"Rat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... followed our movement with a heavy column of infantry; but, when they came near enough to exchange shots, they did not seem to like our looks, as we occupied a low ridge of broken rocks, against which even a rat could scarcely have hoped to advance alive; and they again fell back, and opening a tremendous fire of artillery, which was returned by a battery of our guns. In the course of a short time, seeing no further demonstration ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... that he opened the door and in one powerful haul he drew Ruenke sliding out into the road. Ruenke's bruised and bloody face was uppermost, a rather gruesome sight. Anderson glared down upon him, while men from the other cars crowded around. Ruenke's eyes resembled those of a cornered rat. Anderson's jaw bulged, ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... PATENT OF Wilhide's Celebrated Noiseless Self-setting Rat and Mouse Traps. Thoroughly introduced. Traps sold by all dealers. Address ...
— Scientific American, Volume 40, No. 13, March 29, 1879 • Various
... me, moving backwards and keeping his eyes fixed upon mine, as I have seen a rat do when a snake is about to swallow it. Now we were upon the edge of the crater, and looking over I saw an awful sight. For there, some thirty feet beneath us, the red-hot lava glowing sullenly beneath a shifting pall of smoke, ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... old cock. You're just the fellow to lift my Latin and those filthy mathematics high enough out of the mud to keep the beaks from worrying me to death. I tried Philips for a week, but he did such weird screeds in the 'unseens' that Merishall smelt a rat, and was most particular attentive to me, but your leverage is ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... best moods, resented real or fancied injuries, and at this stage of his career complained that he got nothing but vinegar from his fellows, comparing himself to a worm that trodden on would "turn into a torpedo." He had begun to be tormented by the dyspepsia, which "gnawed like a rat" at its life-long tenement, his stomach, and by sleeplessness, due in part to internal causes, but also to the "Bedlam" noises of men, machines, and animals, which pestered him in town and country from first to last. He ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... Panda, "of course, you do not know where to find a wife between the time the hawk stoops and the rat squeaks in its claws. How should you who have never thought of the matter? Also," he continued, with a smile, "it is well that you have not thought of it, since she whom I shall give to you could not live ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... of spring was wrought. Into the back room over the back alley between the black walls had crept the Harbinger. It was ridiculous, and yet— Well, it is a rat trap, and you, madam and sir and all of ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... yawned. Apparently disappointed, the pug turned away and sought another adversary. He saw King's big tail hanging down beside his pedestal. Flinging himself upon it, he began to worry it as if it were a rat. The next moment the tail threshed vigorously, and the pug went rolling end ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... all he had felt somewhat as he had made me feel when I saw help close to me and might not have it. I pitied him, for I knew well what his torture had been. Ay, and I will tell this, that men may know how this terror burnt into me. Many a time have I let a trapped rat go, because I would not see the agony of dumb helplessness in anything. It frays me. There is no wonder that I ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... Besides the remains of many hyaenas there were teeth or bones of such large animals as the elephant, rhinoceros, hippopotamus, horse, tiger, bear, urus (Bos primi-genius) an unknown animal of the size of a wolf, and three species of deer. The smaller animals included the rabbit, water-rat, mouse, raven, pigeon, lark and a small type of duck. Everything was broken into small pieces so that no single skull was found entire and it was, of course, impossible to obtain anything like a complete skeleton. From the fact that the bones of the hyaenas themselves had suffered ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... coming from the toll-house with my fiddle. The clouds were scudding across the sky; time was passing—and I could not get away. Ah, but my heart was sore; I did not know what to do. And if the leaves rustled outside, or a rat gnawed behind the wainscot, I fancied I saw the old woman gliding in by a secret door and creeping softly through the room, with ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... relationship between soil fertility and human health. McCarrison, a physician and medical researcher, worked in India contemporaneously with Albert Howard. He spent years "trekking around the Hunza and conducted the first bioassays of food nutrition by feeding rat populations on the various national diets of India. And like the various nations of India, some of the rats became healthy, large, long-lived, and good natured while others were small, sickly, irritable, ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... "I'll stay where I am until that's done, and chance it. I'd rather have a cold than be drowned in my cabin, like a rat in a trap." ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... comes to me of a bunk-house on an Arizona range. The time was evening. A half-dozen cowboys were sprawled out on the beds smoking, and three more were playing poker with the Chinese cook. A misguided rat darted out from under one of the beds and made for the empty fireplace. He finished his journey in smoke. Then the four who had shot slipped their guns back into their holsters and resumed their cigarettes and drawling ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... rat-like eyes upon him, compressed his hard, unfeeling lips, and, after surveying him for ...
— The Black Baronet; or, The Chronicles Of Ballytrain - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... Lucie, and he was surprised to hear her name was Marie; he never knew her, he had never been to Alphonsine's, and he had told the story as he had picked it up from the women who turned into the Rat Mort at midnight for a soupe a l'oignon. He said it was a pity he did not know me when he was writing it, for I could have told him her story more sympathetically than the women in the Rat Mort, supplying him with many pretty ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... heaven hollowed out of the winter. The warm curtains drawn, and the fire blazing defiantly,—the angel with the flaming sword to protect their Paradise from the frost, it was indeed a contrast to the sordid shop, and the rat-haunted garret. ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... Davison remarks that "the Grey Tit breeds in holes either of trees or banks; when it builds in trees it very often (whenever it can apparently) takes possession of the deserted nest-hole of Megaloema viridis; when in banks a rat-hole is not uncommonly chosen. All the nests I have ever seen or taken were composed in every single instance of fur obtained from the dried droppings ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... and are fond of dancing, which they do in just measure, but entirely naked. Their dress consists of a cloak of sheep or seals-skin to their middle, the hair side inwards, with a cap of the same, and a small skin like that of a rat hanging before their privities. Some had a sole, or kind of sandal, tied to their feet. Their necks were adorned with greasy tripes, which they would sometimes pull off and eat raw; and when we threw away the guts of beasts and sheep we bought ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... watch who had been aft and fancied that I had been carried overboard, when they found that I was safe, instead of expressing any satisfaction, joined the cook in rating me for my folly. Feeling as I suppose a half-drowned rat might do, I was glad to make my escape below, where, with the assistance of Jim, I shifted into dry clothes, while he hurried on deck to obtain a fresh supply of materials for the captain's pudding. Shortly after this the gale abated, and the brig ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... feet across. These are formed of a jet black membrane, and have a highly polished claw at the extremity of each. The feet consist of five polished black claws, with which the bat hangs on, head downward, to the forest trees. His body is about twice the size of that of a very large rat, black and furry underneath, and with red foxy fur on the head and neck. He has a pointed face, a very black nose, and prominent black eyes, with a remorseless expression in them. An edible bat of vagrant ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... spring, and before either of us could shoot, the lion had pounced upon Inyati, and had him down upon the ground beneath him, shaking the poor fellow like a terrier shakes a rat. Mad with rage I sent bullet after bullet into the brute's head and body till the click of the hammer of my Winchester showed the magazine was empty, and the lion rolled over dead, with Inyati still in its mighty grip, and to all ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... indeed," muttered Cutts. "He is only stupefied, and he can shake off a doze as quickly as a bulldog does when a rat is ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... tracks of the animals, marked off dangerous places with their sticks; and behind them rode Lenox, muffled to the eyes in poshteen and Balaklava cap, his league of leg barely two feet off the ground; his keen little pony—long since christened 'The Rat'—almost as trustworthy on dangerous ground as the donkey himself. And wherever he led, all self-respecting Kashmiri ponies would follow,—even into ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... month there was enacted a comedy of which Hamilton was ignorant. Three days after Bosambo had returned in triumph to his city, there came a frantic call for succour—a rolling, terrified rat-a-plan of sound which the lokali man ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... "Say a rat, rather, George. Don't you know they are right? Would not I do the same if she were my girl, knowing you ...
— Sir Harry Hotspur of Humblethwaite • Anthony Trollope
... straight to the Mexican camp. No doubt they heard us coming when we were close, but made sure it was El Zeres, and so didn't disturb themselves; and it warn't till we had wheeled round and fairly surrounded them that they smelt a rat. But it was too late then, for in another minute we were down upon them, and I don't believe twenty out of the whole lot got away. It was, altogether, one of the most successful businesses in the whole war. And I think that's ...
— On the Pampas • G. A. Henty
... in the direction of her voice, like a terrier that suspects the presence of a rat. Valdarno's answer was inaudible, but Donna Tullia ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... Blankenships: there was old Ben, the father, who had succeeded "General" Gains as the town drunkard; young Ben, the eldest son—a hard case with certain good traits; and Tom—that is to say, Huck—who was just as he is described in Tom Sawyer: a ruin of rags, a river-rat, an irresponsible bit of human drift, kind of heart and possessing that priceless boon, absolute unaccountability of conduct to any living soul. He could came and go as he chose; he never had to work or go to school; he could do all things, good or bad, that the other boys longed to do ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... death. Often when she fell asleep, there would come to her a strange and horrible nightmare. It was such a queer, uncanny kind of dream for a grown-up woman to have! She used to dream that she was a rat—and that Colonel Crofton's own terrier, a fierce brute called Dandy, ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... a temperament as Murphy's, a life like this was happiness itself. He was sociable, and loved company intensely, though preferably the company of Man. Solitude he abhorred; games were his delight; for killing things, even were it a rat from one of the thousand holes he met with when walking by the river, he never cared, and indeed appeared never quite to understand. "Live and let live" was his motto, while playing ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... hell don't you get out the other way and alarm the 'ouse?' And that raised the siege, Bunny. In comes the old woman, as plucky as he was, and shoves the necklace into my left hand. I longed to refuse it. I didn't dare. And the old beast took her and shook her like a rat, until I covered him again, and swore in German that if he showed himself on the balcony for the next two minutes he'd be ein toter Englander! That was the other bit I'd got off pat; it was meant to mean 'a dead Englishman.' And I left the fine old girl clinging on to him, instead ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... gap ban cap an bad bag can map as mad gag fan nap at pad hag pan rap ax sad lag ran hap rat gad tag tan jam sat ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... the old feudal monarchy, the Turkish occupation, and the new principality. We entered the bazaars, which were rotting and ruinous, the air infected with the loathsome vapours of dung-hills, and their putrescent carcases, tanpits with green hides, horns, and offal: here and there a hideous old rat showed its head at some crevice in the boards, to complete the picture of impurity ...
— Servia, Youngest Member of the European Family • Andrew Archibald Paton
... snapped the other handcuff into place. "You beast of ingratitude—you Judas! Kissing and betraying like any other Iscariot! And a dear old man like that! Look here, Mrs. Bawdrey; look here Captain, Travers; what do you think of a little rat ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... among officers and men was to continue the advance in such a way as to make sure of decent quarters o' nights, and to drive the Germans so hard that when winter set in we should be clear of the foul mud tracts and the rat-infested trenches that had formed the battlefields of 1915, '16, and '17. Major Mallaby-Kelby was a keen pushful officer, immensely eager to maintain the well-known efficiency of the Brigade while the colonel was away; but he took me into his confidence on another matter. "Look here!" he began, ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... had been directed, a pretty little cottage, set back from the street and shaded by palms, live oaks, and the inevitable eucalyptus. Her heart warmed at the sight of it. Oh, to find a little niche for herself here, a home, a refuge from those horrible city streets, from the rat of famine, with its relentless tooth. How she would work, how strenuously she would endeavour to please, how patient of rebuke she would be, how faithful, how conscientious. Nor were her pretensions altogether false; upon her, while at home, had devolved almost continually the care of the baby ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... C[oe]li is constructed on the principle of a rat-trap. It is an oblong room divided into three compartments longitudinally, the partition walls being composed of wire and resembling cages. The middle compartment is occupied by the armed warder in charge who walks up and down; ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... of a man walked into a shipping office on the East Side, and inquired for the Manager of the Line. He had kindly blue eyes, a stub nose, and a mouth that shut to like a rat-trap, and stayed shut. Under his chin hung a pair of half-moon whiskers which framed his weather-beaten face as a ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... got a long story for tell dat night On poor leetle Rose Elmire, An' she say she 's sorry about de fight We 're doin' so well down here— But it 's not our fault an' we can't help dat, De law she is made for all, So our duty is wait for de rat-tat-tat Of ...
— The Voyageur and Other Poems • William Henry Drummond
... the crab. The hole in which the lobster lodges has almost always two openings, he has said, through one of which it sometimes contrives to escape when the other is stormed by the fisher; whereas the crab is usually content, like the "rat devoid of soul," with a hole of only one opening; and, besides, gets so angry in most cases with his assailant, as to become more bent on assault than escape, and so loses himself through sheer loss of temper. ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... got hold of rat poison and despite the help of the best veterinarian and also the help of two human doctors who were friends ...
— Nelka - Mrs. Helen de Smirnoff Moukhanoff, 1878-1963, a Biographical Sketch • Michael Moukhanoff
... now an active promoter of the line. Indeed, I know not any one who can give us further trouble, except it be old Pope, who says the road will ruin his villa, and be the death of any of his bulls that get upon the line; but as we know that he is as poor as a church rat, and will never show face in the committee, we mind him not, and, in truth, I have no doubt the committee ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... envious, and dejected, and frantic, and disregard all present things, as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely pleased, though it is a gloomy joy, with the application of Dr. Swift's complaint, that he is forced to die in a rage, like a rat in a poisoned hole." Let the lover of solitude muse on its picture throughout the year, in this stanza, by the same amiable ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... "Day" foretold by yours and you In whispers here, and there with beery clamours— You and your rat-hole spies and blustering crew Of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 19th, 1914 • Various
... been about to burst forth with an angry exclamation; but the thought of his own ignominious flight made him pause. Rats, indeed! He knew there wasn't a rat in the whole mill that had been half so terrified ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... Ballad of the banished and returning Count The Violet The Faithless Boy The Erl-King Johanna Sebus The Fisherman The King of Thule The Beauteous Flower.. Sir Curt's Wedding Journey Wedding Song The Treasure-digger The Rat-catcher The Spinner Before a Court of Justice The Page and the Miller's Daughter The Youth and the Millstream The Maid of the Mill's Treachery The Maid of the Mill's Repentance The Traveller and the Farm-Maiden Effects at a distance The Walking ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... illuminated by a few straggling gleams from the gas-jet outside, we were unable to discriminate any object until our eyes grew accustomed to the gloom. While we were in this state of semi-blindness, something stirred. I wondered whether it was a dog or a rat. The doubt was soon resolved. A human form reared itself up from the bench against the wall, where it had been lying, not asleep indeed, but half unconscious; and to our great surprise, it turned out to be Mr. Cattell, who had surrendered to his bail at the same time ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... and shuffles into the room in her slipshod fashion. She is an oldish woman, with a bloated countenance, and a nose like a parrot's beak set in the middle of it; her fat little hands (she is as sleek as a church rat) and her shapeless, slouching figure are in keeping with the room that reeks of misfortune, where hope is reduced to speculate for the meanest stakes. Mme. Vauquer alone can breathe that tainted air without being ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... and the wind and the rain had held high carnival in her loosely-arranged hair, whose color Tom so detested, and which streamed down her back in many little wet tags, giving her the look of a drowned rat after it has ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... ought to place the list of those misdeeds, by reason of which these elements pass into bodies of animals or men of inferior development. "A drunken priest becomes a worm," says Manu, "a stealer of corn, a rat; the murderer of a Brahman, a dog, a tiger, or a serpent"—and this means that those elements which, in man, serve as a basis for the passions, at death, pass over into the bodies of animals that possess the same passions or experience the ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... finished my breakfast the next morning when I heard a loud rat-tat-tat upon the street door-surely the footman of some person of consequence. And Scipio was in the act of announcing the names when, greatly to his disgust, the visitors themselves rushed into my bedroom and curtailed the ceremony. They were none other than Dr. Courtenay and my Lord Comyn ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... new button. Our vulgar make images, and adore them, which is absurd; for adoration is the homage due from a creature to its creator; now here man is the creator; so the statues ought to worship him, and would, if they had brains enough to justify a rat in worshipping them. But even this abuse, though childish enough to be modern, is ancient. The pagan vulgar in these parts made their images, then knelt before them, adorned them with flowers, offered incense to them, lighted tapers before them, carried them in procession, and made pilgrimages ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... said he, "I'm ashamed of the shop. It isn't that. I wasn't ashamed of our other place—that little rat 'ole in ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair
... edge proof of the toughness of the struggle with the frost, from which it has, after all, crept only half victorious. A bare wild rose-bush on the farther bank was violently agitated, and then there ran from its root a black-headed rat with wings. Such was the general effect. I was not less interested when my startled eyes divided this phenomenon into its component parts, and recognized in the disturbance on the opposite bank only another fierce struggle among ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... The vast mind was sheeted with stone; and each compartment in the depths of it was safe and dry. The night-watchmen, flashing their lanterns over the backs of Plato and Shakespeare, saw that on the twenty-second of February neither flame, rat, nor burglar was going to violate these treasures—poor, highly respectable men, with wives and families at Kentish Town, do their best for twenty years to protect Plato and Shakespeare, and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... never completed, being interrupted by a thundering rat-tat-tat at the front door, followed by a pealing at the bell, which indicated that the visitor was manfully following the printed injunction to "Ring also." The door was opened and a man's voice ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... cried Kate delightedly, as Helen sat down at the table. "Helen," she went on, mischievously, "as a man hunter you are just too dreadful. Poor Big Brother Bill, why, he hasn't the chance of a rat in a corner. He surely is as good as engaged, ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... with the addition of migratory birds and fowls which at certain seasons swarmed on the different islands, supplemented by various nuts and fruits growing spontaneously, provided a varied and ample food supply. Mammals, except the pig, dog, and rat (really a large mouse), which came in with the early natives, were unknown prior to the advent of the whites. There were no land reptiles and few indigenous noxious insects; although mosquitoes, not to mention certain ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... was so glad to see you before in my life!" exclaimed the delighted mother, clasping them both to her bosom. "Why, Paul, you are as wet as a drowned rat! You have been overboard; I know ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... crew had gone away in her, carrying with them a number of cocoa-nuts and gourds, which they said were to sell to the people on shore; and they had coolly left word that they should not be back till the next morning. "On this, sir," continued Dick, "I smelt a rat; and on hunting about in the forepeak, I found a cocoa-nut half full of rum. Thinks I to myself, that's just what they're going to fill the others with; and when they come back they'll be as drunk as they ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... and virtue he never knew. Had he to live again, he would live the same. But more terrible than the death-bed of a believing and despairing sinner that blank gloom of apathy,—that contemplation of the worm and the rat of the charnel-house; that grim and loathsome NOTHINGNESS which, for his eye, falls like a pall over the universe of life. Still, staring into space, gnawing his livid lip, he looks upon the darkness, convinced that darkness is forever ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... and no flies, CHARLIE; swim with the Swells, and all that, But I'm blowed if this bunkum don't make me inclined to turn Radical rat. "Riparian Rights," too! Oh Scissors! They'd block the Backwaters and Broads, Because me and my pals likes a lark! Serve 'em right if old BURNS busts ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... scarcely any boats moving, to be seen. He spoke at random, as if the river swarmed with them; but only a little tug now and then scurried like a water-rat out of the shadows of the bridge, and sped down along towards Chiswick. In its wake, spreading out in ever-broadening lines, it left a row of curling waves that came lapping to the steps below them. ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... necessary when rats are very numerous, but rats appear to be very capricious, abounding in some seasons and scarce in others. My particular rat-catcher was not a very highly evolved specimen of humanity; he was thin and hungry-looking with an angular face, bearing a strong resemblance to the creatures against whom he waged warfare; he had a wandering, restless and furtive expression, ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... things in the world than beer!" he heard his mother declare in her biting way. "By all means take him! You can wash yourself in it if water gets scarce, and I'll place my kitchen orders with you." Lucinda, who had perhaps sniffed timidly at release, burnt crimson: thank you! she would rather eat rat-bane.—He supposed they pinched and scraped along as of old—the question of money was never broached between him and them. Prior to his marriage he had sent them what he could; but that little was in itself an admission ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... things. I consider myself much the most desperate wicked of the family. Your little pains is only pin-pricks compared to mine. It would relieve me to tell, but I love Paulie too much, so I won't. We have all got to hold our tongues for the present. Now good-night. I am not a mouse, nor a rat, nor a ferret. But I mean what I say. ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... to sit up for?" pursued my father, keen and sharp as a ferret at a field-rat's hole, or a barrister hunting a witness in those courts of law that were never used by, though ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... angle of the moat crept a ripple; a rat appeared, swimming, and, seeing them, dived. L'Ombre ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... there's the door. Say, there, jailer, you have just let in a gray rat and I wish you'd come and ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... mended their fortunes overnight. Some few, in the earlier days of frenzied fiction, had played the market, others the ponies, still others had gone West and developed abandoned gold-mines or obscure water- powers. A number also had grown disgustingly rich from patenting rat-traps or shoe-buttons. One young man had discovered a way to keep worms out of railroad-ties and had promptly bludgeoned the railroad companies ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... within a stair or two beneath the spot where I stood the unearthly tread smote the floor. My eye caught something in motion; it was about the size of Goliah's foot—it was grey, heavy, and flapped with a dead weight from one step to another. As I am alive, it was the most monstrous grey rat I ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 1 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... Pontoise and sent your Waverton off to St. Germain with a mighty plausible letter about secret proposals from the chiefs of the Whigs, which brought the King out to hear them secretly. Ma foi! I think Charles Middleton should have smelt a rat. But it was a clever trick, and to choose your Waverton to play it was masterly. For who could think that peacock would be in anything crafty? At Pontoise I tumbled in upon them, and your father, mon cher, ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey
... idees and talk about Adam and Eve being allegories. As a result, the graveyard has become the slowest place in town. You simply can't ha'nt anything around here. A man hears a groan in his room and he gets up and closes the shutters tighter, or throws a shoe at a rat, or swears at the wind in the chimney. A few sperrits were hanging around when I was first dead, but they were complaining very bad about the hard times. There used to be plenty of good society in the burying-ground, they said, but one by one they had to quit. All the old Berrys had left. ...
— Humorous Ghost Stories • Dorothy Scarborough
... seemed peopled by tiny folk, living out their timid, inscrutable lives around him. A water-rat, passing bright-eyed upon his lawful occasion, paused on the border of the stream to consider the stranger, and was lost to view. A stagnant pool among some reeds caught the reflection of the sunset and changed on the ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... dead past: a past beginning with the ruts of chariot-wheels graven on the rock-paved street. I thought, as I looked at the sordid little village of to-day, which had crawled into the very midst of the fortress, of some words I'd read last night: "a rat in the heart ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... and sure enough, right out of that grain bin overhead came a moaning and whimpering, and then a scratching against the door. My hair stood on end. Blended with the drip, drip of the rain, and the occasional scurrying of a rat overhead, that noise had a super-natural sound. I was really frightened; perhaps my nerves were a trifle unstrung from our ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... always known. So they gave those the same names. A Khatkan lion is furred, it is a hunter and a great fighter, but it is not the cat of Terra. However, it is in great demand as a tri-dee actor. So we summon it out of lurking by providing free meals. One shoots a poli, a water rat, or a landeer and drags the carcass behind a low-flying flitter. The lion springs upon the moving meat, which it can also scent, and the rope is ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... business; I have had a sorter kinder sample day. Up at 5, to see a dying man; ought to have been up at 2, but Ben King the rat-catcher, who came to call me, was taken nervous!!! and didn't make row enough; was from 5.30 to 6.30 with the most dreadful case of agony—insensible to me, but not to his pain. Came home, got a wash and a pipe, and again ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... I knelt by the side of the hole and peered down into the littered darkness. We could make out, dimly, heaps of barrels and boxes. A damp, chill air rushed up into our faces, carrying with it the sound of a scurrying rat, and another sound which made the lady gasp and tremble, and caused me to grind my teeth with rage. It was a long, drawn-out sigh, the moan of a man in agony of flesh or spirit. It was Newman's voice. Mingling with ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... transfigured into a milder being; and they made it one of those creatures that sing and croak in the sides of ponds and marshes.14 When Rosalind finds the verses with which her enamored Orlando had hung the trees, she exclaimed, "I was never so berhymed since Pythagoras' time, that I was an Irish rat, which I can hardly remember." One of the earliest popular introductions of this Oriental figment to the English public was by Addison, whose Will Honeycomb tells an amusing story of his friend, Jack Freelove, how that, finding his mistress's pet monkey alone one day, ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... with gruesome visitants in wax, Inhuman, hushed, ghastly with Painted Eyes), I wandered; and no living soul Was nearer than the pay-box; and I stared Upon them staring—staring. Till at last, Three sets of rafters from the streets, I strayed upon a mildewed, rat-run room, With the two Dancers, horrible and obscene, Guarding the door: and there, in a bedroom-set, Behind a fence of faded crimson cords, With an aspect of frills And dimities and dishonoured privacy That made ...
— Poems by William Ernest Henley • William Ernest Henley
... the child has been wanting me this many a day to go to see this tame rat of hers; but I could never get time, never: and I wondered too at the child's liking such a creature. Tell the gentlemen, dear, about your rat. All I know is, that, let her have but never such a tiny bit of bread, for breakfast ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. 2 • Maria Edgeworth
... When Mrs. Rat saw Miss Kitty Cat washing her face, she knew it meant rain. And she wouldn't let her husband leave home ...
— The Tale of Henrietta Hen • Arthur Scott Bailey
... I was more glad than sorry at what took place," Hat now continued. "That cargo of paving stones up and shifted and started her in a new place. She was leaking like a sieve. That little rat of an underwriter said to me: 'If I were you, as soon as I got out of sight of land I would turn round and kick the stern off her with a tap of my foot.' 'Maybe I will, for all you know,' I said. I'd like to ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the loadstar, the very pole of my home-sick desires; always thither the wings of my hopeless fancy bore me first of all; it was, oh! to tread that sunlit grassy brink once more, and to watch the merry tadpoles swarm, and the green frog takes its header like a little man, and the water-rat swim to his hole among the roots of the willow, and the horse-leech thread his undulating way between the water-lily stems; and to dream fondly of the delightful, irrevocable past, on the very spot of all where I ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... the wind and the colours of the leaves and flowers. Sometimes the significance of a sensation has to be learned by the individual animal during its own life, as when a dog, who recognises the significance of a rat by instinct, learns to recognise that of a whip (provided it looks like the whip which he saw and felt before) by experience ...
— Human Nature In Politics - Third Edition • Graham Wallas
... will be perceived, with the exception of the three bats, two mice, and one water-rat, that all our mammals are either Marsupial (pouched) or Monotrematous (a closely-allied form, to which belong the platypus and porcupine of the colonists). Orders found in other countries, such as the Pachydermata and Ruminantia, ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West
... rat in a trap, I had no alternative but to comply with this man's outrageous demands. Despairingly I plied that abominable instrument of torture, the national bucksaw of America. This is the only American institution I could never accustom myself to. I have ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... that there is no fool like an old fool," she said to herself as the night wore on, and the strange sensation of pain and loss which Preston Cheney's unexpected announcement had caused her gnawed at her breast like a rat in ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... or four years ago. It really never came to a public trial. He settled her infamous claim out of court. Her lawyers hounded him as if he were a rat." ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... offerings, hanging up about it silken streamers and canopies, scattering flowers, burning incense, and lighting lamps, so as to make the night as bright as the day. This they did day after day without ceasing. It happened that a rat, carrying in its mouth the wick of a lamp, set one of the streamers or canopies on fire, which caught the vihara, and the seven stories were all consumed. The kings, with their officers and people, were all very sad and ...
— Chinese Literature • Anonymous
... an' Company to be erected in Washington. Another Vanderbilt weddin'. That sounds like goluf, but it ain't. Newport society livin' in Mrs. Potther Pammer's cellar. Green-goods men declare f'r honest money. Anson in foorth place some more. Pianny tuners f'r McKinley. Li Hung Chang smells a rat. Abner McKinley supports th' goold standard. Wait a minyit. Here it is: 'Goluf in gay attire.' Let me see. H'm. 'Foozled his aproach,'—nasty thing. 'Topped th' ball.' 'Three up an' two to play.' Ah, here's the scoor. 'Among those prisint were ...
— Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War • Finley Peter Dunne
... and go to sleep," ses his wife, "hiding your 'ead under the clothes like a child that's afraid o' the dark! There's nothing there, I tell you. Wot next will you see, I wonder? Last time it was a pink rat." ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... of the insolent criminal at the bar to show that he was of the same breed. He was no longer the athlete, whom "prize fighting" had inculcated with principles of manliness and fair play as well as a strong body. All that, as I had seen often before, was a pitiful lie. He was rat-eyed and soft-handed. His skin had the pastiness that comes of more exposure to the glare of vile dance halls than the sunlight of day. His black hair was slicked down; he was faultlessly tailored and his shoes had those ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... stimulant, as he had shared none of the fruits; his poison was that of the will — the distortion of sight — the warping of mind — the degradation of tissue — the coarsening of taste — the narrowing of sympathy to the emotions of a caged rat. Hay needed no office in order to wield influence. For him, influence lay about the streets, waiting for him to stoop to it; he enjoyed more than enough power without office; no one of his position, wealth, and political experience, living at the centre ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... rats. Great water-rats were continually getting at our food and cheese in the dug-outs. In one "rat hunt" we killed eighteen of these rodents in one morning. The stream itself supplied us with drinking water, but one day our men began to fall ill. The doctor analysed the water and discovered that the dastardly Huns had poisoned the stream higher ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... the flora is the fauna. Of mammals there are only the pig, dog, a flying-fox and the rat, of which the first two have probably been imported by the natives. There are but few birds, reptiles and amphibies, but the few species there are are very prolific, so that we find swarms of lizards and snakes, the latter all harmless Boidae, but ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... anythin' in the house 't father didn't ask f'r 'n' 't I didn't get him last night, it must 'a' been the cook-stove in the kitchen. I come nigh to losin' a toe in the rat-trap the third time I was down cellar, 'n' I clum that ladder to the garret so many times 't I do believe I dusted all overhead with my hair afore mornin'. My ears is full o' cobwebs too, 'n' you ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... well at Buonconvento near Sienna, on the 24th September, 1313, in full march towards the rebellious King of Naples, whom the Pope much countenanced. At Buonconvento, Kaiser Henry wished to enjoy the communion; and a Dominican monk, whose dark rat-eyed look men afterwards bethought them of, administered it to him in both species (Council of Trent not yet quite prohibiting the liquid species, least of all to Kaisers, who are by theory a kind of "Deacons to the Pope," or something ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol, II. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Of Brandenburg And The Hohenzollerns—928-1417 • Thomas Carlyle
... ever needs a friend Billy O'Dowd is the boy to respond to any call she sends out. God willing, I may see her again some day,—and I'll say the same to you, old man." He arose and held out his hand. "I'm trusting to you to get her away from these parts before the rat- catchers come. Don't let 'em bother her. Good-bye and ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... callous, bloodless cheeks, straight as silk. Temple Grace looked as if he were blighted by lightning; and his deep blue eyes gleamed like a hyaena's. The Baron was least changed. Tom Cogit, who smelt that the crisis was at hand, was as quiet as a bribed rat. ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... drops from our fingers, or a penny rolls from our grasp, the former, of course, falls on our new white dress, while the latter, nine times out of ten, goes directly to the nearest grating, crack or rat-hole." ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... first saw Major (by misplaced courtesy) Wentworth Caswell. I knew him for a type the moment my eyes suffered from the sight of him. A rat has no geographical habitat. My old friend, A. Tennyson, said, as he so well ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... to where the rat was demanding the passport when she recognized the President's step outside the door. In another moment he was standing beside her chair, looking at the book ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... the relative protein content of nuts, milk, and meat shows that, pound for pound, the almond, beech nut and walnut contain on an average as much protein as does meat and five times as much as is found in milk, and protein which from rat feeding experiments appears to be of equal value. The chestnut, the chinquapin, the filbert, the hickory, pecan and pine nut contain on an average as much protein as is found in fish, while the butternut, the peanut and the pignolia contain twice as much or 50 per cent ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Eleventh Annual Meeting - Washington, D. C. October 7 AND 8, 1920 • Various
... side, and a smothered death-howl rose out of the heap. A fang pierced his eye. Even then no cry came from Wapi, the Walrus. He heaved upward with his giant body. He found another throat, and it was then that he rose above the pack, shaking the life from his victim as a terrier would have shaken a rat. For the first time the Eskimos saw him, and out of their superstitious souls strange cries found utterance as they sprang back and shrieked out to Rydal that it was a devil and not a beast that had waited for them in the trail. Rydal threw up his rifle. The shot came. It burned a crease ...
— Back to God's Country and Other Stories • James Oliver Curwood
... can pick and choose, so I wiped the shell grit from my drill suit and told myself that I had better accept the berth instead of waiting in expectation of something better turning up. Pierre the Rat, who ran "The Rathole," where penniless seamen and beachcombers lodged, was my creditor, and when Pierre was very solicitous in obtaining employment for one of his boarders, it was a mighty good intimation that the boarder's credit ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... Indian lancers and Gurkhas would stroll through the parks of Potsdam. The German fleet, it was asserted, would be at the bottom of the sea before it had time to think. When this fond hope was not realized, the German fleet was to be dug out like a rat of a rat-hole. In their expectations our enemies saw German industry ruined. Germany was soon to be paralyzed, nay, would ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... hair that covered his collar like Grandpa's. Also he plainly had a temper much like Big Tom's. For after staring down at the boy for a moment, he kicked out at him. "On your way!" he ordered angrily. "Ske-daddle!—you little rat!" ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... Piemont's assistant much as a terrier shakes a rat, released his hold, and, as he walked away with his arm in Jim's, ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... nigh to any flame on this day, for Ra entered the flames to strike all his enemies, and whosoever draws nigh to them on this day, it shall not be well with him during his whole life. The 12th of Tybi: inimical, inimical, inimical. See that thou beholdest not a rat on this day, nor approachest any rat within thy house: it is the day wherein Sokhit gave forth the decrees." In these cases a little watchfulness or exercise of memory sufficed to put a man on his guard against evil omens; but in many circumstances all the vigilance in ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... Click—click! That was a cannon. I entered the room without fear, for there was sunlight within and a fresh breeze without. The unseen game was going on at a tremendous rate. And well it might, when a restless little rat was running to and fro inside the dingy ceiling-cloth, and a piece of loose window-sash was making fifty breaks off the window-bolt as ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... wherein I write. But in the pauses of this activity I see below me wagon loads of nails go by and wagon loads of hammers hard after, to get a crack at them. Then there will be a truck of saws, as though the planking of the world yearned toward amputation. Or maybe, at a guess, ten thousand rat-traps will move on down the street. It's sure they take us for Hamelin Town, and are eager to lay their ambushment. There is something rather stirring in such prodigious marshaling, but I hear you ask what this ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... a water-rat in the pond that occupied the rock-garden in the middle of the lawn brought him back to earth, and the Vicar's invitation to tea flashed ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... up suddenly to listen. A queer "rat, tat, tat," detached itself from the other night noises. Beppi was sound asleep, and she rolled him gently into the nest of leaves, then she listened again. ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... farm. The stoat, the pole-cat, and the weazel, commit great depredations in the fields, the barn, and granary; and to a certain extent, the terrier is employed in chasing them; but it is not often that he has a fair chance to attack them. He is more frequently used in combating the rat. ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... old daub of a grandmother was there; all the rest had been sold, and their vacant places remained discoloured on the walls. There were two or three dismembered old chairs, the richly dight windows broken, the floor rat-eaten. The general stood and looked, and did not sigh, but absolutely groaned. They went to the shattered glass door, which looked out upon the terrace—that terrace which had cost thousands of pounds to raise, and he called Cecilia to show ...
— Helen • Maria Edgeworth
... and only waited for a sign from me. There was nothing to be shocked at in this. He had come down of his own free will. 'Let us agree,' said I, 'that we are both dead men, and let us talk on that basis, as equals. We are all equal before death,' I said. I admitted I was there like a rat in a trap, but we had been driven to it, and even a trapped rat can give a bite. He caught me up in a moment. 'Not if you don't go near the trap till the rat is dead.' I told him that sort of game was good enough for these native friends of his, but I would have thought him too white to serve ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... to your haggard brought so cheap in, Without the mowing or the reaping: A razor, though to say't I'm loth, Would shave you and your meadows both. Though small's the farm, yet here's a house Full large to entertain a mouse; But where a rat is dreaded more Than savage Caledonian boar; For, if it's enter'd by a rat, There is no room to bring a cat. A little rivulet seems to steal Down through a thing you call a vale, Like tears adown a wrinkled cheek, Like rain along a blade of leek: ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... request you to introduce Mr. Peter Bell to the respectable family of the Fudges. Although he may fall short of those very considerable personages in the more active properties which characterize the Rat and the Apostate, I suspect that even you, their historian, will confess that he surpasses them in the more peculiarly legitimate qualification ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... something of the gay, bourgeois spirit of France, with aristocratic distinction. His poetry of the court and of occasion has lost its savour; but when he writes familiarly (as in the Epitre au Roi pour avoir ete derobe), or tells a short tale (like the fable of the rat and the lion), he is charmingly bright and natural. None of his poems—elegies, epistles, satires, songs, epigrams, rondeaux, pastorals, ballades—overwhelm us by their length; he was not a writer of vast imaginative ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... was still, with dew a-falling, I saw the Dog Star bleak and grim, I saw a slim brown rat of Norway ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... than an elucidation of the play. There can be no doubt that Shakspere, in heightening and deepening the theme, has obscured it, making the scheming barbarian into a musing pessimist, who yet waywardly plays the mock-madman as of old, and kills the "rat" behind the arras; doubts the Ghost while acting on his message; philosophises with Montaigne and yet delays his revenge in the spirit of the Christianised savage, who fears to send the praying murderer to heaven. ...
— Montaigne and Shakspere • John M. Robertson
... I had talked for a long time, but not two hours had passed yet since I saw the last of the little rat of a man in the railway-station. Though I could not understand any reason for his tricking me, still I told myself that nobody else could have done it, and I decided to go back at once to the Gare du Nord. There I might still be able to find some trace of the little man and of my two other ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... a rat-faced little foreigner, looked upon among the men as a trouble-maker. He nursed a perpetual grievance against his employer and his job, and whenever the opportunity presented, and sometimes when it did not present itself, he endeavored to inoculate others with his dissatisfaction. ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to get hold of Blitzen?" I'd say, and Piddie would prick up his ears like a fox-terrier sightin' a rat. ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Like the birds of the air and the beasts of the wood their first thoughts turned to the assurance of food. Two young fellows stretched a gill-net across the mouth of the creek. Others scattered in search of favourable spots in which to set the musk-rat traps, to hang snares for rabbits ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... voracious: a woman was watched one day, during which, beside a double ration of bread, she devoured more than fifty eggs, as large as those of a duck. Mr. O'Connor saw a child, eight years old, eat a kangaroo rat, and attack a cray-fish. The game they cast into the fire, and when singed drew it out and extracted the entrails; it was then returned to the embers, and when thoroughly warmed, the process was completed. They were acquainted ...
— The History of Tasmania , Volume II (of 2) • John West
... went in the station Billy heard a band playing and the rat-ta-tah-tah of the drums, and when they heard the music the engine horses, all decked in rose collars and bridles, with plumes on their heads, started to prance and pull the beautifully draped and polished engine out of the station to join ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... and rat-tat of the drum are compared to the metric feet, the anapaest ([Symbols: arsis, arsis, thesis] and the pyrrhic ([Symbols: ...
— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus
... "You mangy brown rat!" shouted Kirby in fury. "What in blazes have you done? You know, as well as I do, that such an idea will never get out of those fellaheens' skulls, once it's really planted there. They'll believe every word of that wall-eyed rot you've been telling them! And they'll go on a genuine ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... one should perform such a sacrifice for one year and make a present of a hundred kine with one bull. Having slain a dog or bear or camel, one should perform the same penance that is laid down for the slaughter of a Sudra. For slaying a cat, a chasa, a frog, a crow, a reptile, or a rat, it has been said, one incurs the sin of animal slaughter, O king! I shall now tell thee of other kinds of expiations in their order. For all minor sins one should repent or practise some vow for one year. For congress with the wife of a Brahmana ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... close to the feet of Bud. It was exactly like the angry cry of a fighting rat. But Paul understood instantly that Bobolink must be the cause of all this racket; for he had known his friend on numerous occasions to make good use of his gift as an ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... vanished. He tried to move and sat up. He heard a frenzied squeaking, and a light scampering on wood, and he knew that a rat had run ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... aback, trapped like a rat ashore, With naught but death to follow, and with naught but death afore; The howl of hungry wolves aback—ahead, ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... man looks drinking tea," Kate had whispered; "like a thirsty rat dipping its whiskers and ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... to follow. In other words, they will not tell us, "If your kernels have a certain number of these B. coli in them we will let them by." As it reads, there should be not one organism there, and I can assure you that's almost impossible to get if a rat has ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various |
