to say such things, especially in speeches; but it is by no means intended that these theories should be translated into practice. No, believe me, my dear boy, I am old, and I know humanity. The world must wag like this; we are not made otherwise. In youth one has his own peculiar view of life, but, young man, it is not the right one. Only when one has arrived at the calm restfulness of an advanced age does one see circumstances ...

— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland

... officer has this habit, but most acquire it. I have been told that, however weakly otherwise, the calf muscles of watch-officers were generally well developed. There were exceptions. A lieutenant who was something of a wag on one occasion handed the midshipman of his watch a small instrument, in which the latter did not recognize a pedometer. "Will you kindly keep this in your trousers-pocket for me till the watch is over?" At eight bells he asked for it, and, after examining, said, quizzically, ...

— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... animates art and literature, as the whistle of the master animates the dog and makes him wag ...

— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 2, April 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... mair than ye can mak to through; As for your Priesthood, I shall say but little, Corbies and Clergy, are a shot right kittle: But under favour o' your langer beard, Abuse o' Magistrates might weel be spar'd: To liken them to your auld-warld squad, I must needs say, comparisons are odd. In Ayr, wag-wits nae mair can have a handle To mouth 'a citizen,' a term o' scandal; Nae mair the Council waddles down the street, In all the pomp of ignorant conceit; Men wha grew wise priggin' owre hops an' raisins, Or gather'd lib'ral views ...

— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... into the stove lit parlour. One yet more humble welcomer was there of the vagabond tribe—petty larceny in every curve of his ungainly form, and his spirit so broken by adversity that he only ventured to wag his shabby tail ...

— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... mouth and fell upon an earthenware jar which was broken; the rest of the vessels were upset and the water spilt. The old woman seized a stick, and rose up to beat [the animal]; the dog seized the skirt of her clothes, and began to rub his mouth on her feet, and wag his tail; then he ran towards the mountain; again having returned to her, he sometimes seized a rope, and sometimes having taken up a bucket in his mouth, he shewed it [to her]; and he rubbed his face against her feet, and seizing the hem of her garment, ...

— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli

... thee." So Al-Rashid laughed at his saying and said, "See which of the boon-companions is at the door." Thereupon he went out and returning, said, "O my lord, he who sits without is Ali bin Mansur of Damascus, the Wag."[FN327] "Bring him to me," quoth Harun: and Masrur went out and returned with Ibn Mansur, who said, on entering, "Peace be with thee, O Commander of the Faithful!" The Caliph returned his salutation and said to him, ...

— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... congratulate us, "Qu'il fait tres beau!" We pass the lanes of the village, our heads almost on a level with the flat stone-laden roofs; our mules, with their long rolling pace, like the waves of the sea, give to their riders a facetious wag of the body that is quite striking. Now the village is passed, and see, a road banded with green ribands of turf. S.'s mule and guide pass on, and head the party. G. rides another mule. C. and W. leap along trying their alpenstocks; stopping once in a while to admire the glaciers, as their ...

— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... bark and a wag of his tail, Splash gave a big jump, nearly throwing Bunny and Sue out of the wagon. Then the big dog began to run after the ...

— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue • Laura Lee Hope

... building was always filled by strongly-visaged spinsters and mutinous wives, who twice a week were worked up by Dr. Fleabody to a full belief that a glorious era was at hand in which woman would be chosen by constituencies, would wag their heads in courts of law, would buy and sell in Capel Court, and have balances at their banker's. It was certainly the case that Dr. Fleabody had made proselytes by the hundred, and disturbed the happiness ...

— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... without hope of relief, and the nascent navy of Spain was strangled at the birth. Alberoni, in his fury, had the persons and goods seized of English residents settled in Spain, drove out the consuls, and orders were given at Madrid that no tongue should wag about the affairs of Sicily. The hope of a sudden surprise in England, on behalf of the Jacobites, had been destroyed by the death of the King of Sweden, Charles XII., killed on the 12th of December, 1718, at Freiderishalt, in Norway; the flotilla equipped ...

— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... fact; Bridger an' me finds a drove of buffalos bogged down in the snow,—I reckons now thar's twenty thousand of 'em,—and never a buffalo can move a wheel or turn a kyard. Thar they be planted in the snow, an' only can jest wag their ...

— Wolfville • Alfred Henry Lewis

... cleverly illustrated edition of it was published by Scheible of Stuttgart in 1838, and that a passage in the Hettlingischen Sassenchronik (Caspar Abel's Sammlung, p. 185.), written in 1455, goes to prove that Dyll Ulnspiegel, as the wag is styled in the Augsburgh edition of 1540, is no imaginary personage, inasmuch as under the date of 1350 the chronicler tells of a very grievous pestilence which raged through the whole world, and that "dosulfest sterff Ulenspeygel ...

— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various

... politic, and hath often shunned To make her nest in Democratic boughs. 'Twere well to seek from out the tricky foe One who shall balance, like the flying wheel, The various acts of Francos and his crew And so most shrewdly curb the critic tongues That wag within the jaws of foes most keen, Thus hiding well, from all the thoughtless world. The deep intent which labors in our breast. And which in time shall like the bird encased By brittle shell, break forth and fly aloft, Singing to startled worlds sweet freedom's ...

— 'A Comedy of Errors' in Seven Acts • Spokeshave (AKA Old Fogy)

... is new," said Kriech, with a wag of his head. "That O Lalala! I have heard that that poker iss very dansherous. That Prince Hanoi of Papeite lose his tam headt to a Chinaman. Something comes of ...

— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... scholastic wight, Who wishes to hold a public debate On sundry questions wrong or right! Ah, now this is my great delight! For I have often observed of late That such discussions end in a fight. Let us see what the learned wag maintains With such a prodigal ...

— The Golden Legend • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... yo knows; Be de sunflower or de daisy, de melon or de rose. Don't be what yo ain't, jess yo be what yo is, If yo am not what yo are den yo is not what you is, If yo're jess a little tadpole, don't yo try to be de frog; If yo are de tail, don't yo try to wag de dawg. Pass de plate if yo can't exhawt and preach; If yo're jess a little pebble, don't yo try to be de beach; When a man is what he isn't, den he isn't what he is, An' as sure as I'm talking, ...

— It Can Be Done - Poems of Inspiration • Joseph Morris

... be seen, and sometimes a small round head, or a glistening white tongue, or the point of a wing appeared to encourage me. Baby days were now fast passing away; the mother fed industriously, and the "pair of twins," waxed strong and pert, sat up higher in the nest, and began the unceasing wag of the head from side to side, like their mother. What a fairy-like world was this they were now getting acquainted with! What to them was the presence of human beings, with their interests, their anxieties, and their cares, passing ...

— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller

... tail was once a waving flag Of welcome. Now I cannot wag It for the weight I have ...

— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... sprightly in his writings as he is heavy in his buildings. It is he who raised the famous Castle of Blenheim, a ponderous and lasting monument of our unfortunate Battle of Hochstet. Were the apartments but as spacious as the walls are thick, this castle would be commodious enough. Some wag, in an epitaph he made on Sir John Vanbrugh, has ...

— Letters on England • Voltaire

... might see him in some great peril and prove my love by cutting down a round dozen of his foes. And learned! Why, man, he disputed with the most learned among their Dutch scholars openly in the big church, and left them not a leg to stand on, or a tongue to wag. Why, 't is no more to him to read Hebrew than for me to spell out my Bible. So then, knowing his learning and his love of all that is old and curious, I one day showed him my sword and asked if he could rede me fairly the mystical texts or whatever they might ...

— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin

... Cromwell shouted "drunkard," "glutton," "extortioner," with other opprobrious names. When all were gone, he locked the door and put the key in his pocket. During the night some Royalist wag nailed a placard on the door, bearing the inscription in large letters, "The House to ...

— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... ere long the dwarfs began to mock at the hero with their harsh voices, and to wag their horrid little heads at him, while they screamed in a fury that he was not dividing the treasure ...

— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... like a beggar man, and wag his under jaw; a jocular reproach to a proud man. To eat one's words; to retract ...

— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.

... Mr. John P. Smith, who was a wag, and who would willingly give up his dinner, which he loved, for a joke, which he loved better, was the next day questioned about this incident. One gentleman, a music dealer, said to him: "Mr. Smith, I wish you to settle a question for me. My wife and I are at ...

— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris

... suppose many a time before, "Away by, and get the sheep." And out she went. About two or three, again the scratching. And he found the last sheep back; badly torn; been down some ravine or gully. And the dog was plainly played. And yet she seemed to give a bit of a wag to her tired tail as though she would say, "There it is—I've done as you ...

— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon

... however, and the tongue of gossip continued to wag. Her immediate marriage with a former lover, Mr. Hill, was announced: 'il est bien bon,' said Lady Bessborough. Then it was whispered that Canning was 'le regnant'—that he was with her 'not only all day, but almost all ...

— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey

... from all parts of the world, as to a shrine—from Paris, from Germany, Italy, Norway, and Sweden; from America especially. Leah had to play the hostess almost every day of her life, and show off her lion and make him roar and wag his tail and stand on his hind legs—a lion that was not always in the mood to tumble and be shown off, unless the pilgrims were pretty ...

— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... speed as light comes to us from the sun. As you move the wire away from the magnet, a second wave starts through the wire, flowing in the opposite direction. You can prove this by holding a compass needle under the wire and see it wag first in one ...

— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson

... From the time of the capture of New York by the British in 1776 the notes began to fall. In 1778 the news of the French alliance caused a little rise; but in 1781 the bills fell to a point where a thousand dollars exchanged for one dollar in specie, and a Philadelphia wag made out of the notes a blanket for his dog. The Continental currency was never redeemed, and was consequently a forced tax on those who were least able to pay, since every holder lost by its ...

— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart

... said the man. "They ain't no particler likin' for me. Don't want to run and jump an' wag, but they know I mean well, and ...

— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

... And he took off his pack and sat down in the snow with his legs stretched out in front of him. In the mouth of the pack there was something that little Tota had scraped together for her papa on the trip. And then the bitch began to wag her tail back and forth in the snow and gaze with lustful eyes at ...

— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... 30 the mystery ship was back over the San Francisco area and those people who had maintained that people were being fooled by a wag in a balloon became believers when the object was seen moving ...

— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt

... enduring and a more healthy love, for it increased with years, and made men love one another, and they would stand by each other while they had a limb to lift—while they were able to chew a quid or wink an eye, leave alone wag a pigtail. ...

— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest

... drowse to-night, Skirting lawns of sleep to chase Shifting dreams in mazy light, Somewhere then I'll see your face Turning back to bid me follow Where I wag my arms and hollo, Over hedges hasting after Crooked smile and baffling laughter, Running tireless, floating, leaping, Down your web-hung woods and valleys, Garden glooms and hornbeam alleys, Where the glowworm stars are peeping, Till I find you, quiet as stone On a hill-top ...

— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various

... looks after him properly," said Rumple, with a wag of his head, at which the doctor laughed; for when sleep seized upon Rumple he was of little use in ...

— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant

... They wag as though they were Panting for joy Where they shine, above all care, And annoy, And demons of despair - ...

— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy

... frailty which was received with shouts of rapture by the audience. These were soon, however, renewed at the expense of the jester himself, when the insulted maiden extricated, ere the paroxysm was well over, one hand from the folds of her mantle, and bestowed on the wag a buffet, which made him reel fully his own length from the pardoner, and then acknowledge the favour by ...

— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott

... (whom I have previously allluded to, 'a propos' of a song he wrote) was a merry wag who excelled in making fun of people, in highly-seasoned pleasantry, and in comic songs. Spoiled by the favour which had always sustained him, he gave full licence to his tongue, and by this audacity had rendered ...

— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... race Her Carthage ruin, and her tow'rs deface; Nor thus confin'd, the yoke of sov'reign sway Should on the necks of all the nations lay. She ponder'd this, and fear'd it was in fate; Nor could forget the war she wag'd of late For conqu'ring Greece against the Trojan state. Besides, long causes working in her mind, And secret seeds of envy, lay behind; Deep graven in her heart the doom remain'd Of partial Paris, and her form disdain'd; The grace bestow'd on ravish'd Ganymed, ...

— The Aeneid • Virgil

... together. "Look at those, woman," he said ominously, deliberately, but she could not or would not; and, before she could collect her wits, what must need old Nonna do but make bad worse, and, running, thrust herself in between, and wag her hand under ...

— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... against Ord, whom he accused of purloining Father Pandoza's shoes, when the soldiers in their fury about the ammunition destroyed the Mission. At the time of its destruction a rumor of this nature was circulated through camp, started by some wag, no doubt in jest; for Ord, who was somewhat eccentric in his habits, and had started on the expedition rather indifferently shod in carpet-slippers, here came out in a brand-new pair of shoes. Of course there was no real foundation for such a report, ...

— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... by Allah, O my lord!" answered he. "Thou in this time art Commander of the Faithful and Vicar of the Lord of the Worlds." Aboulhusn laughed at himself and misdoubted of his reason and was perplexed at what he saw and said, "In one night I am become Khalif! Yesterday I was Aboulhusn the Wag, and to-day I am Commander of the Faithful." Then the chief eunuch came up to him and said, "O Commander of the Faithful, (the name of God encompass thee!) thou art indeed Commander of the Faithful and Vicar of the Lord of the ...

— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne

... widened. What now? His tongue longed to wag, but by this time he was readily obeying Hillard in ...

— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath

... existed for him. He gave no thought to his clothes: his undress uniform was not green, but a sort of rusty-meal colour. The collar was low, so that his neck, in spite of the fact that it was not long, seemed inordinately so as it emerged from it, like the necks of those plaster cats which wag their heads, and are carried about upon the heads of scores of image sellers. And something was always sticking to his uniform, either a bit of hay or some trifle. Moreover, he had a peculiar knack, as he walked along the street, of arriving ...

— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... been watching him through some secret peephole. That had been her tribute to him and her scorn of his opponents. It about closed the incident, Pan concluded. Men were now coming along the street in both directions, though not yet close. Some wag yelled from a distance: "Thar ...

— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... shutting their eyes that they see, and by opening their mouths that they apprehend. Like certain broad-muzzled dogs, all stand equally stiff and staunch, although few scent the game, and their lips wag, and water, at whatever distance from the net. We must leave them with their hands hanging down before them, confident that they are wiser than we are, were it only for this attitude of humility. It is amusing ...

— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor

... colder brain, Chilled Nature's streams till man's warm heart was fain Never to lave its love in them again. Later, a sweet Voice 'Love thy neighbor' said; Then first the bounds of neighborhood outspread Beyond all confines of old ethnic dread. Vainly the Jew might wag his covenant head: '"All men are neighbors,"' so the sweet Voice said. So, when man's arms had circled all man's race, The liberal compass of his warm embrace Stretched bigger yet in the dark bounds of space; ...

— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... not wish to make Borrow out a suffering innocent in the hands of that learned heavy-weight and wag, Dr. Knapp. Borrow was a writing man; he was sometimes a friend of jockeys, of Gypsies and of pugilists, but he was always a writing man; and the writer who is delighted to have his travels in Spain compared with the rogue romance, "Gil Blas," is no innocent. Photography, ...

— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... collar, and ever afterward, when I met her in the street, I stopped and looked at her. Sometimes she saw me and stopped her carriage to speak to me; but I always wagged my tail, or rather my body, for I had no tail to wag, whenever I saw her, whether she ...

— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders

... he whose strength was equal to that of a hundred thousand elephants, alas, that king sitteth today, leaning on a woman. Alas! he by whom the iron image of Bhima on a former occasion wag reduced to fragments, leaneth today on a weak woman. Fie on me that am exceedingly unrighteous! Fie on my understanding! Fie on my knowledge of the scripture! Fie on me for whom this lord of Earth lieth today in a manner that ...

— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... too—our Princess,—I dare not say more, sir,— May Providence watch them with mercy and might! While there's one Scottish hand that can wag a claymore, sir, They shall ne'er want a friend to stand up for their right. Be damn'd he that dare not— For my part I'll spare not To beauty afflicted a tribute to give; Fill it up steadily, Drink it off readily, Here's to the Princess, ...

— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... about parish matters," said a wicked wag of the company; "you see, sir, our minister urged pretty hard last Sunday to have his salary paid up. He has had sickness in his family, and nothing on ...

— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... must promise (and mind your word you keep) Not once to tease the little lambs, or run among the sheep; And then the little yellow chicks that play upon the grass, You must not even wag your tail to ...

— Pinafore Palace • Various

... the aisle, take my place in front of the Chief Pharisee, wag my finger under his nose, and tell him a thing or two about the condition of ...

— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... doin' you underrate your own deeds. Moreover, we don't allow boastin' aboard of this island; so go ahead, Jack Brace, and tell us what you did do, without referrin' to what you think you could do. Mind, I'm king here, and I'll have to clap you in irons if you let your tongue wag ...

— The Lonely Island - The Refuge of the Mutineers • R.M. Ballantyne

... party we're seated at tea, The dollies all seem very glad, Save the poor little thing who is leaning on me; I fear that she feels rather bad; Poor limp little thing! she wants a back-bone, She's only just made up of rag. There's little Miss Prim sitting up all alone, And the Japanese looks like a wag. ...

— Very Short Stories and Verses For Children • Mrs. W. K. Clifford

... accommodated more dancing folk than the neighbours and their guests. The famous Four were not present; nor were they seen in Menlo that summer. Immediately after the announcement of Helena's engagement some cruel wag had sent each a miniature tub with "For Tears" inscribed with black paint upon the bottom. It was generally supposed that the afflicted quartette were spending their leisure over these tubs, for they had retired into as complete an obscurity as their various callings would permit. ...

— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... "Chief" by his no longer going about with the other boys, by his habits becoming solitary, and by his neglecting his personal appearance, especially in letting his very abundant hair grow longer than fashion dictates for the young manhood of the coast. That was the reason some wag one day dubbed him "Absalom," which the rest caught up and soon shortened to "Sally." In the proper order of things it should have been "Abe." Wasn't Absalom Sims always called "Abe"? There was obviously an intentional tinge of satire in this ...

— Labrador Days - Tales of the Sea Toilers • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell

... they hang him up by wounds made through his hands and feet, between the earth and the heavens; where he hanged for the space of six hours. No God yet appears for his help. While he hangs there some rail at him, others wag their heads, others tauntingly say, "He saved others, himself he cannot save." Some divide his raiment, casting lots for his raiment before his face; others mockingly hid him come down from the cross; and when ...

— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... ter git away from," answered Uncle Terry, "an' ye can't be perlite ter him unless ye want t' spend the rest o' yer life listenin'. His tongue allus seemed ter be hung in the middle an' wag both ways. I wasn't lonesome," he continued, rising and adding a few sticks to the fire, as the two women laid aside their wraps and drew chairs up; "I've read the paper purty well through an' had a spell o' livin' over by-gones," and then, turning to Telly and smiling, he added: "I got ...

— Uncle Terry - A Story of the Maine Coast • Charles Clark Munn

... various units. One by one he discarded them. The semaphore would serve only for short distances and then only when the boats were within sight of each other. The same argument would apply against the wig-wag. The heliograph would be useless in stormy weather or in fog. A fast launch would help out, but even that would not completely solve the difficulty. How did boats keep in touch with one another? The answer came at once. Why hadn't ...

— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... me in mind of a story!" put in Shadow, eagerly. "A girl who was going to get married had a shower, as they call 'em. Well, a wag of the town—maybe he was sore because he couldn't marry the girl himself—told all his friends, in private, that she was very anxious to get a nice bread-box. The shower was to be a surprise, and it was, too, for when it came off the girl ...

— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer

... suddenly starts up as if distracted. "Yelp, yelp!" Ah! poor Fido! although your master seems evidently out of humor, he would not have kicked your beautiful spotted coat had he seen you! There, he caresses you—so fold back your long ears, and wag your tail complacently, while we hear what this impatient youth has to say, as he strides so rapidly hither ...

— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... and bar'!' Put yo' crook around our necks, John, an' lead us home with our tails behind us, so as our Bo Peeps'll know us when we come an' gladden us with their soft black eyes! Ain't that the way the poetry runs?" snickered a drunken wag, dropping on the post-office steps and gazing up with a befuddled air at Fairfield, who had removed his hat and ascended ...

— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... my slender armes about his thigh. O my deare master! cannot you (quoth I) Make me a Poet, doe it if you can, And you shall see, Ile quickly bee a man, 30 Who me thus answered smiling, boy quoth he, If you'le not play the wag, but I may see You ply your learning, I will shortly read Some Poets to you; Phoebus be my speed, Too't hard went I, when shortly he began, And first read to me honest Mantuan, Then Virgils Eglogues, being entred ...

— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton

... 't was Jotham Marden's watch, A curious wag,—the pedler's son; And so he mused (the wanton wretch), "To-night I'll have a ...

— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... had such a long pursuit, but that did not keep back Whitey's laughter when Bull staggered up to where they waited for him. He sure was a happy dog, and fatigue did not keep him from showing it, his method being to twist his body into almost a half-circle, wag his stump tail, and prance about gazing delightedly ...

— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart

... wiry-haired, scrubby, melancholy Irish terrier followed O'Connell for miles. He tried to drive him away. The dog would turn and run for a few seconds and the moment O'Connell would take his eyes off him he would run along and catch him up and wag his over-long tail and look up at O'Connell with his sad eyes. The dog followed him all the way home and when O'Connell opened the door he ran in. O'Connell Had not the heart to turn him out, so he poured out some milk and broke up some dry biscuits for him and then played with him until ...

— Peg O' My Heart • J. Hartley Manners

... and blossoms sprout in spring, And bid the burdies wag the wing, They blithely bob, and soar, and sing By the foot ...

— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume IV. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... we hit a man," said the engineer, swinging his lantern far out into the darkness. But no sign, whether of the dead or of the living, was in sight,—nothing except a half-starved, collarless dog, who sat stupidly upon the grass, and who did not even wag his tail when the stoker spoke ...

— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward

... species of hound. (14) One dog as soon as he has found the trail will go along without sign or symptom to show that he is on the scent; another will vibrate his ears only and keep his tail (15) perfectly still; while a third has just the opposite propensity: he will keep his ears still and wag with the tip of his tail. Others draw their ears together, and assuming a solemn air, (16) drop their tails, tuck them between their legs, and scour along the line. Many do nothing of the sort. (17) They tear madly about, babbling round the line when they light upon it, and senselessly ...

— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon

... he happens to have a tail to wag, and others haven't," said I. "I consider myself as good as Tibe, any day, though handicapped in some ways. I'll soon show you that I'm not ungrateful, when you've let me know exactly what cause I have for gratitude. Have you murdered the late ...

— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson

... Radisson, "I thought 'twas the men I sent to spy if the marsh were safe crossing. Give Le Borgne tobacco, La Chesnaye. If once the fellow gets drunk," he adds to me in an undertone, "that silent tongue of his may wag on the interlopers. We must be stirring, stirring, Ramsay! Ten days past! Egad, a man might as well be a fish-worm burrowing underground as such a snail! We must stir—stir! See here"—drawing me to ...

— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut

... nature to ensnare his attention. She would keep back some piece of news during dinner to be fired off with the entrance of the supper tray, and form as it were the LEVER DE RIDEAU of the evening's entertainment. Once he had heard her tongue wag, she made sure of the result. From one subject to another she moved by insidious transitions, fearing the least silence, fearing almost to give him time for an answer lest it should slip into a hint of separation. ...

— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... clear whistle came from the street; There's a wag of the tail and a twinkle of feet, And the little white dog did not even say, "Excuse me, ma'am," as he scampered away; But I'm sure as can be his greatest joy Is just to ...

— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... Faithful and Viceregent of the Lord of the three Worlds." Abu al-Hasan laughed at himself and doubted of his reason and was bewildered at what he beheld, and said, "In one night do I become Caliph? Yesterday I was Abu al-Hasan the Wag, and to-day I am Commander of the Faithful." then the Chief Eunuch came up to him and said, "O Prince of True Believers (the name of Allah encompass thee!), thou art indeed Commander of the Faithful and Viceregent of the Lord of the three Worlds!" and the slave-girls and eunuchs ...

— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... two let the world wag. Then the whole booth fell heavily over, mouth uppermost, and we within it. It was the final of the animal race that was responsible for our overthrow. The black pig, blind with jealous rage and mortification at being beaten ...

— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates

... four legs dropped the big white dog, and with another wag of his fluffy tail he came ...

— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope

... composed the crew of the lighter; and, as there had already been considerable loss from demurrage, were embarked as soon as they arrived. The name of the father was Tom Beazeley, but he was always known on the river as "old Tom" or, as some more learned wag had christened him, "the Merman on two sticks." As soon as we had put our traps on board, as old Tom called them, he received his orders, and we cast off from the wharf. The wind was favourable. Young Tom was as active as a monkey, and as full of tricks. His ...

— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... second season that le Bourdon had occupied "Castle Meal," as he himself called the shanty. This appellation was a corruption of "chateau au Mtel" a name given to it by a wag of a voyageur^ who had aided Ben in ascending the Kalamazoo the previous summer, and had remained long enough with him to help him put up his habitation. The building was just twelve feet square, ...

— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... now, how now, mad wag, what in thy quips and thy quiddities? what a plague have I ...

— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt

... it, no worse than three or four you might have found by stepping across the road to Roisin's coffee-house in the Rue Vaugirard. The commoners in the late troubles have been leal enough, I'll give them that credit, but some of the gentry wag their tongues for Prince Tearlach and ply their pens for ...

— Doom Castle • Neil Munro

... could never bear any allusion to this tree-climbing episode in his martial career, which, as it happened, had taken place in full view of his retainers, among whom it remained the greatest of jokes. Indeed, he wanted to kill a man, the wag of the party, who gave him a slang name which, being translated, ...

— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... much the matter, but a second look showed the boys poor old Skipper lying on the floor in front of the open fireplace which was filled with fresh green boughs—and evidently a very sick dog indeed. He gave the boys a pathetic glance of recognition as they came in, and with a feeble wag or two of his tail tried to show them he was glad to see them; but this done, he seemed to be completely exhausted, and once more laid his head between his ...

— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson

... must be narrow-hipped, and half a million dollars in false hips, rubber pads, and other properties are cast aside. No extravaganza is too absurd for these people who are abject slaves to the whimsicalities of the designer, who is a wag in his way, as has been well shown in a story told to me. The designers for a famous man dressmaker in Paris had a habit of taking sketches of the latest creations to their club meetings. One evening a clever caricaturist took a caricature of a fashion showing a woman ...

— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... come in at one end of the town, he had better go out at the other. He followed the suggestion, and Abdiel followed him—his head hanging and his tail also, for the joy of recovering his master had used up all the remnant of wag there was in his clock. He had no more frolic or scamper in him now than when Clare first saw him. How the poor thing had subsisted during the last few days, it were hard to tell. It was much that he had escaped death from ill-usage. Meanest of wretches ...

— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... Gildon draw his venal quill;— I wish'd the man a dinner, and sat still. 150 Yet then did Dennis rave in furious fret; I never answer'd,—I was not in debt. If want provok'd, or madness made them print, I wag'd no war ...

— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... number of their hits, riflemen on the number of misses by the enemy. Daring spirits, before making an attack, have even been known to bet on the number of guns they would capture. "We have already picked up a good deal in the way of German souvenirs," says one wag; "enough, indeed, to set a decent-sized army up in business." The British Army, indeed, is an army of sportsmen. Every man must have his game, his friendly wager, his joke, and his song. As one officer told his ...

— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick

... blue eyes met her own. Then the eyeglass dropped from its place, the jaw fell, with a wag of the fair beard, and a look of stony astonishment and blank disappointment came into all the great features, while Madame Bonanni broke into a ...

— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... the door. They trotted into the house and out again, and mingled with the mongrel home pack that snarled and growled hostility for this invasion. Then, they came once more to the stile. As they climbed out, Samson South reached up and stroked a tawny head, and the bloodhound paused a moment to wag its tail in friendship, before it jumped down to the road, and ...

— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... keen Per un Wag', So hebbt wi junge Been! Un de so glueckli is as ik, Jehann, dat ...

— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... of the Dexter Trust Company—yes, he was in his pew, wizened and hunched up, prematurely bald. And Stuyvesant Gunning, of the Fidelity National—they were all here, the masters of the city's finance and the pillars of "law and order." Some wag had remarked if you wanted to call directors' meeting after the service, you could settle all the business of ...

— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair

... trying to fill the vat of the Danaides! Their house is mortgaged for three hundred thousand francs for an incorrigible father! Why, they have nothing left, poor wretches! And they have no fun for their money. All they have to live upon is what Victorin may make in Court. He must wag his tongue more, must monsieur your son! And he was to have been a Minister, that learned youth! Our hope and pride. A pretty pilot, who runs aground like a land-lubber; for if he had borrowed to enable him to get on, if he had run into debt for ...

— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... amusing to boys of any country, but to these Formosan lads who had had no experience with one the sound of Lu-a's harsh voice and the sight of his flying heels brought convulsions of merriment. "He's pounding rice! He's pounding rice!" shouted the wag of the party, and his companions flung themselves upon the grass and rolled ...

— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith

... are sometimes varied by the command "Simon says wig-wag!" when all the thumbs must be waggled to ...

— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... But, as some wag once said, the wisest way is to wait till after something has happened before you begin to prophesy ...

— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn

... troop of monkeys, well drilled by an intelligent manager, were performing a tragedy with great applause, the decorum of the whole scene was at once destroyed, and the natural passions of the actors called forth into very indecent and active emulation, by a wag who threw a handful of nuts upon the stage. In like manner, the approaching crisis stirred up among the expectants feelings of a nature very different from those of which, under the superintendence of Mr. Mortcloke, they had but now been endeavouring to imitate the expression. ...

— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... manner many a man had been rewarded and plundered. Once a wag came to court, and amused every one by his drolleries. The King gave him a great many presents, including a horse. After taking leave of the King and his courtiers, the Wag bundled up the presents ...

— The Talking Beasts • Various

... of this grisly reminder of our mortality some wag—or so I suppose, but perhaps he was a cynic—had stuck a great pair of glassless barnacles or goggles. It was a loathly conceit, and yet it added vastly to the favour of the inn in the minds of those wildings that haunted it. Must I add that it did so in mine too, ...

— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... wag as he was, he no longer affected low-bred manners to the same degree as formerly; he already began to dress well, and although with his mocking nature he was still disposed to snap at everybody as of old, he pursed his lips into the serious expression of a fellow who wants ...

— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola

... remained silent, waiting for more. Not so Little Tim. That worthy, although gifted with all the powers of courage and endurance which mark the best of the American savages, was also endowed with the white man's tendency to assert his right to wag his tongue. ...

— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne

... glorified and women gibbeted. If your words for Mrs. Fair have made your trip a failure, so let it be—it is no disgrace to you. It is scandalous the way the papers talk of you, but stick to what you feel to be right and let the world wag. ...

— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper

... fell back a pace. He turned his face upon his companions. His eyes rolled faster than ever; but, although his lips appeared to move, and his tongue to wag, he was too excited to give utterance to a word. A volley of clicks and hisses ...

— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... you e'er long again for such relish as this is, Devoutly I'll pray, wag Maecenas, I vow, With her hand that your mistress arrest all your kisses, And lie as far off as ...

— Horace • Theodore Martin

... don't know but I'd as soon tell a story as not," replied Grace, pushing back her curls; "I reckon Pincher wants to hear one, he begins to wag his tail. I can't make up any thing as I go along, but I can tell a ...

— Little Prudy • Sophie May

... fragments of shell from the steaming dainty and laid it snugly on a leaf. "That's for Paddy"—an Irish terrier, always of the party. It was an affecting act of renunciation. Presently "Paddy" came along; but "Paddy," who, too, had lunched, bestowed merely a sniff and a "No, thank you" wag of the tail. "What, you no want 'em? All right." No second offer was risked, and in a moment, in one mouthful, the chick was being crunched by Mickie, feathers and all. The menu of the Chinese—with ...

— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... on the Same Epitaph on Peter Staggs Tray's Epitaph On a Stone thrown at a very great Man, etc. A Consolatory StanzaEpigrams by Robert Burns. The Poet's Choice On a celebrated Ruling Elder On John Dove On Andrew Turner On a Scotch Coxcomb On Grizzel Grim On a Wag in Mauchline Epitaph on W—- On a Suicide Epigrams from the German of Lessing. Niger A Nice Point True Nobility To a Liar Mendax The Bad Wife The Dead Miser The Bad Orator The Wise Child Specimen of the Laconic Cupid and Mercury Fritz On Dorilis To a Slow Walker, ...

— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton

... boy continued, "we sha'n't be here long, I hope, and then you shall go with me in the woods again and hunt the wolves to your heart's content." The great hound gave a lazy wag of his tail. "And now, Wolf, I must go. You lie here and guard the hut while I am away. Not that you are likely to have any strangers to call ...

— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty

... twirling a long and silken moustache. Handsome, graceful, and thoroughly inured to the public gaze, he fronted a small circle of gapers like an actor adroit to make the best of himself, and his tongue wagged fast enough to wag a man's leg off. At a casual glance he might have been taken for thirty, but his age was fifty and more—if you could catch him in the morning before he had ...

— Tales of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett

... follow. They who had closed the barriers of London against the king could not defend them against their own creatures. They who had so stoutly cried for privilege, when that prince, most unadvisedly no doubt, came among them to demand their members, durst not wag their fingers when Oliver filled their hall with soldiers, gave their mace to a corporal, put their keys in his pocket, and drove them forth with base terms, borrowed half from the conventicle and half from ...

— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Contibutions to Knight's Quarterly Magazine] • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... think of something I am to do: give me an order!" (By the way, in reply to a similar question put to Rolf by the wife of Colonel Schweizerbarth, at Degerloch, he had commanded her to "wedeln" ( to wag!) N.B. This word being only used in connexion with a tail in German!) But Lola merely ordered me "to work"—"What am I to work at?" I inquired. "Raking the garden, reckoning, writing or reading?" And I was somewhat surprised, for she was used to seeing me at work at something or other for ...

— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann

... now and take on a few drinks. Hunt up an old friend or two and wag your chins. Make it right secretive and confidential and make each one promise faithful not to breathe a syllable to another living soul. That way the news is sure to ...

— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts

... do not rouse your sleek ears: your ears, Blanchy, are lady's ears, and so ought to hear nothing frightening—and your eyes, Blanche, are lady's eyes, and should never see any thing disagreeable.—What ails thee, doggy? Nay, wag ye'r tail, and do not crouch so; 'tis but the shadow of a cow, I think.—How ...

— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall

... you not now all join to say, that it is more manly to attach a lion than a sheep?—Thou knowest, that I always illustrated my eagleship, by aiming at the noblest quarries; and by disdaining to make a stoop at wrens, phyl-tits,* and wag-tails. ...

— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson

... said she only knew some of the old ones, for since Madame Deslois had been a widow the new ones never stayed with her. A sort of fear which I could not have explained kept me from mentioning the young man in the white smock, and Adele added with a wag of her chin: "Fortunately her eldest son has come back from Paris. The farm ...

— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux

... persons capable of being accommodated on deck. There is indeed a smaller cabin adjoining, which, though the exclusive right of the diligence passengers from Paris, is usually shared by them with the rest. It is distinguished by the words over the door, "Chambre de Pairs," which some wag had altered into "Chambre des Paris," or the Upper House, inscribing the other cabin with his pencil as ...

— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... at this time, respecting this election, which was rather ridiculous, and excited considerable mirth at Paris. Upon the first appearance of the election book of the first consul, in one of the departments, some wag, instead of subscribing his name, immediately under the title of the page, "shall Napoleone Bonaparte be first consul for life?" wrote the following words, ...

— The Stranger in France • John Carr

... or talk, He has a funny kind of walk, His tail is difficult to wag And that's what makes ...

— The Kitten's Garden of Verses • Oliver Herford

... by nightfall, he was still miles away from the appointed place. Nothing daunted, with a proud and mighty air, he paused in the streets of Ardagh to ask a wayfarer where he could find the best house of entertainment. This question, it happened, was addressed to the greatest wag in the vicinity. ...

— Oliver Goldsmith • E. S. Lang Buckland

... have slunk back into the friendly gloom of the windfall, but at this moment Gray Wolf came around the end of a great log, followed by Kazan. She muzzled Baree joyously, and Kazan in a most doglike fashion wagged his tail. This mark of the dog was to be a part of Baree. Half wolf, he would always wag his tail. He tried to wag it now. Perhaps Kazan saw the effort, for he emitted a muffled yelp of approbation as he sat ...

— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood

... Mexico,' and the earnest look which every one had in the room. How different to the vacant gaze that we have been accustomed to! I was really particularly struck by the circumstance. Every one at Premium's looked full of some great plan, as if the fate of empires wag on his very breath. I hardly knew whether they were most like conspirators, or gamblers, or the lions of a public dinner, conscious of an universal gaze, and consequently looking proportionately interesting. One circumstance particularly ...

— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield

... so very different, perhaps. Now, Sue, I've asked you before, don't let your mind grope, and your little tongue wag, every instant; it is n't good for you, and it certainly is n't ...

— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... grown to love them all right well,—him too, though that was the difficult part of the feat. For in his Irish way he played the conjurer very much,—"three hundred and sixty-five opinions in the year upon every subject," as a wag once said. In fact his talk, ever ingenious, emphatic and spirited in detail, was much defective in earnestness, at least in clear earnestness, of purport and outcome; but went tumbling as if in mere welters of explosive unreason; ...

— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... her difficult sum. Betty made cumbrous jokes at Miss Eyre's expense. Molly looked up with the utmost gravity, as if requesting the explanation of an unintelligible speech; and there is nothing so quenching to a wag as to be asked to translate his jest into plain matter-of-fact English, and to show wherein the point lies. Occasionally Betty lost her temper entirely, and spoke impertinently to Miss Eyre; but when ...

— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... free themselves from the entangling lassos, they were instantly seized and other ropes of raw-hide were deftly twisted about their limbs and bodies, until in less than a minute they were so tightly and securely trussed up that they could scarcely wag a finger; after which they were each hoisted upon the shoulders of four Indians and borne with songs of triumph and rejoicing to the canoes, into which they were tumbled with scant ceremony. Then, with further songs of triumph, they were swiftly transported back down the river to the village ...

— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... on became the College of San Gregorio at Valladolid, where he had the companionship of his devoted friend Ladrada and the support of an important community of his Order. Fray Rodrigo, who also acted as confessor to his old friend, would seem to have been something of a wag, as it is related of him that when the Bishop had become somewhat deaf, the confessor might be heard admonishing his penitent: "Don't you see, Bishop, that you will finish up in hell because of your want of zeal in defending the Indians whom God has ...

— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt

... jaw of him! Fill your cheek with that, you Barbary ape, and wag your tail if you can, but ...

— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes

... kopjes that lie right out yonder," said Buck, giving his head a wag to indicate the clumps of rock that he ...

— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn

... the institutions of America, civil and religious, little better than a solemn mockery, a tragical jest for the passers-by of other nations, who, seeing two millions and a half of slaves held in fetters by vaunting freemen and ostentatious patriots, wag the head at the disgusting sight, and cry out deridingly to degraded America, 'The worm is spread under thee, and the ...

— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... the right exposure here to the south and sou'-west," says the Sergeant, with a wag of his grizzled head, and a streak of pleasure in his melancholy voice. "This is the shape for a rosery—nothing like a circle set in a square. Yes, yes; with walks between all the beds. But they ...

— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... his tail—he was very sad too, but he had far too much self-respect not to wag his tail when he was kindly spoken to, however depressed he might be feeling—and looked up again, blinking his eyes behind their ...

— "Us" - An Old Fashioned Story • Mary Louisa S. Molesworth

... and Willy Dicey tried if they could not eat them while still blazing, and, of course, burned their mouths, eliciting shouts of laughter; and the whole party soon thought no more of the future, and were happy in the present. How Mrs Clagget's tongue did wag! She was a tall, old lady, going out to a nephew in New Zealand; and, as she was to be the companion of the young Diceys on the voyage, she had been asked to join ...

— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston

... high-minded women to be an honour, and the body of the building was always filled by strongly-visaged spinsters and mutinous wives, who twice a week were worked up by Dr. Fleabody to a full belief that a glorious era was at hand in which woman would be chosen by constituencies, would wag their heads in courts of law, would buy and sell in Capel Court, and have balances at their banker's. It was certainly the case that Dr. Fleabody had made proselytes by the hundred, and disturbed the happiness of many fathers ...

— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope

... there. He is never nervous, never cross, never snaps or snarls, and is ready, the moment after the grossest affront, to wag the tail of forgiveness,—all because kind Nature has put his dog's body together so that it always works harmoniously. If every person in the world were gifted with a stomach and nerves like his, it would ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various

... a different type; long and thin for fourteen, burnt to almost Kaffir darkness; a wag of a boy, with merry brown eyes, and a temperament unable to be depressed for more than five minutes at a time. He was always in scrapes at school, but a great favourite with masters and boys notwithstanding; and he straightway laid his boyish heart down at Norah's ...

— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... the day when word came from a nearby town that Reginald had been seen in a strange touring car with two unknown men and a girl, the gossips commenced to wag their heads. It was mentioned, casually of course, that this town was a few stations along the very road upon which Abigail had departed the previous afternoon for that destination which she had not reached. It was likewise remarked that Reginald, the two strange men and the GIRL had ...

— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... which he fell at the end lest after all Kitty should mock and turn from him, was only in truth another pleasure. No delay! Circumstances might develop at any moment and sweep her from him. Now or never must he snatch her from difficulty and disgrace—let hostile tongues wag as they pleased—and make ...

— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... corner of the house was William's pointer, Carlo. Carlo, observing by the general movement that there was something on foot, had the curiosity to come out to the end of his chain, and as he stood there, giving every now and then a little uncertain wag of his tail, George took notice of him and came to him ...

— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... want to know a woman Who can play a game of tag With Truth until it's spent beyond repair, Who can start a thousand rumors, Set ten thousand tongues a-wag Till there's nothing left of Gospel in the air, Who can get you into trouble And your reputation smirch— It's Mrs. Grundy On a Sunday When she's ...

— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... over him again, beside herself with grief. Cinders, in the midst of his pain, tried gently to wag his tail. His brown eyes, faithful, appealing, full of love, gazed up at her. He had never seen his mistress in such trouble before, and the instinct to comfort her urged him even then, in the midst of his own. Again he made piteous efforts to crawl into her arms, but again ...

— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell

... was almost altogether and absolutely comic, and yet a man of sense, fidelity, courage, and worth, but over his entire nature the comic ruled supreme—the late Sir Adam Ferguson, whose very face was a breach of solemnity; I dare say, even in sleep he looked a wag. This was the way in which everything appeared to him first, and often last too, with a serious enough middle saw him not long before his death, when he was of great age and knew he was dying; there was no levity in his manner, or thoughtlessness about his state; ...

— Spare Hours • John Brown

... watching him through some secret peephole. That had been her tribute to him and her scorn of his opponents. It about closed the incident, Pan concluded. Men were now coming along the street in both directions, though not yet close. Some wag yelled from a distance: "Thar ...

— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey

... some French in Tescheron after all, for he waved his arms and danced about like a man whose tongue won't wag fast enough ...

— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... capable of being accommodated on deck. There is indeed a smaller cabin adjoining, which, though the exclusive right of the diligence passengers from Paris, is usually shared by them with the rest. It is distinguished by the words over the door, "Chambre de Pairs," which some wag had altered into "Chambre des Paris," or the Upper House, inscribing the other cabin with his pencil as ...

— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes

... sight, and the enemy realised that further resistance would be useless. They were caught. About half a dozen men sprang on to the railway bank and began furiously to wag white sheets of paper or rag—anything white. They must have been brave men to do such a thing. The British gunners either did not see their signs, or perhaps refused to accept them on account of various "jokes" ...

— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... to cause. To this feeling of doubt was added a sense of distrust when Dr. Jameson's importunity and impatience became known; and when the question of the flag was raised there were few, if any, among those concerned in the movement who did not feel that the tail was trying to wag the dog. The feeling was so strong that many were prepared to abandon the whole scheme and start de novo rather than continue an undertaking in which it looked as though they were being fooled. Hence the despatch of Messrs. Leonard ...

— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick

... girls get into trouble to-night, toot this thing," and Chet produced an automobile horn which he had brought along for the purpose. "If you need us by day, Laura knows how to wig-wag with those flags. I ...

— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison

... in the carriage of Sut under these trying circumstances. Instead of replying by taunts to the taunts of his enemies, he maintained silence, permitting them to wag on to their ...

— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne

... one wag called out, "Three cheers for holder-on Dawson." The cheers were given heartily, the Marines stood aside from the doors, and the room rapidly emptied. The officials of the Munitions Department and the Colonel, who was Dawson's insubordinate ...

— The Lost Naval Papers • Bennet Copplestone

... concocting some plausible story. To every friend who calls, to anyone of our world whom you may meet, you must tell the same tale, and if you note an air of incredulity in anyone, if you hear whispers of there being some mystery, well! let the world wag its busy tongue—I care less than naught: it will soon tire of me and my doings, and having torn my reputation to shreds will quickly leave me in peace. But to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes," she added earnestly, "tell the whole truth from me. He ...

— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... comb, like themselves! The wearer of a queue was likely to be knocked on the head. These creatures used to congregate at the old Feydeau theater, or meet around the entrance of the Louvre, to talk classical jargon, and wag!" ...

— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... couldn't help feeling that he had done a mean, cowardly thing, and Tode never liked to feel himself a coward. He looked after the dog. It had crawled into a corner and was licking the injured paw. Tode walked toward the poor creature that looked at him suspiciously, yet with a faint little wag of its tail, as showing its readiness to forgive and forget, while at the same time ready to run ...

— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston

... stars tremble, and the devil sweat himself to powder in a fit of repentance. His influence over the stars and heavenly bodies is tremendous, and it is a well-known fact throughout the universe that he has them in such a complete state of terror and subjection, that a single comet dare not wag his tail unless by his permission. He travels up and down the milky way one night in every month, to see that the dairies of the sky are all right, and that that celebrated path be properly lighted; brings down a pail of the ...

— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton

... a romance," whispered some wag of fourteen, when Mademoiselle Brun first appeared in the schoolroom; and that became ...

— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman

... the lonely pickets stand. Pipes are out now. An oracle outlines the general campaign of the war as it will be and as it should have been. A long-winded, innocent braggart tells of his personal prowess that day. A little group is guying the new recruit. A wag shaves a bearded comrade on one side of his face, pockets his razor and refuses to shave the other side. A poet, with a bandaged eye, and hair like a windblown hay-stack, recites "I am dying, Egypt—dying," ...

— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox

... creature living Would do it, and prove, through every disaster, So fond, so faithful, and so forgiving, To such a miserable, thankless master. No, Sir! see him wag his tail and grin— By George! it makes my old eyes water— That is, there's something in this gin That chokes a ...

— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various

... night, in the wards, the men recovering from all manner of wounds would try to speed the lagging hours by telling stories, singing songs, and inventing the wildest of rumors. Occasionally, when the lights were out, some wag would begin an imitation of a machine gun, with its rat-tat-tat-tat, and another, catching the spirit of the mimic warfare, would make the whistling sound of a high angle shell. In a few moments the ward ...

— Aces Up • Covington Clarke

... Mr. Bobbsey. Snap wanted to bark and wag his tail, as he always did when any one spoke pleasantly to him, but he knew if he opened his mouth to bark now, he would have to drop Snoop. And Snap had hard enough work swimming, without trying to wag his tail. On he ...

— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope

... of the largest noses in the country. There was only another man, he said, who could approach him in that respect. If the two men met in a very narrow "loanan "—what they call a "boreen" in other parts of Ireland—the other man, who was a bit of a wag, would put his hand to his nose, and make a motion of putting it aside, as if there was not sufficient room for two such organs, and call out with a kind ...

— The Life Story of an Old Rebel • John Denvir

... the editorial page and the Sunday edition. It includes such subjects as, "How to Jiu-jitsu a Holdup Man," "Why Hot Water Dissolves Things," "Duties of an International Spy," "Feminism and the Baby Crop," "Why Dogs Wag their Tails," "The World's Highest Salaried Choir Boy," etc. Stories of new inventions and discoveries, accounts of the lives of famous and infamous men, of barbaric and court life, methods for lowering the high cost of living, explanations of the workings ...

— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... Gunners wager about the number of their hits, riflemen on the number of misses by the enemy. Daring spirits, before making an attack, have even been known to bet on the number of guns they would capture. "We have already picked up a good deal in the way of German souvenirs," says one wag; "enough, indeed, to set a decent-sized army up in business." The British Army, indeed, is an army of sportsmen. Every man must have his game, his friendly wager, his joke, and his song. As one officer told his men: "You are a lively ...

— Tommy Atkins at War - As Told in His Own Letters • James Alexander Kilpatrick

... "Sidmouth," i, 206) fixes the spot. Mr. A. Hawkes, in an article in the "Wimbledon Annual" for 1904, places it in front of the house called "Scio," but it must be the deeper hollow towards Kingston Vale. Caricatures of the time wrongly place the duel on the high ground near the windmill. A wag chalked on Abershaw's gibbet a figure of the two duellers, Tierney saying: "As well fire at ...

— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... several well-known tunes to it. [See Note on Arbeau's 'Orchesographie.' 1588.] The derivation of the name is from the French, bransle, a totter, swing, shake, etc., or perhaps from Old French Brandeler, to wag, shake, swing. Skeat thinks the original dance may have been a sword dance, and with this he connects the word Brandish.[20] It was danced, sometimes in a ring, holding ...

— Shakespeare and Music - With Illustrations from the Music of the 16th and 17th centuries • Edward W. Naylor

... of May, 1844, Lord Ballindine and Fanny Wyndham were married. The bishop "turned 'em off iligant," as a wag said in the servants' hall. There was a long account of the affair in the "Morning Post" of the day; there were eight bridesmaids, all of whom, it was afterwards remarked, were themselves married within two years of the time; an omen which was presumed ...

— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope

... wait to be adopted. He adopted us, but not ostentatiously at first—just a friendly wag here and there to show that he had at last found what he was looking for. By degrees he became more friendly and genial, so that at the end of an hour he was thoroughly one ...

— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... worn, and aged, His faith was ever strong; The people's war he wagd For victory erelong. Beneath the banner dying, He would not yet give o'er, And him Valkyries flying Home ...

— Poems and Songs • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... and said—'If you value your po-seetion'—he was a Lowland Scot, with the Lowland accent—'if you value your po-seetion on this paper, you'll hold your tongue!' So I did hold my tongue then—but only because I meant to wag it more violently afterwards. I always devote Mrs. Mushroom Ketchup to the blue blazes, because I'm sure it was through her I lost my post. You see a shareholder in a paper has a good deal of influence, especially if he has as much as a hundred ...

— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... bowl, each fearless soul, Let the world wag as it will: Let the heavens growl, let the devil howl, Drain, drain ...

— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms

... by jabers that's not what we're afther, We'd breed for ourselves if they'd give us a chance. BALFOUR, ye stand there wid an oi full o' laughter. Ye divil, we know that cool optical dance. Come the comether on us then, would ye, ye wag, Wid this "ginerous" gift of a ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various

... a couple of miles on their way homeward and their tongues were just beginning to wag, girl-like, again, when both were considerably startled by a loud hallo, coming from behind. They turned quickly and saw two horsemen, who had just ridden out from behind a small grove of trees, some twenty rods back and to the right, and who were ...

— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil

... pointed at the dog. 'I've made a bet with myself he won't wag his tail within the next ten minutes. I beg of you, Harrington, to remain silent for ...

— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... am angry, you rise and bristle; when I am pleased, you wag; when I am alarmed, you tuck yourself in out of danger. You are too mercurial—you disclose all my emotions. My notion is that tails are given to conceal thought. It is my dearest ambition to be ...

— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce

... had an idea that their distance from me was as nothing to my remoteness from them. The impression they produced was that of having in common one memory so deep and dark that nothing that had happened since was worth either a growl or a wag. ...

— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton

... possessing feelings, motives of action, characters, differing from the others, as the stamp of nature on his brow differs from his fellows! Thus, also, men's ears ring with the advancement of science, men's beards wag with repetition of the novel powers which have been educed from material nature; and if, in our daily traffic, we traverse without attention countless sands of thought, how much more, in our hackneyed talk of science, do we neglect the debt we owe to thought—thought, not the mere normal ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXXVI. October, 1843. Vol. LIV. • Various

... appearance, moulded into the shape of a rampant bear, which the owner regarded with a look of mingled reverence, pride, and delight, that irresistibly reminded Waverley of Ben Jonson's Tom Otter, with his Bull, Horse, and Dog, as that wag wittily denominated his chief carousing cups. But Mr. Bradwardine, turning towards him with complacency, requested him to observe this curious relic of ...

— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... disconcerted nor offended him. He was a philosopher—and, like so many of his kind, a laughing philosopher. When he was sufficiently recovered from his operation to get about on crutches he was the wag of the ward. He took a special delight in those practical jokes which are invented by patients to tease the nurses, and devoted the most painstaking ingenuity to their preparation. It was he who found a small hole in ...

— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir

... right!" said Calvin. "Any time; suit yourself! Only I can't wag your jaws for ye, ...

— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards

... they can, as the night looks rainy. So, disappointed of my projected 'talk about runts' and turnips, I am come back—with a good deal of animal spirits at my tongue's and fingers' ends. If I were transported now into your room at Castellamare, I would wag my tongue far beyond midnight with you. These fits of exultation are not very common with me: as (after leaving off beef) my life has become of an even grey paper character: needing no great excitement, and as pleased with Naseby as Naples. . ...

— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald

... a cat has whiskers," or why and how they make a purring noise when they are pleased and wag their tails when they are angry, while a dog wags his to show pleasure, the wisest man cannot answer your question. A teacher once asked a boy about a cat's whiskers and he said they were to keep her from trying to get her body through ...

— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... must confess that it is a novelty and a pleasure to enter an enemy's territory and sit down in a room marked Militaer Wachtzimmer, with all the enemy's emblems on the walls, but on the whole I liked best the advice evitare di fumare esplosioni painted by some Italian wag on an Austrian guardhouse, and possibly intended as a hint to Austro-German diplomacy in ...

— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)

... speak, then he burst out with: 'It's an infernal lie; you could no more paint that picture than you could fly.' 'I did paint it, jest the same,' pursued the stranger imperturbably, as Rosenheim, to make an end of the insufferable wag, snapped out sarcastically, 'Perhaps you painted its mate, then, the Bolton Corot.' 'The one that sold for three thousand dollars last week? Of course I painted it; it's the best nymph scene I ever done. ...

— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... to be free. This, indeed, makes all the institutions of America, civil and religious, little better than a solemn mockery, a tragical jest for the passers-by of other nations, who, seeing two millions and a half of slaves held in fetters by vaunting freemen and ostentatious patriots, wag the head at the disgusting sight, and cry out deridingly to degraded America, 'The worm is spread under thee, and ...

— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell

... ordinarily he did awake betwixt eight and nine o'clock, whether it was day or not, for so had his ancient governors ordained, alleging that which David saith, Vanum est vobis ante lucem surgere. Then did he tumble and toss, wag his legs, and wallow in the bed some time, the better to stir up and rouse his vital spirits, and apparelled himself according to the season: but willingly he would wear a great long gown of thick frieze, furred with fox-skins. Afterwards ...

— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... mistake. The others are (1) 'Ala al-Din, (2) 'Ala yadin, (3) 'Alah Din in the H. V. and (4) 'Alaa al-Din (with the Hamzah), the last only being grammatical. In Galland the Histoire de la Lampe merveilleuse is preceded by the Histoire du Dormeur Eveille which, being "The Story of Abu al-Hasan the Wag, or the Sleeper awakened," of the Bresl. Edit. (Nights cclxxi.-ccxc.), is here omitted. The Alaeddin Story exists in germ in Tale ii. of the "Dravidian Nights Entertainments," (Madana Kamara-Sankadaj), by Pandit S. M. Natisa Shastri ...

— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton

... not say anything. You do not offer me any hope. But, ah me, it is just as well—it is just as well. You could not do me any good. The time has long gone by when words could comfort me. Something tells me that my tongue is doomed to wag forever to the jigger of that remorseless jingle. There—there it is coming on me again: a blue trip slip for an eight-cent fare, a buff trip slip ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... shall have his worship presently, that is, if he means to keep his hour; if not, you may wait for him, Godfrey, if you court his acquaintance. But what, after all, if it should prove but a mummery got up by Vankarp, or some such wag? I wish you had run all risks, and cudgelled the old burgomaster soundly. I'd wager a dozen of Rhenish, his worship would have unmasked, and pleaded old acquaintance in ...

— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu

... why those signals are in English," said Nestor. "There are plenty of Americans mixed up in this mess, but they are not doing the signaling, so far as I have heard. It would seem that the wig-wag ought to be in Spanish. I wonder if I could get down the mountain to the man there? It would ...

— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson

... wet compress and went on, singing loudly and boldly, with a facetious wag of her head, (how tired she was of all ...

— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher

... Charley-Wag With wipes and tickers and what not! Until the squeezer nips your scrag, Booze and the ...

— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer

... result of his experiment, hurried to relieve the poor animal, which was rolling on the ground; at last he succeeded in getting hold of him, but he had much difficulty in freeing him from his vindictive assailants. One beetle, indeed, seized hold of the hand of the mischievous wag, whose grimaces much amused us; as fast as he disengaged one of the insect's claws, the creature—which possessed six—soon found a chance to cling on with others. Annoyed at having to strive with such a paltry enemy, l'Encuerado at last tore the beetle roughly ...

— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart

... and deep-toned, and he had been well trained as to the use to make of it, but his personal actions were too vehement, and one wag remarked, 'Mr. Fox, in speaking, saws the air with his hands, but Mr. Pitt saws with ...

— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... come to look bright and clear and exhilarating; and as the fire begins to crackle again in the stove, we sit down to the tea-urn, while, chilled with the night cold, our black dog, Polkan, will look in at us through the window, and wag his tail with a cheerful air. Presently, a peasant will pass the window in his cart bound for the forest to cut firewood, and the whole party will feel merry and contented together. Abundant grain lies stored in the byres, and great stacks of wheat ...

— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... saw him in the 'seventies. I was a small boy then, and I did him the honour of playing truant—"playing wag" we called it. I felt that the occasion demanded it. To have the god of my idolatry in my own little town and not to pay him my devotions—why, the idea was almost like blasphemy. A half-dozen, or even a dozen, from my ...

— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... At about three miles distance from Woodhall we reach the small but well-built village of Stixwould (in Domesday Book, Stigesuuald, Stigeswalt, Stigeswalde). As to the name Stixwould, anyone, without being a wag, might well say, and with some apparent reason, “What more natural combination than these two syllables?” We naturally, in primitive life, go to the “wald,” or wood, for our sticks. Was not the liberty to gather “kindling,” as we now call it, a valued ...

— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter

... at the height of his popularity, some wag perpetrated the following joke in a newspaper paragraph: "During some experiments he was making in chemistry last week, an explosion took place which entirely bewildered his faculties and left him in a condition bordering on the grave. He was blown into a thousand atoms. It took place on ...

— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini

... of the two was by nature a merry wag, and though he had never had the chance to taste of pleasure, he thought that nothing in the world could be better worth spending money for than wine and music and dancing. So, when the evening had ...

— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle

... passage in larger ships than mine. Still, I will do my best to make you comfortable, and I can assure you that Leon, my cook, is by no means a bad hand at turning out dainty dishes. He was cook in an hotel, at one time; but he let his tongue wag too freely and, having to leave suddenly, was glad enough to ship with me. Fortunately he likes the life, and I do not think anything would tempt him to go back to ...

— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty

... chatter away at top speed, though I tried to restrain myself, to show that I was nothing more than an uncle to her. I talked to distract her, to distract us both; I let my tongue wag—I could hear it buzzing. What could I say? A little of everything—a ...

— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun

... boy's clear whistle came from the street; There's a wag of the tail and a twinkle of feet, And the little white dog did not even say, "Excuse me, ma'am," as he scampered away; But I'm sure as can be his greatest joy Is just ...

— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... rested while the horses grazed, and then on again until the sun went down below the horizon. During the hotter hours I took my ease in the buggy, but in the early morning, and at the end of the day I rode. The Mongols were gay young fellows, taking a kindly interest in my doings. One, the wag of the party, was bent on learning to count in English, and each time he came by me he chanted his lesson over, adding number after number until he reached twenty. The last few miles before getting into camp was the time for a good race. ...

— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall

... Construction) Abstain from Beans: for I find the Excellency of 'em in Cakes and Dishes; from the first, they inspire the Soul with mighty Thoughts; and from the last our Bodies receive a strong and wholesom Nourishment. That is, (said a Wag among those sharp Youths, I think 'twas my Friend the Count) these puff you up in Mind, Sir, those in Body. They had some further Discourse among the Nymphs of the Stage, ere they went into the Pit; where Sir Philip spread the News of his Friend's Accession to the Title, ...

— The Works of Aphra Behn - Volume V • Aphra Behn

... I do not care; Wag as it will the world for me; When Fuss and Fret was all my fare It got no ground, as I could see. So when away my caring went I counted cost and ...

— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various

... the sake of the orphan child I am able to hold up at all," she would tell us. "I would not have blamed him so much for leaving us poor, but it was hard and cruel to leave us disgraced into the bargain"; and then Miss Blake would weep, and the wag of the office would take out his handkerchief and ...

— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... the same he could never bear any allusion to this tree-climbing episode in his martial career, which, as it happened, had taken place in full view of his retainers, among whom it remained the greatest of jokes. Indeed, he wanted to kill a man, the wag of the party, who gave him a slang name ...

— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard

... are those who wag their heads knowingly and tell us that the capital of the Cotton Kingdom has moved from the Black to the White Belt,—that the Negro of to-day raises not more than half of the cotton crop. Such men forget that the cotton crop has doubled, ...

— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois

... it, you'd better say," said Doctor Wharton. "No matter how she took it, you fellows would wag ...

— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips

... that, but I knew that I felt very grateful to Mrs. Montague for my new collar, and ever afterward, when I met her in the street, I stopped and looked at her. Sometimes she saw me and stopped her carriage to speak to me; but I always wagged my tail, or rather my body, for I had no tail to wag, whenever I saw her, whether she ...

— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders

... saved him the trouble, had the wag honourably adhered to the institutions of chivalry, in his conflict with our novice. But on this occasion, his ingenuity was more commendable than his courage. He had provided at the inn a blown ...

— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett

... quaffings the better the effects; not a compound of acids and sweets, hot water and fire-water, to steal away the brains,—but a finer mixture of subtler elements, conducive to mental and moral health; not, in a word, punch, the drink, but "Punch," the wise wag, the genial philosopher, with his brevity of stature, goodly-conditioned paunch, next-to-nothing legs, protuberant back, bill-hook nose, and twinkling eyes,—to speak respectfully, Mr. Punch, attended ...

— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various

... strength to his face. His great mouth with its fleshy underlip, supplemented the nose. Both were material for grotesque caricature. He looked like an educated gawk, a rural genius, a pied piper of motley followers. He was a sad clown, a Socratic wag, a countryman dressed up for a state occasion. But he was not a poor man defending the cause of the poor. There was nothing of the dreamer in his make-up, the eccentric idealist. His big nose and mouth and Henry Clay forehead denied all of this. He sat ...

— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters

... Doktor is new," said Kriech, with a wag of his head. "That O Lalala! I have heard that that poker iss very dansherous. That Prince Hanoi of Papeite lose his tam headt to a Chinaman. Something comes ...

— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien

... If I had but a tail I would wag it this morning with joy, At your having provided My car that's one-sided With ...

— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott

... to say it all the same!" laughed Verity. "Members of Parliament always make speeches to their constituents. Here, take the Snark's desk as your thingumgig—rostrum, or whatever it's called, and begin your jaw-wag!" ...

— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... ain't goin' to be trouble between Mary Lamson an' Sereno's Hattie, I'll miss my guess!" said a matron, with an appreciative wag of her purple-bonneted head. "They've either on 'em canned up more preserves 'n Tiverton an' Sudleigh put together, an' Mary's got I dunno what all among 'em!—squash, an' dandelion, an' punkin with lemon in't. That's steppin' acrost the bounds, I say! If she gits a premium for ...

— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown

... hills which girt the sea coast. This made my theory of the sleep-walking to the cliffs more plausible. But while we lay low in the clump of trammon trees the appearance of Kit Kermode, with his cat-like walk and his eyes that could wink slander faster than any old woman's tongue could wag it, gave me a theory, or at least a ...

— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various

... means are not always happy. Thus, though the humours of Truga may have been suggested by the character of Dipsa in the Jealous Lovers, she is probably introduced into Cowley's play as the counterpart of Dorylas in Amyntas. Randolph trod on thin ice in some of the speeches of the liquorish wag, whose 'years are yet uncapable of love,' but censure will not stick to the witty knave. On the other hand, Cowley's portrait of incontinent age in Truga fails wholly of being comic, and appears all the loathlier for the fact that the author himself was still a mere schoolboy—though this is, ...

— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... dog had reached the shore, and stood shaking the water from his coat; so that the bystanders had to rush aside to escape a good wetting. Then he began to bark with joy and wag his tail, springing first at this one, then at that one, as if to express his thanks for the ...

— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne

... brother was very quietly pursuing his lunars with the paper tube, expecting soon to work up all the curious angles of the Umpire's face. To properly intersperse this amusement he would now and then bestow a good-natured and very sly wink upon a wag who sat at the opposite side of the table, ever and anon tickling with the feather of his quill the nasal organ of the Secretary, who had just melowed away into a delicious nap. Flum proceeded: 'I mean no disrespect ...

— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton

... few chances of plying their active tongues. When no less than four ladies had on four several occasions met Sir James and Mrs. Dangerfield walking together along the lanes, those tongues began to wag. ...

— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson

... stool near the window, unwind the roll of her enormities. A wheedling thing she was, with an ambition to drive men crazy, but my presence killed the gossip on her tongue, though I liked to look at her. When I entered, the wag at the wa' clock had again possession of the kitchen. I never heard more than the ...

— A Window in Thrums • J. M. Barrie

... engine ran merrily. Above its barking I sang the praises of the Englishman, with a comfortable feeling that, at least in this, the tail would wag the dog. ...

— The River and I • John G. Neihardt

... with her. He had been inclined to carry her away from the house: Doory would take care of her! But he saw that to leave the enemy in possession would be to yield him an advantage. Awkward things might result from it! the tongues of inventive ignorance and stupidity would wag wildly! He would take her to her room, and there watch her as he ...

— Donal Grant • George MacDonald

... Kirby's fer sendin' the mulatter gurl 'long. She's a free nigger an' might let her tongue wag. Now listen, Moffett, I'm a goin' out putty soon ter git things ready, an' I'll leave Sal yere ter tend bar. Now git this; thar's a right smart trail back o' the cabin, leadin' straight down ter the crick, with a spring 'bout half way. Thar ain't ...

— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish

... should see the Trojan race Her Carthage ruin, and her tow'rs deface; Nor thus confin'd, the yoke of sov'reign sway Should on the necks of all the nations lay. She ponder'd this, and fear'd it was in fate; Nor could forget the war she wag'd of late For conqu'ring Greece against the Trojan state. Besides, long causes working in her mind, And secret seeds of envy, lay behind; Deep graven in her heart the doom remain'd Of partial Paris, and her form disdain'd; The grace bestow'd on ravish'd Ganymed, Electra's glories, and her ...

— The Aeneid • Virgil

... I, forsooth, from good Banbury Town," said the jolly Tinker, "and no one nigh Nottingham—nor Sherwood either, an that be the mark— can hold cudgel with my grip. Why, lads, did I not meet that mad wag Simon of Ely, even at the famous fair at Hertford Town, and beat him in the ring at that place before Sir Robert of Leslie and his lady? This same Robin Hood, of whom, I wot, I never heard before, is a right merry ...

— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... he, "that I am Ralph Jobson? Why it knew me, and seemed to wag its tail; nay, made as though it would lick ...

— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... friend of Dr. Kitchiner's, on a very wet night, after several messengers, whom he had despatched for a coach, had returned without obtaining one; at last, at "past one o'clock, and a rainy morning," the wag walked himself to the next coach-stand, and politely advised the waterman to mend his inside lining with a pint of beer, and go home to bed; for said he, "there will be nothing for you to do to night, I'll lay you a shilling that there's not ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume XII. F, No. 325, August 2, 1828. • Various

... parlor; and the first thing he did was to call for some red wax and a light, and he clapped a great splatch of a seal on either bag; and then he looked at Joe, and gave a little grunt of a laugh, and a smartish wag of the head, as much as to say, "Do it again, Joe, if you can." But after that he said, "Here, Joe, is five shillings for restoring my speciments, and here is another five shillings for showing me a speciment ...

— The Squire of Sandal-Side - A Pastoral Romance • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr

... do you know that you are at this present time giving occasion for the tongues of my parishioners to wag more than is at all reasonable? Oh!" continued he, replying to a remonstrating gesture of his companion, "it is unpremeditated on your part, I am sure, but, all the same, they ...

— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... bondage into which he had thus fallen, the courtiers and the people were alike less blind and less forbearing. With that light-heartedness which has enabled the French in all ages to find cause for mirth even in their misfortunes, some wag, less scrupulous than inventive, on one occasion, under cover of the darkness, affixed above the door leading to the rooms occupied by the brothers a painting which represented the adoration of the Magi, beneath which was printed in bold letters, "At the sign of the Three Kings"; a ...

— The Life of Marie de Medicis, Vol. 2 (of 3) • Julia Pardoe

... home as proud as a king, laid the package at his mistress's feet, and waited, with a delighted, expressive wag, for her approval. ...

— The Nursery, November 1877, Vol. XXII. No. 5 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various

... Green-Room. One evening a distinguished actor so far forgot himself as to let slip an expletive of three simple letters, whereat Mrs. KEAN held up her hands in horror and quitted the room, followed by the actresses who happened to be present. Subsequently some wag at the Garrick Club wrote a song whereof the burden was "The Man who said 'dam' in the Green-Room." Tempora mutantur, and now, at the Avenue Theatre, under the management of Mr. and Mrs. KENDAL in the Green-Room and behind ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, May 13, 1893 • Various

... them with "good-morning, damn you," and other remarks of an equally mixed order. A second irrepressible being held that all the emotions of the soul should be freely expressed, and illustrated his theory by antics that would have sent him to a lunatic asylum, if, as an unregenerate wag said, he had not already been in one. When his spirit soared, he climbed trees and shouted; when doubt assailed him, he lay upon the floor and groaned lamentably. At joyful periods, he raced, leaped, and sang; when sad, he wept aloud; ...

— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various

... with ready wit and good tune. We three composed the crew of the lighter; and, as there had already been considerable loss from demurrage, were embarked as soon as they arrived. The name of the father was Tom Beazeley, but he was always known on the river as "old Tom" or, as some more learned wag had christened him, "the Merman on two sticks." As soon as we had put our traps on board, as old Tom called them, he received his orders, and we cast off from the wharf. The wind was favourable. Young Tom was as ...

— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... Commissioner held an extra appeal for the 'conscientious men.' Now, in said county, there dwelt one Barney Mullen, who, not being exempted at the first appeal, on 'non-citizenship' grounds, was in 'great tribulation' in regard to the approaching draft. Some wag persuaded him to attend the second 'hearing,' telling him to swear that he was conscientious, and he would get his exemption papers. So Barney was at hand at the 'appointed time and place,' At last, 'it came to pass' that he got ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 3 No 2, February 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... are all INCOMPRIS, only more or less concerned for the mischance; all trying wrongly to do right; all fawning at each other's feet like dumb, neglected lap- dogs. Sometimes we catch an eye - this is our opportunity in the ages - and we wag our tail with a poor smile. "IS THAT ALL?" All? If you only knew! But how can they know? They do not love us; the more fools we to squander life on ...

— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... slender link that connects me with my babyhood. It wag around my neck when Scharfenstein picked me up. Open it and look at ...

— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath

... was Kit Carson. They were talking of the important affairs of their section of country, when this strange individual entered. His familiarity with all things soon gave him an introduction; and, after a short conversation, a wag present was tempted, by the fellow's boasting, to quiz him. Addressing the traveler he asked, "What part of the world, pray ...

— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... lights and she had chattered gaily of anything that came into her head, twice she had caught in her sister's eyes that glimmer of expectancy. "Amy feels sure I will be a success!" Ethel thrilled at the recollection, and thought, "Oh, yes, you're quite a wag, my love; and as soon as you get over being so young you'll probably make a name for yourself. No dinner or suffrage party will ever again be quite complete without your droll dry humour. . . . I suppose I ought to ...

— His Second Wife • Ernest Poole

... "You wag! You know that as well as I do," said old Fischer roguishly. "Fine weather! They came back the ...

— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland

... ride to anchor in Blanket Bay. What say ye? There comes the other watch. Stand by all legs! Pip! little Pip! hurrah with your tambourine! Pip ( Sulky and sleepy.) Don't know where it is. French Sailor Beat thy belly, then, and wag thy ears. Jig it, men, I say; merry's the word; hurrah! Damn me, won't you dance? Form, now, Indian-file, and gallop into the double-shuffle? Throw yourselves! Legs! Legs! Iceland Sailor I don't like your floor, maty; it's too springy to my taste. I'm used to ice-floors. ...

— Moby-Dick • Melville

... good opinion; and you may pay just as much attention to it as if it were made of wax or cardboard, never forgetting that excellent Italian proverb: non e si tristo cane che non meni la coda,—there is no dog so bad but that he will wag his tail. ...

— Counsels and Maxims - From The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer

... brought my camera!" murmured Raymonde. "I simply hadn't room to stuff it in. It was a choice between it and my night-gear, and I thought Gibbie'd treat me to jaw-wag if I ...

— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil

... invited the princes and generals of the Continent. Dunning had announced himself as Solicitor-General of England. Frederick, either knowing nothing of solicitors, though much of generals, or what is more probable—for he was the most deliberate wag in existence—determining to play the lawyer a trick, ordered him to be received as a general officer, and provided him with a charger for his presence at the grand display. Dunning, long unused to ride, soon found that he had his master under him. The charger, as well disciplined as one of his ...

— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various

... Sydney through the streets toward the German Gardens—since the war, Belgium Gardens—where we were camped, I noticed every one laughing as I went by. After crossing the ridge where the Anglican Cathedral now stands, I went around to the off side, and there saw that some wag, while I was loading, had obliterated a letter on the name of my waggon, which Fitzmaurice had christened the "Townsville Lass." Striking the "L" out gave it a different name. I quickly procured a paint brush and renewed the name ...

— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield

... Meantime, a wag of a fellow, an intimate friend of Briarly's, appeared in Market street in an old rusty coat, worn hat, and well-mended but clean and whole trowsers and vest. Friend after friend stopped him, and, in astonishment, inquired the cause of this change. He had but one answer, in substance. ...

— Off-Hand Sketches - a Little Dashed with Humor • T. S. Arthur

... to be an old hunter you'll look on supper as about the most serious work o' the day. When that's over, an' the pipe a-goin', an' maybe a little stick-whittlin' for variety, a man may let his tongue wag ...

— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne

... a tug on the rope, as if to advise him that it was time to get busy if they were expected to reach shore. And Miki, drenched and forlorn, resembling more a starved bone than a thing of skin and flesh, actually made an effort to wag his tail when ...

— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood

... day and has to forget me," he answered calmly. "You can bring me back to bed when she is through." And to this plea was added a pathetic wag of the ...

— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess

... strength was equal to that of a hundred thousand elephants, alas, that king sitteth today, leaning on a woman. Alas! he by whom the iron image of Bhima on a former occasion wag reduced to fragments, leaneth today on a weak woman. Fie on me that am exceedingly unrighteous! Fie on my understanding! Fie on my knowledge of the scripture! Fie on me for whom this lord of Earth lieth today in a manner that is ...

— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli

... Samoans and four Fijians. The captain seemed to enjoy yelling at his men in the Fijian language, with a strong flavouring of English "swear words," and spoke about the Fijians in terms of utter contempt, calling them "d——d cannibals." The cabin wag a small one with only two bunks, and swarmed with green beetles and cockroaches. Our meals were all taken together on deck, and consisted of yams, ship's ...

— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker

... said, wagging their heads. They had now no tails to wag, and they had to wag something. So the Farmer's wife tied them ...

— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke

... AT SEA CREST or The Wig Wag Rescue Luna Land, a little island by the sea, is wrapt in a mysterious seclusion, and Kitty Scuttle, a grotesque figure, succeeds in keeping all others at bay until ...

— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson

... tome 2 page 60.) says that not one constant difference can be pointed out between their structure and that of the smaller races of dogs. They agree closely in habits: jackals, when tamed and called by their master, wag their tails, lick his hands, crouch, and throw themselves on their backs; they smell at the tails of other dogs, and void their urine sideways; they roll on carrion or on animals which they have killed; and, lastly, when in high spirits, they run round in circles ...

— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin

... approached the farmhouse they discerned in the darkness a figure coming toward them with a stable lantern. The figure swung this light to and fro, up and down, in wig-wag signaling, and Tom replied by whistling shrilly two short blasts, which meant "All right, we're coming." Then the figure hailed them with a whoop of ...

— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler

... bar'!' Put yo' crook around our necks, John, an' lead us home with our tails behind us, so as our Bo Peeps'll know us when we come an' gladden us with their soft black eyes! Ain't that the way the poetry runs?" snickered a drunken wag, dropping on the post-office steps and gazing up with a befuddled air at Fairfield, who had removed his ...

— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris

... not lose all your Money. I have heard much talk of that same Zadig; they say he is very honest, and that if ever he returns to Babylon, as 'tis to be hop'd he will, he'll discharge his Debts with Interest, like a Man of Honour. But, as for your Wife, who appears to me, to be no better than a Wag-tail, never take the Trouble, if you'll take my Advice, to hunt after her any more. Be rul'd, and make the best of your Way to Babylon. I shall be there before you, as I shall ride, and you will be on Foot. Make ...

— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire

... just returned from Truro to sell one of them, and brought home with him some provisions, the proceeds of the sale of the negro. The agent was cheerful in spite of his troubles; and withal was something of a wag. On his return to the Island the people gathered around him to hear the news. "What kind of a place is Pictou?" inquired one. "Oh, an awful place. Why, I was staying with a man who was just eating the last of his nigger;" and as the people were reduced themselves they did ...

— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean

... more or less concerned for the mischance; all trying wrongly to do right; all fawning at each other's feet like dumb, neglected lap- dogs. Sometimes we catch an eye - this is our opportunity in the ages - and we wag our tail with a poor smile. "IS THAT ALL?" All? If you only knew! But how can they know? They do not love us; the more fools we to ...

— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson

... our own broom-gharri? When I was at Bandstand before we comed away, I asked Inverarity Sahib why he was sitting in it, and he said it was his own. And I said, 'I will give it you'—I like Inverarity Sahib—and I said, 'Can you put your legs through the pully-wag loops by the windows? And Inverarity Sahib said No, and laughed. I can put my legs through the pully-wag loops. I can put my legs through these pully-wag loops. Look! Oh, Mamma's crying again! I did n't know. I was n't ...

— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling

... this: he was the ship's wag, and so was greeted with shouts and whistles of approval as he stepped on to the stage attired in the burlesque counterfeit ...

— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... of this dry prose, Must play the devil again out hollow. [Aloud.] The healing art is quickly comprehended; Through great and little world you look abroad, And let it wag, when all is ended, As pleases God. Vain is it that your science sweeps the skies, Each, after all, learns only what he can; Who grasps the moment as it flies He is the real man. Your person somewhat takes the eye, Boldness you'll find an easy science, And ...

— Faust • Goethe

... pendant behind. Both the lappet and tail are fastened on a belt which is worn round the loins, like those in the Shir tribe; thus the toilette is completed at once. It would be highly useful, could they only wag their tails to whisk off the flies which ...

— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker

... their race-horse, saddled, and rode away without a word to any of the range-riders. The men round the fire gave no sign that they knew the confidence men were on the map until after they had gone. Then tongues began to wag, the foreman having gone to the edge of the ...

— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine

... for the sake of the orphan child I am able to hold up at all," she would tell us. "I would not have blamed him so much for leaving us poor, but it was hard and cruel to leave us disgraced into the bargain"; and then Miss Blake would weep, and the wag of the office would take out his handkerchief and ostentatiously wipe ...

— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... servant to Humphrey. "It is the canon's order. He will see this nephew of the prior's and inquire more narrowly concerning his journey. And say thou naught of this rescue to any man. We four do the canon's bidding at all times, but our tongues wag not of ...

— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger

... private Act of Toleration for a little Harmless Love, otherwise called Fornication.' There is a marginal note to this passage: 'Mrs. Behn's Miscell. Printed by Jos. Hindmarsh.' In a Letter from the Dead Thomas Brown to the Living Heraclitus (1704), a sixpenny tract, this wag is supposed to meet Mrs. Behn in the underworld, and anon establishes himself on the most familiar terms with his 'dear Afra'; they take, indeed, 'an extraordinary liking to one another's Company' for 'good Conversation is not so overplentiful ...

— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn

... graces that Sancho Panza is one of the most pleasant squires that ever served a knight-errant. Sometimes his simplicity is so arch, that to consider whether he is more fool or wag yields abundance of pleasure. He has roguery enough to pass for a knave, and absurdities sufficient to confirm him a fool. He doubts everything and believes everything; and often, when I think he is going to discharge nonsense, he will utter apothegms that will raise him to the skies. In a word, ...

— Wit and Wisdom of Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

... make a world, said Torfi Torfason. And he took off his pack and sat down in the snow with his legs stretched out in front of him. In the mouth of the pack there was something that little Tota had scraped together for her papa on the trip. And then the bitch began to wag her tail back and forth in the snow and gaze with lustful eyes at the ...

— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various

... class of men who call themselves jewellers, but may be better likened to hucksters, or linen drapers, pawn brokers, or grocers... with a maximum of credit and a minimum of brains... these dunderheads... wag their arrogant tongues at me and cry, 'How about the chrysophrase, or the jacynth, how about the aqua marine, nay more, how about the garnet, the vermeil, the crysolite, the plasura, the amethyst? Ain't these ...

— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... see the merry-faced boy, and the big, black dog who immediately began to wag his tail as if willing ...

— Five Little Peppers And How They Grew • Margaret Sidney

... exposure here to the south and sou'-west," says the Sergeant, with a wag of his grizzled head, and a streak of pleasure in his melancholy voice. "This is the shape for a rosery—nothing like a circle set in a square. Yes, yes; with walks between all the beds. But they oughtn't to be gravel walks like these. Grass, Mr. ...

— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins

... solid influence of porridge, tinned fruit, fresh bread, butter and tea and the soothing aroma of innumerable pipes, other public heroes arose and ousted this upstart of the night. Meanwhile, the latter began to show signs of abating energy after twelve hours' work. Soon some wag had caught him having a private nap, a whispered signal was passed round and the unfortunate hero was startled into life with a rousing "Rise and shine!" in which all past ...

— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... animal, placed some bread in his hat and carried it to him. It happened that when he turned out the bread the root which the little devil had given him fell out also. The old dog swallowed it with the bread and was almost instantly cured, when he jumped up and began to wag his tail as an expression of joy. Ivan's father and mother, seeing the dog cured so quickly, asked by what means he had ...

— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy

... art a wag; no more of that. Thou shall want neither man's meat, nor woman's meat, as far as his provision ...

— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden

... household, in concocting some plausible story. To every friend who calls, to anyone of our world whom you may meet, you must tell the same tale, and if you note an air of incredulity in anyone, if you hear whispers of there being some mystery, well! let the world wag its busy tongue—I care less than naught: it will soon tire of me and my doings, and having torn my reputation to shreds will quickly leave me in peace. But to Sir Andrew Ffoulkes," she added earnestly, "tell the whole truth from me. He will understand ...

— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... was not particularly interested in preventing the perfunctory abuse which the old man might feel disposed to bestow upon the complacent girl. The truth is, the child's mind was occupied with the episode in the story of Mr. Benjamin Ram which treats of the style in which this romantic old wag put Mr. and Mrs. Wolf to flight by playing a tune upon his fiddle. The little boy was particularly struck with this remarkable feat, as many a youngster before him had been, and he made bold to recur to it again by asking Uncle Remus for all the details. It was plain to the latter ...

— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris

... to these Formosan lads who had had no experience with one the sound of Lu-a's harsh voice and the sight of his flying heels brought convulsions of merriment. "He's pounding rice! He's pounding rice!" shouted the wag of the party, and his companions flung themselves upon the grass and rolled about laughing ...

— The Black-Bearded Barbarian (George Leslie Mackay) • Mary Esther Miller MacGregor, AKA Marion Keith

... spent a fortnight with him some eighteen months ago; and certainly one of his levees with his settlers would, if as well reported, be quite as amusing as one of those Mornings at Bow Street—that about the time I left London were styled, by some wag, the leading articles ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various

... the second season that le Bourdon had occupied "Castle Meal," as he himself called the shanty. This appellation was a corruption of "chateau au Mtel" a name given to it by a wag of a voyageur^ who had aided Ben in ascending the Kalamazoo the previous summer, and had remained long enough with him to help him put up his habitation. The building was just twelve feet square, in the interior, and somewhat less than fourteen on its ...

— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper

... gain twice as much again by hearkening my tale and the rede that shall go with it. And I do thee to wit that the telling of thy tale shall unfreeze mine; so tarry not, if ye be in haste to be gone, but let thy tongue wag." ...

— The Well at the World's End • William Morris

... stopped and fell back a pace. He turned his face upon his companions. His eyes rolled faster than ever; but, although his lips appeared to move, and his tongue to wag, he was too excited to give utterance to a word. A volley of clicks and hisses ...

— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid

... his shoulders. "That is an idle rumor," said he; "two days ago they were still in Frankfort. You see, therefore, that some wag has amused himself by teasing you and frightening you a little for the thunderbolts which you two, and particularly the Vossian Gazette, ...

— The Merchant of Berlin - An Historical Novel • L. Muhlbach

... the Alhambra, but swore him to solemn secrecy over a vase of sherbet. Then Squib told his tailor, in consideration that his bill should not be sent in; and finally, the Bird of Paradise betrayed the whole affair to the musical world, who were, of course, all agog. Then, when rumour began to wag its hundred tongues, the twelve peeresses found themselves bound in honour to step into the breach, yielded the plan their decided approbation, and their avowed patronage puzzled the grumblers, silenced the weak, ...

— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli

... the fire stronghold. Kaiser and Pawsy still remained as much company for me as they had been from the first. What I should ever have done in that solitude without them I don't know. The great bushy wag of Kaiser's tail, and the loud purr of the cat, were the two things that cheered me more than anything else. I do believe that cat to have had the loudest purr of any cat that ever lived. A young tiger need not have been ashamed of ...

— Track's End • Hayden Carruth

... that a very cleverly illustrated edition of it was published by Scheible of Stuttgart in 1838, and that a passage in the Hettlingischen Sassenchronik (Caspar Abel's Sammlung, p. 185.), written in 1455, goes to prove that Dyll Ulnspiegel, as the wag is styled in the Augsburgh edition of 1540, is no imaginary personage, inasmuch as under the date of 1350 the chronicler tells of a very grievous pestilence which raged through the whole world, and that "dosulfest sterff ...

— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various

... big mastiff began to wag his tail, and though he still barked, it was by way of a welcome now. Frank fearlessly opened the gate and walked in. The guardian of the farm came up to him, sniffing, and Frank, without hesitation, rubbed his hand over the shaggy head ...

— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy

... when we met I told him one or two things—sufficient to cause him to think.' Then the gentleman stood up angrily and cried out in quite a loud voice: 'What! you fool! You've actually told him—you've allowed your infernal tongue to wag and let out the truth!' But she said that she had not told all the truth, and started abusing him—so much so that he left the room and went out into the garden, where, a few minutes later, I saw him talking excitedly to Ali. But when the two men talked I could, of course, ...

— The Sign of Silence • William Le Queux

... myself! Mrs. Jenkin has a good heart, but her head is as soft as blubber, so I was pretty careful not to say much," Miles answered, with a wag of his own head, which he thumped with his fist to show that at least he was not topped ...

— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant

... day was a Thursday. The ceremony was to take place in the chapel of which David Davis was a member; the subsequent festivities were arranged for at an hotel. It wag to be a notable affair, an epochmaker in the local shipping world, and when all was over there would be time for the newly-wedded to go aboard the Burdock and take her out on the tide. Old Captain Price, decorous in stiff black, drove to the church with his son ...

— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... hated to see a good thing go to waste. His eyes spoke words to me, for he and I had been friends for a long time. When I was afraid of anything in the woods, he would get in front of me at once and gently wag his tail. He always made it a point to look directly in my face. His kind, large eyes gave me a thousand assurances. When I was perplexed, he would hang about me until he understood the situation. Many times I believed he saved my life by uttering ...

— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman

... "but if there were no Jew, the wit of the theatre would suffer. Doth not the wag ever make merry concerning the god of the Jew which refuseth to be a god unless an inch of skin be taken where ...

— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... stay, or else for lunch or tea or dinner, there were pious pilgrims from all parts of the world, as to a shrine—from Paris, from Germany, Italy, Norway, and Sweden; from America especially. Leah had to play the hostess almost every day of her life, and show off her lion and make him roar and wag his tail and stand on his hind legs—a lion that was not always in the mood to tumble and be shown off, unless the pilgrims were pretty and of the ...

— The Martian • George Du Maurier

... assembly with wonder, Miss screamed a cantata, like Boreas, That waked farmer Thrasher's dog Thunder, Who starting up, joined in the chorus: While a donkey, the melody marking, Chimed in too, which made a wag say, sir, "Attend to the Rector of Barking's Duet with the Vicar of ...

— Deborah Dent and Her Donkey and Madam Fig's Gala - Two Humorous Tales • Unknown

... without renown was I, In the ranks of gallantry. Now, when Love no more will call, To battle; on this sacred wall, Venus, where her statue stands, To hang my arms, and lute commands; Here the bright torch to hang, and bars, Which wag'd ...

— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various

... Katharine, 'I would hear how you think that I can manage a disputation. For the fellow is the sturdiest rogue with a yard of tongue to wag.' ...

— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford

... maintained and consistent with thought—indeed, productive of it. Not every officer has this habit, but most acquire it. I have been told that, however weakly otherwise, the calf muscles of watch-officers were generally well developed. There were exceptions. A lieutenant who was something of a wag on one occasion handed the midshipman of his watch a small instrument, in which the latter did not recognize a pedometer. "Will you kindly keep this in your trousers-pocket for me till the watch is over?" At eight bells he asked for it, and, after examining, said, quizzically, "Mr. ...

— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... out, Cromwell shouted "drunkard," "glutton," "extortioner," with other opprobrious names. When all were gone, he locked the door and put the key in his pocket. During the night some Royalist wag nailed a placard on the door, bearing the inscription in large letters, "The House ...

— The Leading Facts of English History • D.H. Montgomery

... How now, how now, mad wag, what in thy quips and thy quiddities? what a plague have I to do ...

— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... should visit him during his college term and there meet and be attracted by the gaunt, yet already unique and striking, figure of Eugene Field, the most unscholarly student and most incorrigible wag in Columbia? Julia was too young at this time, in the estimation of her sisters, to travel so far from St. Jo. Besides, what interest would a little girl in short skirts take in the grave and intellectual life of the brother ...

— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... came from the street; There's a wag of the tail and a twinkle of feet, And the little white dog did not even say, "Excuse me, ma'am," as he scampered away; But I'm sure as can be his greatest joy Is just ...

— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various

... to-day simply as Niang-tzu, walked up and down the streets of the city, warning all of the coming calamity. She was laughed at and looked upon as mad by the careless people. A pork-butcher in the town, a noted wag, took some pig's blood and sprinkled it round the eyes of the stone lions. This had the desired effect, for when Niang-tzu saw the blood she fled from the city amid the jeers and laughter of the inhabitants. Before many hours had passed, however, the face of the sky darkened, a mighty ...

— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner

... house where the poodle lay dead. But was he dead? You know he wasn't, as well as I do. What do you ask such senseless questions for? "It's the only sure test," said ALKALOID. "If that dog's alive, he'll wag his tail when I try to photograph him. I never knew ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various

... certain weight. He erected so many magnificent gates and arches, surmounted by representations of chariots drawn by four horses, and other triumphal ornaments, in different quarters of the city, that a wag inscribed on one of the arches the Greek word Axkei, "It is enough." [828] He filled the office of consul seventeen times, which no one had ever done before him, and for the seven middle occasions in successive years; but in scarcely any of them had he more than the title; for he never continued ...

— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus

... step up the aisle, take my place in front of the Chief Pharisee, wag my finger under his nose, and tell him a thing or two about the condition of ...

— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker

... his aged companion in the middle of the second flight to wag a portentous finger, "Old Un, mind this now—if there should 'appen to be cake for tea, don't go makin' a ancient beast of yourself with it—no slippin' lumps of it into your pocket on the sly, mind, because if I ...

— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol

... purloining Father Pandoza's shoes, when the soldiers in their fury about the ammunition destroyed the Mission. At the time of its destruction a rumor of this nature was circulated through camp, started by some wag, no doubt in jest; for Ord, who was somewhat eccentric in his habits, and had started on the expedition rather indifferently shod in carpet-slippers, here came out in a brand-new pair of shoes. Of course there ...

— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan

... collie had pricked his ears and glanced inquiringly up and down the street. Catching sight of the group seated in front of the estaminet, he began to wag his plumy tail and set off toward ...

— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune

... you question with the Jew: You may as well go stand upon the beach, And bid the main flood bate his usual height; You may as well use question with the wolf, Why he hath made the ewe bleat for the lamb; You may as well forbid the mountain pines To wag their high tops and to make no noise When they are fretten with the gusts of heaven; You may as well do anything most hard As seek to soften that—than which what's harder?— His Jewish heart: therefore, I do beseech you, Make no moe offers, use no farther means, But with ...

— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... dog growled, looking towards the village, and I heard voices coming nearer, and with them I heard the tread of a horse. But soon the dog ceased, and began to wag his tail as if to welcome friends, and when the comers entered the clearing, I saw that they were Egfrid's men, and that it was my horse that they were leading. My axe was yet at ...

— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler

... serve as a schoolhouse. So far as petty litigation was concerned, Squire Ichabod Inchly, the wheel-wright, was prepared to hold justice-court in the open air in front of his shop when the weather wag fine, and in any convenient place when the weather was foul. "Gentlemen," he would say, when a case came before him, "I'd a heap ruther shoe a horse or shrink a tire; yit if you will have the law, I'll try and temper it wi' jestice." ...

— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... church, or among her friends that he did not gladly avail himself of the opportunity of accompanying her home. Madame rumor soon got tidings of Mr. Luzerne's attentions to Annette and in a shout the tongues of the gossips of A.P. began to wag. Mrs. Larkins who had fallen heir to some money, moved out of Tennis court, and often gave pleasant little teas to her young friends, and as a well spread table was quite a social attraction in A.P., her gatherings ...

— Trial and Triumph • Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

... Miss," said the inevitable wag, who was one of the standing passengers, "steady on. We're more than full up already, you know. Do you take ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 30, 1919 • Various

... triers," said Appleyard, with an emphatic wag of the head. "Make no mistake about that! Fifty thousand! Gosh!—why, anybody that's got the least clue, the slightest idea—and there must be somebody—'ll have a go in for all he or ...

— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher

... Treasurer and Auditor of the State, the two chief officers of the Government, which are very capacious and well fitted up—and we were specially introduced to both these functionaries; Mr. Neil, who is somewhat of a wag, was rather jocose with them, and high as their position here is, they very cordially retaliated on him. We next went to those appropriated to the Governor of the State, General Chase, in order that we might be introduced to him, but he was out, ...

— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter

... upon her side, exerted all the arts of her vigorous nature to ensnare his attention. She would keep back some piece of news during dinner to be fired off with the entrance of the supper tray, and form as it were the LEVER DE RIDEAU of the evening's entertainment. Once he had heard her tongue wag, she made sure of the result. From one subject to another she moved by insidious transitions, fearing the least silence, fearing almost to give him time for an answer lest it should slip into a hint of separation. Like so many people of ...

— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... till I met these Americans that I was such a wit—or perhaps wag is a better word. I didn't try to be funny, I didn't even know I was being funny, but every word I ...

— Olivia in India • O. Douglas

... smile upon my knee; When thou art old there 's grief enough for thee. Mother's wag, pretty boy, Father's sorrow, father's joy; When thy father first did see Such a boy by him and me, He was glad, I was woe; Fortune changed made him so, When he left his pretty boy, Last his sorrow, first his joy. ...

— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy

... through which our stage-coach passed sometimes called it the "bean-pot." The Jehn who drove it was something of a wag. Once, coming through Charlestown, while waiting in the street for a resident passenger, he was hailed by another resident who thought him obstructing the ...

— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom

... her eyes widely, but she did not at once reply; she was not, strictly speaking, a clever girl, and did not at once grasp any new idea; our conversations were generally rather one-sided. Emma Hardy, who was our school wag, once observed that I used Jessie's brains as an airing-place for my ideas. Certainly Jessie listened more than she talked, but then, she listened ...

— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... Hence wag the tongues of the passing people, saying In their surmise, "Ah—whose is this dull form that perambulates, seeing nought Round him that looms Whithersoever his footsteps turn in his ...

— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy

... march on the mutineers, to seize their ringleaders, and to lash them down in their berths," he answered. His plan was generally approved of. We had now altogether twelve or fourteen persons prepared for the expected emergency. It wag important to communicate with Spratt, to collect the men forward who could be trusted. I volunteered immediately to do this. I knew that there was considerable risk, for I had already had an example of the way Cobb and his associates ...

— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... sweet-peas, the long rows of neat vegetable beds sloping down to the water, the straggling lane with the big oak at the gate. And there was Collie bounding down the lane, uttering yelping barks and twisting himself almost out of joint in his efforts to wag his tale hard enough to express his welcome. The Lad leaped down and ran to open the gate; Collie knocked him over in his ecstasy, and his father smiled indulgently as the two rolled over ...

— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith

... brother is prompted by ill-feeling to wag his tongue a bit. A depraved son receives heavy ...

— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... was of service, and created an effect which was salutary. When the door was tiled, and when the servants were gone, how could they be merry together? By what mirth should the beards be made to wag on that ...

— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... know a woman Who can play a game of tag With Truth until it's spent beyond repair, Who can start a thousand rumors, Set ten thousand tongues a-wag Till there's nothing left of Gospel in the air, Who can get you into trouble And your reputation smirch— It's Mrs. Grundy On a Sunday When she's walking ...

— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher

... a rich, dunder-headed baronet of Monmouthshire, without wit, words, or worth, but believing himself somebody, and fancying himself a sharp fellow, because his servants laugh at his good sayings, and his mother calls him a wag. Sir David pays his suit to Miss [Emily] Tempest; but as the affections of the young lady are fixed on Henry Woodville, the baron goes to the wall.—Cumberland, The Wheel of ...

— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.

... yourself. Show me a tugboat skipper that would come out here on a night like this to pick up the S.S. Maggie, two decks an' no bottom an' loaded with garden truck, an' I'll wag my ears an' look at the back o' my ...

— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... force, he was unfortunate enough to meet with a wag, who at once told him he was afraid that he, the Colonel, would meet or ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Place, every morning, I've watched her there—that is, I've happened to be passing there—and depend on it, there's a mystery in her case. People are not so unhappy unless they have something to repent of," added Tom Eaves with a knowing wag of his head; "and depend on it, that woman would not be so submissive as she is if the Marquis had not some sword to hold ...

— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... Ridge, Telegraph Hill, and a 12-pounder on Middle Hill, while Pom-Poms at two points barked frequently, but all this fuss and fury happily did no harm to anybody. At night a brilliant beam, like the tail of a comet, appeared in the southern sky. Presently the tail began to wag systematically, and experts were able to spell out the words of a cipher message. It was General Buller talking to us across fifteen miles of hills, and the conversation, all on one side, was kept up until lowering ...

— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse

... windpipe than the oesophagus; the pleura than the diaphragm? Why is the collar-bone the undisputed king of the osseous frame? One can understand the supremacy of the heart: it plainly bosses the whole vascular system. But why do the bronchial tubes wag the lungs? Why is the chin superior to the nose? The ankles to the shins? The ...

— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken

... Oxonian was at the bottom of all this oracular mystery, and was disposed to amuse himself with the general, whose tender approaches to the widow have attracted the notice of the wag. I was a little curious, however, to know the meaning of the dark hints which had so suddenly disconcerted Master Simon: and took occasion to fall in the rear with the Oxonian on our way home, when he laughed heartily at my questions, and gave me ...

— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... sufficient time, for I followed him with the muzzle of the gun for three or four minutes at least, as he ran to and fro; at last I fired. Tommy barked with delight, and the bird flew away. "I think I must have hit it," said I; "I saw it wag its tail." ...

— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... the floor from below made both jump up, and in ten minutes a shiny-faced lad and a lively dog went racing down-stairs—one to say, "Good-morning, ma'am," the other to wag his tail faster than ever tail wagged before, for ham frizzled on the stove, and Sancho was ...

— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various

... looks at his neighbour's countenance to discover if he is Whig or Tory: they appear to be examining one another like the dogs who meet in the street, and it is impossible to conjecture whether the mutual scenting will be followed up by a growl or a wag of the tail; however, one remark will soon discover the political sentiments of the whole party. Should they all agree, they are so busy in abuse that they rail at their adversaries with their mouths full—should they disagree, ...

— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)

... signal!" called Benny, now going straight up boldly to the flag of fury. "See, it's a wig-wag, pointing to that big rock. Let's look!" and be followed the pointing stick which, tied to the top of the improvised flagpole plainly meant—due west—to any one who understood the scout wig-wag code. "Here!" ...

— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis

... Such thou wert always, AEschines my friend. In lazy mood or trenchant, at thy whim The world must wag. ...

— Theocritus • Theocritus

... cited by the people of the sky,) That times to come should see the Trojan race Her Carthage ruin, and her tow'rs deface; Nor thus confin'd, the yoke of sov'reign sway Should on the necks of all the nations lay. She ponder'd this, and fear'd it was in fate; Nor could forget the war she wag'd of late For conqu'ring Greece against the Trojan state. Besides, long causes working in her mind, And secret seeds of envy, lay behind; Deep graven in her heart the doom remain'd Of partial Paris, and her form disdain'd; ...

— The Aeneid • Virgil

... showed the boys poor old Skipper lying on the floor in front of the open fireplace which was filled with fresh green boughs—and evidently a very sick dog indeed. He gave the boys a pathetic glance of recognition as they came in, and with a feeble wag or two of his tail tried to show them he was glad to see them; but this done, he seemed to be completely exhausted, and once more laid his head between his forepaws ...

— The Boy Scouts of the Eagle Patrol • Howard Payson

... older of the two was by nature a merry wag, and though he had never had the chance to taste of pleasure, he thought that nothing in the world could be better worth spending money for than wine and music and dancing. So, when the evening had come, he proposed ...

— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle

... hurriedly removed himself and his wine, and were served obsequiously by Nicodemus and his wife with the best the house afforded. For a while they ate and drank in silence. Then the tongue of the small old man, loosened by the wine, began to wag. He spoke abruptly, in a ...

— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... Pickwick!' exclaimed the Grand Master, letting the hand fall in astonishment. 'Never in Ba-ath! He! he! Mr. Pickwick, you are a wag. Not bad, not bad. Good, ...

— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... I could cease to love, the world would wag as well as may be. But now,—now,—as they say, Thyonichus, I am like the mouse that has tasted pitch. And what remedy there may be for a bootless love, I know not; except that Simus, he who was in love with the daughter of Epicalchus, went over seas, and came back heart-whole,—a ...

— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang

... Charles II. was displeased with the colonists for coining money, which he considered his royal prerogative, and intimated to Sir Thomas Temple that they must be punished, and the business stopped. Sir Thomas was considerable of a wag, and showed the king one of honest John Hull's shillings, on the reverse of which was the pine tree. The king asked him what sort of a tree that was. Upon which Sir Thomas replied that, of course, it was the royal oak, which had saved his majesty's life. The king smiled ...

— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... him all of my secrets, And he kept them without fail, With never a sign that he knew them But a wag of his short, stump tail. Long years have passed since I heard them.— The sound of his gruff bow-wows, As he tagged my heels in the good old days When we went after ...

— The Gray Goose's Story • Amy Prentice

... Although looked up to by multitudes as the political leader of his time, Peck was noted at Albany for his shabbiness of dress. He wore coarse boots, which he never blackened. On one occasion, on the eve of an important debate, some wag at the tavern blackened one of Peck's boots. Peck, in dressing for the fray, did not recognize the shining boot, and having put on one began to search high and low for the other. At last, enlightened by the laughter ...

— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall

... not wait to be adopted. He adopted us, but not ostentatiously at first—just a friendly wag here and there to show that he had at last found what he was looking for. By degrees he became more friendly and genial, so that at the end of an hour he was thoroughly one ...

— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon

... bethought myself. I was nearly a man now; I would be afraid of things no more; I would get out my pendulum, and see whether that would not help me. Not this time would I flinch from what consequences might follow. Let them be what they might, the pendulum should wag, and have a fair chance of ...

— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald

... conscious he ought to confess, but destitute of resolution to do so, and, in a perfect agony as the master went to his desk, took up the book, and carried it away, so unconscious, that Larkins, a great wag, only waited till his back was turned, to exclaim, "Ha! old fellow, you don't ...

— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge

... story so often that he actually believed it himself. But finally a wag friend of Colonel Andrews told of a dream which he had had about old Dave, which the latter hugely enjoyed. According to this second vagary, the old vagabond had also died and gone to heaven. There was some trouble at St. Peter's gate, ...

— The Outlet • Andy Adams