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More "Patching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I be patching torn trousers or darning ripped sweaters for if you were like Bob, I'd like to know? Who'd be pestering me to hunt up his cap and mittens? And who would I ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... worth it," Hastings explained. "This island land is the most productive in the world. This section of California is like Holland. You wouldn't think it, but this water we're sailing on is higher than the surface of the islands. They're like leaky boats—calking, patching, pumping, night and day and all the time. But ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... be seen about the streets, shivering and looking the very picture of absolute wretchedness. Amongst these, a few old women may be seen sitting by the side of the streets, earning a scanty subsistence by mending and patching the clothes of people as poor as themselves. These poor women, having all undergone the barbarous operation of cramping the feet during infancy, are consequently unable to undertake any thing but sedentary employment ...
— Trade and Travel in the Far East - or Recollections of twenty-one years passed in Java, - Singapore, Australia and China. • G. F. Davidson
... repair, in good taste, spotless from dirt, and suited both to the weather and the occasion; doing for herself what her own personal needs require; arranging flowers; entertaining company; nursing the sick; "letting down" and "letting out" to suit the growing ones; patching, darning, knitting, crocheting, braiding, quilting,—but let us remember the warning of the old saying, and ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... wonderful faculty of invention and constitutes an inexhaustible source of pleasure. This pleasure is all the more pleasurable because the matter is always presented in a thoroughly workmanlike form. The shapelessness, the incoherence, the necessity for endless annotation and patching together, which mar so many even of the finest Elizabethan plays, have no place in Beaumont and Fletcher. Their dramatic construction is almost narrative in its clear and easy flow, in its absence of puzzles and piecings. Again, their stories are always interesting, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... saw it peeking over the eastern cliffs while Andy was patching me up." He carried one arm in a sling, and his other ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... volumes, mostly of old Scotch divinity, in the little bookcase at Dunglass was well thumbed. But reading of a lighter kind was also indulged in, and on winter nights, when the mother was plying her spinning-wheel and the father had taken down his cobbler's box and was busily engaged patching the children's shoes, it was a regular practice for John to sit near the dim oil-lamp and read to the rest. Sometimes the reading would be from an early number of Chambers's Journal, sometimes from ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... all about their great work? I hope it'll be finished by the end of the year. The bits they have sent me will do very well indeed. I knew they had it in them to put sentences together. Now I want them to think of patching up something or other for The English Girl; ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... like myself. No, he was but a cobbler. On the following day, going again to see her, I find this cobbler there. I remonstrate with her, but in vain. And what is worse, she had sent to him the shoes I made, to be repaired. He was patching my own work! I swallowed my ire and went back to my shop. A week later, to be brief, I went there again, and what I beheld made my body shiver. She, the wench. Forgive me, Allah! had her hands around his neck and her lips—yes, her lying lips, on his cheek! No, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... change had taken place on his outward man. Whenever they observed this dubious expression gather upon his countenance, accompanied with a glance that fixed now upon the sleeve of his coat, now upon the knees of his breeches, where he probably missed some antique patching and darning, which, being executed with blue thread upon a black ground, had somewhat the effect of embroidery, they always took care to turn his attention into some other channel, until his garments, 'by the aid of use, cleaved to their mould.' The only remark he was ever known to make on the ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... to the probable duration of the "spell o' weather," and John's or Pat's chance of getting or losing a job in consequence. The snow man stood there till long after all doubts were settled on these mooted points, falling slowly into helpless decrepitude in spite of occasional patching. But long before that time the frost succeeding the snow had paved the way for coasting in the hilly streets, and discovered countless "slides" in those that were flat, to the huge delight of the small boy and the discomfiture of his unsuspecting elders. With ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... Home in it for my fellow-traveller; and for her predictions of fair winds and fine weather (all wrong, or I shouldn't be half so fond of her); and for the ten thousand small fragments of genuine womanly tact, by which, without piecing them elaborately together, and patching them up into shape and form and case and pointed application, she nevertheless did plainly show that all young mothers on one side of the Atlantic were near and close at hand to their little children left upon the other; and that what seemed to ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... fatally result either in the defeat of the Russian Army by the Germans, and the patching up of a peace between the Austro-German coalition and the Franco-British coalition at the expense of Russia-or in a separate peace ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... better established than that till nearly the end of the nineteenth century it was the general belief that the ancient industrial system, with all its shocking social consequences, was destined to last, with possibly a little patching, to the end of time. How strange and wellnigh incredible does it seem that so prodigious a moral and material transformation as has taken place since then could have been accomplished in so brief an interval? The ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... Mr. Peggotty came home about nine o'clock, this unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge was knitting in her corner, in a very wretched and miserable condition. Peggotty had been working cheerfully. Ham had been patching up a great pair of waterboots; and I, with little Em'ly by my side, had been reading to them. Mrs. Gummidge had never made any other remark than a forlorn sigh, and had never raised her eyes ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... desired and setting him beside the tree returned to his own folk and the caravan loaded and left the place. Presently Mohsin swarmed up the trunk; and, taking seat upon a branch of its branches, fell to cropping the leaves and patching them upon either eye as he had heard the Jinni prescribe; and hardly had two days gone by when he felt healed of his hurt and opened his eyelids and saw what was around him. Then, after taking somewhat of its foliage, he came down from the tree ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... own resources could not provide. Because of the failure to paralyze Spain by a single blow, Napoleon had, for the first time in his history, returned after a "successful" campaign without an enormous war indemnity. Once again, after temporary patching, French finances were in disorder, and there was urgent need to repair them. The people desired peace for their enterprises, but the continental blockade so hampered commerce that any peace which did not include a pacification of the seas would avail them little. It was a customary ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... which her empty central gas-bags spread in canopies and festoons. Nothing, however, had caught fire, and her men were speedily at work upon her repair. They behaved with a confidence that verged upon indiscretion. While most of them commenced patching the tears of the membrane, half a dozen of them started off for the nearest road in search of a gas main, and presently found themselves prisoners in the hands of a hostile crowd. Close at hand was a number of villa residences, whose occupants speedily developed from an unfriendly curiosity ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... over his head; but who will give him a roof if mine be taken from me? Is not this so? All seemed in agreement, and Peter continued: I am thinking, John, that our new brother might help us to buy the Master a new cloak, for his is falling to pieces and my wife's mother is weary with patching it. He cured her of the fever, but she thinks that a great cost is put upon me and would ask the Master something for his keep. Whereupon John spoke out that the story of his mother-in-law was for ever the same; and seeing that ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... had to dance attendance on scores of intriguing factors and brokers ashore), the requisite stores for the fleet, Paul sat in his cabin in a half-despondent reverie, while Israel, cross-legged at his commander's feet, was patching up some old signals. ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... long and confidential talk; and I perceived that, though he had finally given up all intention of getting me into the church, in the hopes of patching up the holes in the old roof with a mitre, he had fully made up his mind on the subject of a widow. I rejoiced that Mrs Coutts was already disposed of. He talked a long time of jointures, three per cents, India stock; and I—O youth! O hope!—I mused all the time ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... the window Simon's old shirt she had been patching, and gave it to the stranger. She also brought out a pair of trousers ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy
... to see our institutions freed from every vestige of human oppression, of inequality of rights, of the recognized degradation of the poor and the superior caste of the rich. But that bright dream had vanished. "I find," said he, "that we shall be obliged to be content with patching up the worst portions of the ancient edifice, and leaving it in many of its parts to be swept through by the tempests, the frosts, and ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... sounds, my Philo, brought into my head that old anecdote about the Sinopean. A report that Philip was marching on the town had thrown all Corinth into a bustle; one was furbishing his arms, another wheeling stones, a third patching the wall, a fourth strengthening a battlement, every one making himself useful somehow or other. Diogenes having nothing to do—of course no one thought of giving him a job—was moved by the sight to gird up his philosopher's cloak and begin rolling ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... to thus helping in dressmaking there were lessons to be given in patching and darning, and in lengthening out, or adding to, the dresses of the ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... wagon wheels was broken, and in the course of an hour or two, Willis and I succeeded in patching up the shattered body sufficiently to hold the hogs. But how to get the heavy brutes off the ground and up into the wagon was a task beyond our resources. When you try to take a live hog off its feet, he is likely to bite as well as to squeal. We ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... me so in church to look at her elbows and back seams that I can't hardly listen to the Deacon pray. Patching is the most worrisome job a woman has to do, according to my mind," said the widow, with an expression of distaste on her beaming face. "I've done patched two men, and I ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Well, I really thought I should have burst—to be forced not to allow people to suppose that I cared, when I should like to tear the old wretch out of his coffin to beat him. His wardrobe! If people knew his wardrobe as well as I do, who have been patching at it these last ten years—not a shirt or a stocking that would fetch sixpence! And as for his other garments, why a Jew would hardly put them into his bag! (Crying.) Oh dear! oh dear! After all, I'm just like Miss Clementina; for Sergeant O'Callaghan, when he ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... girl and grade, and many were the exclamations of commendation from those who visited the rooms where the display was made. Works deserving special mention are buttonholes made by Martha Howard of the seventh grade; patching by Lulu Gaston, and darning by Gertrude Williams. The cooking-school, for lack of money, was discontinued after three months, but during that time substantial progress was made, and there can be no question about the advisability of pushing the industrial ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 48, No. 7, July, 1894 • Various
... find such a logic as would bring the conclusions they require out of the canonical books. And a queer logic it is; nothing but the Roman forge can be compared with the Protestant loom. The picking, the patching, the piecing, which goes to the Protestant termini ad quem,[73] would be as remarkable to the general eye, as the Roman manufacture of termini a quo,[74] if it were not that the world at large seizes the character of ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume II (of II) • Augustus de Morgan
... Downwards and seawards, though the hill is not half the altitude of Cissbury. Northwards are the beautiful woods of Castle Goring, once the residence of the Shelleys, through which we may walk to Clapham and Patching, villages on southern spurs of the Downs; the latter has a restored Early English church with a very beautiful modern reredos. Clapham has a Transitional church containing memorials of the Shelley family. Notice the blocked-up Norman arch which proves ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... is there, palefac'd, quiet; her young man went back on her four years ago; his folks would not let him marry a convict's sister. She sits by the window, sewing on the children's clothes, the clothes not only patching up; her hunger for children of her ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... with ye?" asked the Doctor, very coolly taking a third chair, seating himself astraddle on it, and crossing his arms over the top. "No harm to be taken patching up a bit of plaster, is there?" Again ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... all those Notions be found to be false and deceitful, that will not undergo all the Trials and Tests made of them by Experiments. And therefore such as will not come up to the desired Apex of Perfection, I rather wholly reject and take new, then by piecing and patching, endeavour to retain the old, as knowing such things at best to be but lame and imperfect. And this course I learned from Nature; whom we find neglectful of the old Body, and suffering its Decaies and Infirmities to remain without repair, and altogether sollicitous and careful ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... patching an old coat, Lulu an apron, Gracie a doll's dress; Eva and Rosie each had a worn stocking drawn over her hand, and was busily engaged in darning it; the other girls were mending gloves, the boys old shoes; and as they worked they talked ...
— Christmas with Grandma Elsie • Martha Finley
... pushed stretchers on rubber-tyred wheels about the paths, stretchers on which motionless forms lay shrouded in blankets. One, concerning whom I asked, had just had part of his skull trepanned: another had suffered amputation. And all this pruning and patching up of broken men to win them a few more years of crippled life caught one's throat like the penetrating smell of the iodoform. Nor was I sorry to hasten away by the night mail northwards to the camps. It was still dark as we passed ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... theirs, and seeking out misery in order that he might heal it with words, with help, with attentions, and with money, according to the case: as ready to solace the rich in their misfortunes as the poor, patching up their souls and bringing them back to God; and tearing about hither and thither, watching his troop, the dear shepherd! Now the good man went about careless of the state of his cassocks, mantles, ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... laughed to herself. "And here I've been hiring my own mending done! Theodosia Baxter, see what you are doing; you are patching a shirt for a man! No, I'm not, either! I'm doing it for Stefana—what ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... we put it off a month longer there won't be enough material on land or sea to supply the demand for ready-made garments. As it is, I'm afraid the poor devils will have to go naked themselves until a new crop springs up. I saw one of Pootoo's wives patching his best suit of breech clothes to-day, so he must be hard put for ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... how you tried to blast our medic," replied the captain with a grin which was close to shark-like, "he may not feel much like patching up those fingers of yours. Stick 'em in where they have no business, and they're apt to get burned. At any rate he's not going to look at 'em until he's had a chance to rest. I'll give you first aid. And while I'm ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... ashes. My unfortunate workman, having blundered on for certain millions of years tinkering and patching and improving his dismal colony, will give the thing up; and God will laugh and show him the mistakes and then blot the essay out, as a master runs his pen through the errors in a pupil's exercise. The earth grows cold at last, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... is the fact that we have had a constitution for one hundred and twenty-five years, and the Lord knows it needs patching. It needs something worse: It needs abolishing worse than ...
— Industrial Conspiracies • Clarence S. Darrow
... head-master, that Bolsover awoke to the knowledge that a change had taken place. Mr Frampton—he was not even a "Doctor" or a "Reverend," but was a young man with sandy whiskers, and a red tie—had a few ideas of his own on the subject of dry-rot. He evidently preferred ripping up entire floors to patching single planks, and he positively scared his colleagues and pupils by the way he set to work. He was young and enthusiastic, and was perhaps tempted to overdo things at first. When people are being reformed, they need a little breathing time now and then; but Mr Frampton ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... off my style, and can do nothing well; indeed, I fear I have marred Roads finally by patching at it when I was out of the humour. Only, I am beginning to see something great about John Knox and Queen Mary; I like them both so much, that I feel as if I could write ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... inspiration ran low, he occupied himself doctoring books. Eternally, he hunted for the flat stones between which he pressed their swollen bulks back to shape. Eternally he puttered about, mending and patching them. He used to sit for hours at a desk which he had rescued from the ship's furniture. The others never became accustomed to the comic incongruity of this picture—especially when, later, he virtually boxed himself in with a ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... wish to dispose of, the same school will afford you instruction how to make the most of him, that is to say, to conceal his vices and defects, and by proper attention to put him into condition, to alter his whole appearance by hogging, cropping, and docking—by patching up his broken knees—blowing gun-powder in his dim eyes—bishoping, blistering, &c. so as to turn him out in good twig, scarcely to be known by those who have frequently seen and noticed him: besides which, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... the fog we drove through the silent ruin of the streets, still on their feet, so to speak, as at Verdun, but eyeless, roofless, and dead, scarcely a house habitable, though here and there one saw a few signs of patching up and returning habitation. And in the great square before the Cathedral instead of the old comeliness, the old stir of provincial and commercial life—ruin!—only intensified by a group of motors, come to ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "Luck was with me. The knife went to his heart. I am merely scratched. His leap was short, but he caught me above the knees with his claws. Alas, your highness, these trousers of mine were bad enough before, but now they are in shreds. What patching I shall have to do! And you may well imagine we are short of thread and needles ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... press them too far. Do not drive them to the goal of last resort. Give them justice while you have it in your power to do so. Satisfy them that ultimately they shall have equality in this broken Government, or Union, if you will. But, sir, I leave the patching up of the Constitution to the distinguished Senator from Kentucky and other gentlemen, especially my friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. BIGLER], who has labored harder to patch up the Constitution than ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... me. I was content to be master, but she said there was better behind; She took the chances I wouldn't, and I followed your mother blind. She egged me to borrow the money, an' she helped me clear the loan, When we bought half shares in a cheap 'un and hoisted a flag of our own. Patching and coaling on credit, and living the Lord knew how, We started the Red Ox freighters—we've eight-and-thirty now. And those were the days of clippers, and the freights were clipper-freights, And ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... busy for weeks, in fact, ever since the show in the cellar, patching, sewing, and putting together old rag carpet, canvas, heavy with paint, that had been ripped from the hurricane deck ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... to life to go through that agony and ordeal of the inquest again and come out with the same result as if he hadn't been there at all? And I decided—no; no, thanks; not me. It was too much like patching up a dying man in a civilised country for the pleasure of hanging him, or like fatting up a starving man in a cannibal country for the satisfaction ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... Nomerfide, "that every one is like you, who would use one slander for the patching of another; but there is danger lest the patch impair what it patches and the foundation be so overladen that all be destroyed. However, if you think that the subtlety, of which all believe you to be fully possessed, is greater than that found in women, I yield place to ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... are good that way. I often envy you, for what with my health and every one's health to think about, doctoring one man for fever, putting all you fellows straight, and patching up squabbling savages, my appetite often feels as if it wants a fillip. A doctor's is an anxious life, my boy—more especially out here in a country like this, amongst a very uncertain people, when a man feels that he has ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... at this country all cut up into silly little parallelograms, look at all those villas we passed just now and those potato patches and that tarred shanty and the hedge! Somebody's minding every bit of it like a dog tied to a cart's tail. Patching it and bothering about it. Bothering! Yapping at every passer-by. Look at that notice-board! One rotten worried little beast wants to keep us other rotten little beasts off HIS patch,—God knows why! Look at the ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... tenderly and patted her plump shoulder. "Had a flat tire and had to stop, and get her pumped up," he explained, "and then the man found a place wanted patching. He took a little longer than I expected. I was afraid you ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... been with us two or three weeks, he began to make mistakes which I had difficulty in patching up for him. Approaching Benares one day, he got out of the train to see if he could get up a misunderstanding with somebody, for it had been a weary, long journey and he wanted to freshen up. He found what he was after, but kept up his pow-wow a shade too long and got left. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... violator to my heart? Can I vow duty to one so wicked, and hazard my salvation by joining myself to so great a profligate, now I know him to be so? Do you think your Clarissa Harlowe so lost, so sunk, at least, as that she could, for the sake of patching up, in the world's eye, a broken reputation, meanly appear indebted to the generosity, or perhaps compassion, of a man, who has, by means so inhuman, robbed her of it? Indeed, my dear, I should not think my penitence for the rash step I took, ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... house a little later he found that the family had had supper, a single plate remaining for himself. His stepmother, looking jaded and nervous, was putting salted herring to soak in an earthenware bowl, while she scolded Sairy Jane, who was patching Jubal's apron. ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... Rousseau's originality went infinitely further than this. He neither represented his age, nor led it; he opposed it. His outlook upon the world was truly revolutionary. In his eyes, the reforms which his contemporaries were so busy introducing into society were worse than useless—the mere patching of an edifice which would never be fit to live in. He believed that it was necessary to start altogether afresh. And what makes him so singularly interesting a figure is that, in more than one sense, ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... make our education brave and preventive. Politics is an after-work, a poor patching. We are always a little late. The evil is done, the law is passed, and we begin the up-hill agitation for repeal of that of which we ought to have prevented the enacting. We shall one day learn to supersede politics by education. What we call our root-and-branch ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... nothing would have induced me to confess it then. He had served in the Crimea, and seemed to regard a dilapidated body very much as I should have regarded a damaged garment; and, turning up his cuffs, whipped out a very unpleasant looking housewife, cutting, sawing, patching and piecing, with the enthusiasm of an accomplished surgical seamstress; explaining the process, in scientific terms, to the patient, meantime; which, of course, was immensely cheering and comfortable. There was an uncanny ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... the Vandyke beard, cutting into a cake, you may not need to be told, is Patching, the painter of those delicious interiors which have been seen every year by those who had eyes to find them, in obscure corners at the rooms of the National Academy of Design. In short, Patching is the subject of a conspiracy in ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... Tinker said, "but I ran out of paper and gave it up. Then, when the night fell," he resumed dolefully, after another long interval of silence, "I tried to prop it up. But I met with the same difficulty that confronted me in patching up the day, and was ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... thoroughly well learned. And the strangest things come of use, too, at the strangest times. A sailor teaches you to tie a knot when you are on a fishing party, and you tie that knot the next time when you are patching up the Emperor of Russia's carriage for him, in a valley in the Ural Mountains. But "getting ready" does not mean the piling in of a heap of accidental accomplishments. It means sedulously examining the coming duty or pleasure, imagining it even in its details, decreeing the utmost punctuality ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... that the prosecution was not satisfied with its case, and would have liked to find more definite proof of Lanrivain's complicity than the statement of the herb-gatherer, who swore to having seen him climbing the wall of the park on the night of the murder. One way of patching out incomplete proofs in those days was to put some sort of pressure, moral or physical, on the accused person. It is not clear what pressure was put on Anne de Cornault; but on the third day, when she was brought ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... I suppose it is useless for me to ask," he added, "but have you, by any chance, a bit of canvas—an old sail or hammock?—I don't need much. That's what I came for—and some shellac and wire, and a screwdriver of sorts? We need patching as well as petrol; and we're a little short ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... He had been sitting on the bed with a studiously vacant expression. It was Smith's policy not to seem, except by request, to take any interest in, or, in fact, to be aware of anything unusual that Steelman might be doing—from patching his ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... it," nodded Aldous cheerfully. "I went out for it, Mac, and I got it! Get out your emergency kit, will you? I rather fancy I need a little patching up." ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... could not at present do her own laundry-work, she insisted upon darning and patching and mending as only she could darn ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... without meaning, puns without point, cant without character, sentiments as dull as they were false, and a continual outrage on manners, morals and common sense, were its leading features. Yet, strange to tell, the audience endured it all; and, by copious retrenchments and plaistering and patching, this very piece had ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Thomas de Villeneuve, who were in charge of an immense hospital, had two old masons who might be seen at all times, trowel in hand, patching up the slightest damage to their buildings; the local manager of a Dufayel store had become almost a fanatic on the subject. His stock in trade consisted of furniture, china and crockery of all kinds, housed beneath a glass roof, which seemed to attract ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... about fifteen, dressed in European clothes. I fainted from loss of blood, and don't remember anything else until I found myself in a tent, with two Cossacks patching up my wound. When I came to, she rushed forward, and thanked me profusely for saving her. To my surprise, she spoke in French, and on inquiry I found that she was the daughter of a certain Baron Conrad de Hetzendorf, an Austrian, who possessed a house in Budapest ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... point, the Yenesei still swept along. The lagoon had been frozen over for some days, in spite of the water being kept almost perpetually in motion by the flocks of water-fowl, and the ground was as hard as iron. The Ostjaks were now for some days employed in patching up their huts and preparing them to withstand the cold ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... diligent patching and the strong tackle told. The question was not with regard to the strength of the net, it was rather with regard to the strength of the younger lads; for they had succeeded in enclosing a goodly portion of a large shoal of mackerel, and ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... deal of questioning and patching together, we finally got her story, but I cannot say that it threw much light upon the matter. She had put the chicken in the oven, and then she felt powerful queer, as if something were going to happen. Suddenly she ...
— The Four Pools Mystery • Jean Webster
... Crafts; and the rich raiment wherein her friends of the Castle of the Quest had clad her. Then she arose and sought needle and thread and some remnants of green cloth, and did off the ragged coat and fell to patching and mending it, and so sat at her work in smock-sewing till the night was old and she was weary and sleep overcame her, and she lay down in her bed and slept dreamlessly till the sun was high ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... as I work I say, All simply, to Him: "Come! And if to-day, Then wilt Thou find me thus: just as I am— Tending my household; stirring goose- berry jam; Or swiftly rinsing tiny vests and hose, With puzzled forehead patching some one's clothes; Guiding small footsteps, swift to hear, and run, From early dawn till setting of ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... or touched on in this report: ways of cleaning up rivers and assuring their flow, ways of halting erosion and siltation, ways of planning land's use by concentrated human populations with as little loss as possible of amenities, ways of patching up old damage. Many of them are imperfect as yet and for some problems tools are still missing, nor are the existing techniques being applied in a completely coordinated manner anywhere on this continent except in a few experimental places of restricted ...
— The Nation's River - The Department of the Interior Official Report on the Potomac • United States Department of the Interior
... days, were soaked with water and very soon hurt my feet so I had to take them off. I made my way into Kenyon and there saw the great destruction which had been done by the hail. There was not a whole pane of glass in the little village and the inhabitants were engaged in patching up their windows with boards and blankets, as best they could. The crops were entirely destroyed. Many people had suffered by being struck by hailstones, some of which were ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... often mention I feel the want of to a certain extent; but while I welcome it if it comes to me, I am not exactly beating the covert for it.[474] I am building in three places, and am patching up my other houses. I live somewhat more lavishly than I used to do. I am obliged to do so. If I had you with me I should give the builders full swing for a while.[475] But this too (as I hope) we ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... in its disgusting trade, And botching, patching, leaving still behind Something of which its masters are afraid, States to be curbed and thoughts to be confined, Conspiracy or congress to be made, Cobbling at manacles for all mankind, A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old chains, With God and ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... a change, where the stream darts along swiftly, after having escaped from a weir, and still streaked with foam. The shore rises like a sea beach, and on the pebbles men are patching and pitching old barges which have been hauled up on the bank. A skiff partly drawn up on the beach rocks as the current strives to work it loose, and up the varnish of the side glides a flickering light reflected ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... its power. Behind him that nation was patching up its one great quarrel, and now a gray phantom stalked out of the past to the music of drum and fife, and Crittenden turned sharply to see a little body of men, in queer uniforms, marching through a camp of regulars toward him. They were old ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... boarders loitering about with knitting work or book. The landlord brought cool tinkling glasses of water and rich milk from the spring-house, and they dropped into the chairs to wait while the men of the party gave assistance to the chauffeur in patching ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... chimney, on two dogwood forks, rested the long rifle with its fishtail sight and the brass plate on the stock for the bullets and the "patching." Below it hung the old powder-horn, its wooden plug dangling from a string,—tools of the long ago. Closing one's eyes one could see the tall grandsires fighting in the beech forest, a brown patch of hide sighted over the brass knife-blade bead, and death, and ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... in his old charge, and seems to have spent the rest of his life quietly in the country, enjoying the fresh air and the old English sports—'repenting at leisure moments,' as Shakspeare has it, of the early pruriencies of his muse; or, as the same immortal bard says of Falstaff, 'patching up his old body' for a better place. The date of his death is not exactly ascertained; but he seems to have got considerably to the shady side of seventy years ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... patches on elbows, on knees; colored binding round his jacket, scarlet edging at the bottom of his trousers; and the sunshine made him look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal, because you could see how beautifully all this patching had been done. A beardless, boyish face, very fair, no features to speak of, nose peeling, little blue eyes, smiles and frowns chasing each other over that open countenance like sunshine and shadow on a windswept plain. 'Look out, captain!' he cried; 'there's a snag lodged in here last night.' ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... grip her, and let her float free. We have no tackle that would be of any use in hoisting her, but if we take the plug out of her bottom, she will empty as the river sinks, and hang there. Once she is in the air there will be no difficulty in patching her up." ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... but as crutches to our weakest plays. Nor were we so lost to all sense of what was valuable, as to dishonor our best authors in such bad company. We still had a due respect to several select plays, that were able to be their own support; and in which we found constant account, without painting and patching them out.... It is a reproach to a sensible people to let folly ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... girls had had their supper, they set out for the quarters. Dilsey and Chris and Riar, of course, accompanied them, though Chris had had some difficulty in joining the party. She had come to grief about her quilt patching, having sewed the squares together in such a way that the corners wouldn't hit, and Mammy had made her rip it all out and sew it over again, and had boxed her soundly, and now said she shouldn't go with the others to the quarters; ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... were seated the gunner and sailmaker, both engaged patching old clothes,—while the old carpenter, like the captain, was reading the bible,—and the armorer was lying flat on his back, and singing. A very pretty boy of fourteen, an apprentice to the captain, was playing, ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... indignant surprise, in Cox's book on this campaign, then recently published, his statement that the brigades of Lane and Conrad rallied at the river but were not again carried into action. When Cox made that statement he was more concerned in patching up that fatal gap in the battle line of his own command without any outside assistance, than he was in ascertaining the truth, and he took that way to dispose of two entire brigades. In his first official ...
— The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee • John K. Shellenberger
... reached over and sheltered a snug little porch. There we sat, after the long hot drive, drinking cool water,—the talkative little storekeeper who is my daily companion; the silent old black woman patching pantaloons and saying never a word; the ragged picture of helpless misfortune who called in just to see the preacher; and finally the neat matronly preacher's wife, plump, yellow, and intelligent. "Own land?" said the wife; ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... Uncle Remus—adjusting his spectacles so as to be able to see how to thread a large darning-needle with which he was patching his coat—"one time, way back yander, 'fo' you wuz bomed, honey, en 'fo' Mars John er Miss Sally wuz bomed—way back yander 'fo' enny un us wuz bomed, de animils en de creeturs sorter 'lecshuneer roun' 'mong deyselves, ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... by the report of the Mia-mia boundary rider, he drove slowly along the river frontage, and saw five miles of wagons, wagonettes, spring-carts, buggies, tents, women, children, dogs, cooking-utensils, and masculine laundry. He saw fellows patching tarpaulins, mending harness making yokes, platting whips, fishing, pig-hunting, reading Ouida, yarning round fires, or trying to invent some new form of gambling; but he only saw their backs, and they did n't see him at all. He took a tour round the paddock, and found a racecourse ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... While his crew was patching the Argo and pumping the water from her hold, the lookout yelled that another sail was making for them. Without hesitation Talbot somehow got this absurdly impudent one-masted craft of his under way and told those of his sixty men who survived to prepare for ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... Jessie demurely. She was patching a pair of leather trousers for Fergus and she did not raise ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... Silverado, when we were full of business, patching up doors and windows, making beds and seats, and getting our rough lodging into shape, Irvine and his sister made their appearance together, she for neighbourliness and general curiosity; he, because he was working for me, to my sorrow, cutting firewood at I forget how much a day. The way ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Sicilian war, but it was protracted by various delays during a long period [122]; at one time for the purpose of repairing his fleets, which he lost twice by storm, even in the summer; at another, while patching up a peace, to which he was forced by the clamours of the people, in consequence of a famine occasioned by Pompey's cutting off the supply of corn by sea. But at last, having built a new fleet, and obtained twenty thousand manumitted slaves [123], who were given ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... cleared the two old hulls lay shattered but safe on the surface of the ice-pack. The whole larboard side of the Dorothea was smashed, but they brought her somehow to Spitzbergen, and there by wonderful patching enabled ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... and both were fearfully knocked about. The Salvador had lost all her masts, every one of her boats had been smashed to pieces by the gun-fire of the English, and her sides were everywhere perforated with shot-holes. But a prize crew had been put on board her, and was now hard at work patching her up and rendering her seaworthy, rigging jury-masts, cutting away wreckage, and otherwise putting her once more into sailing trim. El Capitan was in a similar condition. She had still her mizzenmast standing; but otherwise she was as badly damaged as her ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Northrup explained, sitting opposite Larry. "I couldn't wait to get word from you—my mother is ill. I must put this business through in a sloppy way. It may need a lot of legal patching after, but I'll take my chances. Heathcote has straightened out your wife's part—the Point is yours. I've made sure of that. Now I'm going to write out something that I think will hold—anyway, I want your signature to it and to a receipt for money I will give you. ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... Lent, 1595, Henslowe took occasion to make further repairs on his playhouse, putting in new pales, patching the exterior with new lath and plaster, repainting the woodwork, and otherwise furbishing up the building. The total cost of this work was L108 10s. And shortly after, as a part of these improvements, no doubt, he paid L7 2s. for "making the ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... n't put the instrument down immediately he would tear it from our hands and pitch it outside. If we DID lay it down quietly he would snatch it up and heave it out just as hard. The next evening he would devote all his time to patching ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... lid of the flesh-pot chattered high, The knives were whetted and—then came I To Mahbub Ali the muleteer, Patching his bridles and counting his gear, Crammed with the gossip ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... kitchen, and went into the living room. She sat down on the bench under the window, and began patching the children's clothes; at the same time she could see what was happening on the beach and on ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the mother, as though she were as much outraged as astonished. She was seated in the door, patching, by the waning light, an old pair of mud-spattered trousers, her own dress being very old-fashioned, coarse, and scanty,—so scant, in fact, as to reveal the angles of her form with ungraceful definiteness, especially the knees, that were almost ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... the dragon's toilet, patching up a fat white foot as he might have doctored the pad of an elephant, we wandered about, and finally decided to lunch in a secluded corner ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... Ludar told me, had been found on the coast, a half wreck, some weeks since, and, by dint of great labour and patching, ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... but was found to be more or less like paper, and only a small portion could be used. One tent served me throughout Bornean travels, but finally the quality of the fabric became impaired to a degree which necessitated constant patching; it was made to last only by the exercise of great care and with the aid of a fly, three of these having been used on this expedition. If a journey to a country climatically like Borneo is planned to last only a year, rot-proof tents may be recommended on account of their ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... gift of making everybody laugh. I remember once seeing him patching his trousers with a Union Jack, and singing, "We'll never let the ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man: space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations, taken together, are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind they do not ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books, Volume XIII. - Religion and Philosophy • Various
... planned his picture so as to convey its message and meaning, he did try to make it beautiful to look upon, and he often succeeded. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries it was beauty of outline and a pleasant patching together of bright colours for which the painters strove, both in pictures and in manuscripts. If you think of this picture for a moment as a coloured pattern, you will see how pretty it is. The blue wings against the gold background make ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... is a stone-cutter and mason, much employed in patching dilapidated graves and cutting inscriptions, and popularly known in Bumsteadville, on account of the dried mortar perpetually hanging about him, as "Old Mortarity." He is a ricketty man, with a chronic disease called bar-roomatism, and so very grave-yardy in his very 'Hic' that one almost ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 12 , June 18,1870 • Various
... the patching up of the barricades in which we assisted must be taken if Borth is to remain permanently in the roll of Welsh villages. Our storm-wave was but part of a system of aggression which the sea is carrying out upon these coasts. Older ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... Police Magistrate at Brantford, before whom many of these little domesticities come for their due appreciation (for they disclose, often, elements of really baffling complexity) not less than their ventilation and unravelling, is an eminently peace-loving man, and quite an adept at patching up such-like conjugal trifles. He will dispense from his tribunal sage advice, and prescribe remedial measures, which shall have untold efficacy, in dispelling mutual mistrust, restoring mutual ...
— A Treatise on the Six-Nation Indians • James Bovell Mackenzie
... days and days, pressed by the favouring gale, meeting the sun each day a long span earlier, making daily four degrees of longitude. It was the time, on these bright days, to forearm with dry clothing against future stormy weather. Boxes and bags were brought on deck, and drying and patching went on by wholesale in the watch below, while the watch on deck bestirred themselves putting the ship in order. "Chips," the carpenter, mended the galley; the cook's broken shins were plastered up; and ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... way, sent as many spears at him as he would stand for. The detention caused by the loss of the horses, was a serious matter, whilst the hostility of the natives was very annoying, keeping the party constantly on the alert. The interval was occupied in patching up the ration tent, with portions of the other two, so that they had now one water-proof to protect their stores. Some good snipe and duck shooting might have been got round these lagoons, but as nearly all their caps ...
— The Overland Expedition of The Messrs. Jardine • Frank Jardine and Alexander Jardine
... Lery. One and all supported that view of the despatches taken by the Governor and the Intendant. All agreed upon the necessity of completing the walls of Quebec and of making a determined stand at every point of the frontier against the threatened invasion. In case of the sudden patching up of a peace by the negotiators at Aix La Chapelle—as really happened—on the terms of uti possidetis, it was of vital importance that New France hold fast to every shred of her ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... began to frame her own laws, these, since they were blended with ancient ordinances which were bad, could not themselves be good; and thus for the two hundred years of which we have trustworthy record, our city has gone on patching her institutions, without ever possessing a government in respect of which she could truly be termed ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... in her cheeks, her garden meant so very much to her. Certainly the house had strong claims—and it was Monday morning—the very morning for forming and carrying out good plans and resolutions! Meals wanted cooking, cupboards and drawers tidying; garments darning and patching! But then—the garden! Did it not also need her. Ah! and did she not also ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... woman bearing burdens in the street, trotting along with a couple of heavy baskets swung from her shoulders, or they stop to stare at the neatly dressed mothers sitting on their low stools in the narrow alleyways, patching clothing or fondling their children. They see and hear the boat-women, the women who have the most freedom of any in all China, as they weave their sampans in and out of the crowded traffic on the canals. These same tourists visit the tea-houses and see the gaily dressed "sing-song" girls, or catch ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... to carry more than three hundred passengers, not less than nine hundred and fifty soldiers were packed. Most of the vessels were antiquated and inadequate; not a few were badly decayed. With a little superficial patching up they were imposed upon the Government. Despite his knowing that only vessels adapted for ocean service were needed, Vanderbilt chartered craft that had hitherto been almost entirely used in navigating inland waters. Not a single precaution was taken by him or his associates ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... all the castle is in such hurly-burly. Some of the men are loading the cannon, and some are examining the great gates, and the walls all round, and are hammering and patching up, just as if all those repairs had never been made, that were so long about. But what is to become of me and you, ma'amselle, and Ludovico? O! when I hear the sound of the cannon, I shall die with fright. ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... Reisz's front room door and entered, she discovered that person standing beside the window, engaged in mending or patching an old prunella gaiter. The little musician laughed all over when she saw Edna. Her laugh consisted of a contortion of the face and all the muscles of the body. She seemed strikingly homely, standing there in the afternoon light. She still wore the shabby lace and the artificial bunch of violets ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... up-stairs by his faithful Bulke, and Jacob Fleischmann strolled about on deck, or reclined in the steamer chairs, which even the trading vessel possessed. Stoss needed some massaging and patching up, and while the physicians were busy with him, he crowed and cawed ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... and a few others still on the stocks. To Theophanes the Patrician was given this nucleus of a squadron with which to beat back the Russians. Desperate and even hopeless as the situation appeared, he went to work with the greatest energy, patching up the old ships, and hurrying the completion of the new. Meanwhile the invaders sent raiding parties ashore that harried the unprotected country districts with every refinement of cruelty. In order to make each ship count as much as possible as an offensive unit, Theaphanes made an innovation ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... helpful to her husband in many ways. At home she was a good housewife and when Washington was in public life she played her part well. No brilliant sallies of wit spoken by her on any occasion have come down to us, but we know that at Valley Forge she worked day and night knitting socks, patching garments and making shirts for the loyal band of winter patriots who stood by their leader and their cause in the darkest hour of ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... the paths, stretchers on which motionless forms lay shrouded in blankets. One, concerning whom I asked, had just had part of his skull trepanned: another had suffered amputation. And all this pruning and patching up of broken men to win them a few more years of crippled life caught one's throat like the penetrating smell of the iodoform. Nor was I sorry to hasten away by the night mail northwards to the camps. ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... and sounds, my Philo, brought into my head that old anecdote about the Sinopean. A report that Philip was marching on the town had thrown all Corinth into a bustle; one was furbishing his arms, another wheeling stones, a third patching the wall, a fourth strengthening a battlement, every one making himself useful somehow or other. Diogenes having nothing to do—of course no one thought of giving him a job—was moved by the sight to gird up his philosopher's cloak and begin ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... large wave would break against the side, then leap clear over the boat. Every wave seemed powerful enough to crush in the sides. But they came out dripping, glistening red after each onslaught. The boatman had succeeded in patching the rent caused by the collision, but the upper deck was leaking in many places. The "Red Rover" had been strained almost to the breaking-up point. It was now fairly wallowing in the foaming sea dashing against ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... morning after the battle ended, Lord Oliphant and Cyril rowed on board Prince Rupert's ship, where every unwounded man was hard at work getting up a jury-mast or patching up the holes in ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... "Grosses Concert in E moll. Op. 11." Bearberet von Carl Tausig. Score, pianoforte, and orchestral parts. Berlin: Ries and Erler.] I shall only say that his cutting-down and patching-up of the introductory tutti, to mention only one thing, are not well enough done to excuse the liberty taken with a great composer's work. Moreover, your emendations cannot reach the vital fault, which lies in the conceptions. A musician may have mastered the mechanical ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... of all affairs with which Columbus had to do was in full swing. We have seen him patching up matters in Espanola; hurrying to Spain just in time to rescue his damaged reputation and do something to restore it; and now when he had come back it was but a sorry tale that Bartholomew had to tell him. A fortress had been built at the Hayna gold-mines, but provisions had been so scarce ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... insatiate demand finally consumed the whole coat, in a vain attempt to prevent an exposure of person greater than consistent with the usages of society. The pantaloons—or what, by courtesy, I called such, were a monument of careful and ingenious, but hopeless, patching, that should have called forth the admiration of a Florentine artist in mosaic. I have been shown—in later years—many table tops, ornamented in marquetry, inlaid with thousands of little bits of wood, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... reason to rejoice at these disasters, apart from our sympathy with individual sufferings. More good will have been done by this one great shock to the heart of England than by fifty years' more patching, and pottering, and knocking impotent heads together. What makes me most angry is the ministerial apology. 'It's always so with us for three campaigns,'!!! 'it's our way,' 'it's want of experience,' &c. &c. That's precisely the thing complained of. ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... PATCHES. VANITAS VANITATUM. LADIES turn conjurers, and can impart The hidden mystery of the black art, Black artificial patches do betray; They more affect the works of night than day. The creature strives the Creator to disgrace, By patching that which is a perfect face: A little stain upon the purest dye Is both offensive to the heart and eye. Defile not then with spots that face of snow, Where the wise God His workmanship doth show, The light of nature and the light of grace ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... Early as Martin was up to feed his stock, she was up still earlier that she might lend a hand to a neighbor, harrowed by the fear that gathered fruit might perish. Late as he plowed, in the hot summer evenings, her sweaty fingers were busy still later with patching, brought home to boost along some young wife struggling with a teething baby. She seemed never too rushed to tuck in an extra baking for someone even more rushed than herself, or to make delicious broths and tasty dishes for sick folk. In her quiet ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... sympathized with their sufferings and grievances and with their attempts to better their condition, so far as this could be achieved without violence, and without leaving a permanent state of war between Labor and Capital. In a word, he did not aim at merely patching up a temporary peace, but at finding, and when found, applying, a remedy to the deep-rooted ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... board off the reefs of any of the islands nothing could have saved the Casco from going to the bottom. The ship was at once sent to Papeete for repairs, but as it was impossible to obtain new masts of a proper size there, they were obliged to be content with patching up the old ones. This let the party in for a long stay at Tautira, at which none repined, for the scenery and climate were delightful, and their new friends hospitable ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... our education brave and preventive. Politics is an after-work, a poor patching. We are always a little late. The evil is done, the law is passed, and we begin the up-hill agitation for repeal of that of which we ought to have prevented the enacting. We shall one day learn to supersede politics by education. What we call our root-and-branch reforms ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... on the front, patches on elbows, on knees; coloured binding around his jacket, scarlet edging at the bottom of his trousers; and the sunshine made him look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal, because you could see how beautifully all this patching had been done. A beardless, boyish face, very fair, no features to speak of, nose peeling, little blue eyes, smiles and frowns chasing each other over that open countenance like sunshine and shadow on a wind-swept plain. 'Look ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... journeys and sails through Pliny, Marco Polo, Odoric de Pordenone,[675] Albert d'Aix, William of Boldensele, Pierre Comestor, Jacques de Vitry, bestiaries, tales of travels, collections of fables, books of dreams, patching together countless marvels, but yet, as he assures us, omitting many so as not to weary our faith: It would be too long to say all; "y seroit trop longe chose a tot deviser." With fanciful wonders are mingled many real ones, ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... ridicule to the officials: they even refused it the noble name of cloak, and called it a cape. In fact, it was of singular make: its collar diminishing year by year, but serving to patch its other parts. The patching did not exhibit great skill on the part of the tailor, and was, in fact, baggy and ugly. Seeing how the matter stood, Akakiy Akakievitch decided that it would be necessary to take the cloak to Petrovitch, the tailor, who lived somewhere on the fourth floor up a dark stair-case, and ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... at work patching up one side of the improvised hut when he heard a movement in the brushwood not far away. Fearing some wild animal he ran for his gun, but ere he could reach the firearm a ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... explained, sitting opposite Larry. "I couldn't wait to get word from you—my mother is ill. I must put this business through in a sloppy way. It may need a lot of legal patching after, but I'll take my chances. Heathcote has straightened out your wife's part—the Point is yours. I've made sure of that. Now I'm going to write out something that I think will hold—anyway, I ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... all which its author borrows from previous systems, is a commonplace work, whose method consists in constantly explaining the known by the unknown, and in giving entites for abstractions, and tautologies for proofs. Its whole theodicy is a work not of genius but of imagination, a patching up of neo-Platonic ideas. The psychological portion amounts to nothing, M. Lamennais openly ridiculing labors of this character, without which, however, metaphysics is impossible. The book, which treats of logic and its methods, ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... wouldn't! Who would I be patching torn trousers or darning ripped sweaters for if you were like Bob, I'd like to know? Who'd be pestering me to hunt up his cap and mittens? And who would I be ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... thing had never been known in the history of the Northwest Fur Company. It would disgrace them forever. Think of the honor of conquering disaster. Then he vowed that he would go ahead, whether the men accompanied him or not. Then he set them to patching the canoe with oil-cloth and bits of bark; but large sheets of birch bark are rare in the Rockies; and the patched canoe weighed so heavily that the men could scarcely carry it. It took them fourteen hours to make the three-mile portage of these rapids. The Indian from the ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... fo'c's'le was in as filthy a state as could well be imagined. Herriot thrust his head down the hatch once during the morning and as he caught the sickening stench of the place he called the two boys, who had been up forward helping the patching. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... employed in painting over my Opie, which had suffered by heat, or something of that kind. I borrowed Laurence's palette and brushes and lay upon the floor two hours patching over and renovating. The picture is really greatly improved, and I am more reconciled to it. It has now to be varnished: and then I hope some fool will be surprised into giving 4 pounds for it, ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... the end of cruel intervals, when he had begun to hope that at least that trouble was done with. One morning he told his wife that he was going to ask the doctors to examine him again. They had spoken of patching up; but he wanted to know whether he was going to live or die. There was a certain relief in hearing him speak so plainly; she had had enough of the torture of hope, and would like to know the worst. He liked better to go to the hospital alone, but she felt that she could not sit ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... to her. Certainly the house had strong claims—and it was Monday morning—the very morning for forming and carrying out good plans and resolutions! Meals wanted cooking, cupboards and drawers tidying; garments darning and patching! But then—the garden! Did it not also need her. Ah! and did ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... the kitchen, and went into the living room. She sat down on the bench under the window, and began patching the children's clothes; at the same time she could see what was happening on the beach ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... for so many years. It was to her a simple enough matter to fashion herself a dress which should be in form and line all that could be desired. To do it out of unbroken yards of material, without necessity for piecing and patching, was a delightful novelty. To accomplish it in three days was only a matter of working at top speed, with fingers which flew at the behest of a brain which also worked like magic at ...
— Under the Country Sky • Grace S. Richmond
... former may be conceived. The wheel was an utter smash. No patching however thorough, no care however tender, could place it on its edge again a perfect wheel. A hill rose before them, behind which the Spaniards, hitherto their companions, had disappeared half an hour previously, and were now ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... my style, and can do nothing well; indeed, I fear I have marred Roads finally by patching at it when I was out of the humour. Only, I am beginning to see something great about John Knox and Queen Mary; I like them both so much, that I feel as if I could write the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... his fur cap. "If Miss Rawlinson would like to see Mrs. Sandberg, I'll drive her round," he suggested. "We'll catch you up in a league or so. Gregory has a bit of patching to do on his ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... we were able to make and dress our own dolls, hem our handkerchiefs and aprons, and in due time were promoted to the darning of father's stockings and the patching of his working-clothes. We thought the being able to do these things for him a very great affair, and mother praised us for our work. But when sister Jane once put a patch over a hole in the knee of father's pantaloons, without covering all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... purple face. "Sure, that's right!" he emphasized. "And I don't care how much of a trap you call this, it isn't a patching to the one Applehead busted us out of. He's what I call ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... are drawn by some strange impulse toward the altar; and while all is mute and watchful, the voice of Margaret is heard from heaven, imploring a baptism for her unborn babe. The author himself cannot feel more sensibly than ourselves the injustice of thus patching together the beauteous fragments of his sorrowful and melodious history in so hugger-mugger a way; but MAGA is peremptory, and hints to us that we cannot command the scope of the 'Edinburgh Review:' The voice ceases to thrill the wondering ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, February 1844 - Volume 23, Number 2 • Various
... story of an injured woman is one of the cards in the stage pack which it is always safe to play—but against this there was a bad last act, one of the worst I have ever acted in. It was always being tinkered with, but patching and alteration only seems ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... went down. They lowered me gently enough, so that I was able to take stock of the way the wall was made, and found that for the most part it was cut through solid chalk; but here and there, where the chalk failed or was broken away, they had lined the walls with brick, patching them now on this side, now on that, and now all round. By degrees the light, which was dim even overground that rainy day, died out in the well, till all was black as night but for my candle, and far overhead I could see the well-mouth, white and ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... there won't be enough material on land or sea to supply the demand for ready-made garments. As it is, I'm afraid the poor devils will have to go naked themselves until a new crop springs up. I saw one of Pootoo's wives patching his best suit of breech clothes to-day, so he must be ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... was broken, and in the course of an hour or two, Willis and I succeeded in patching up the shattered body sufficiently to hold the hogs. But how to get the heavy brutes off the ground and up into the wagon was a task beyond our resources. When you try to take a live hog off its feet, ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... with peril but I hoped, not without reason, the worst was over. As I went off the campus the top of my hat was hanging over my left ear, my collar and cravat were turned awry, my trousers gaped over one knee. I was talking with a fellow sufferer and patching the skin on my knuckles, when suddenly I ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... Philip Van Reypen, I've already exhausted myself this evening patching up one spoiled friendship, and it's just about worn me out! Now if ours needs any patching up, you'll have to do it yourself. I shan't ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... villakin in his neighbourhood; but you are yet too volatile, and any lady with a coach and six horses would carry you to Japan." "If your ramble," says Swift, in another letter, "was on horseback, I am glad of it, on account of your health; but I know your arts of patching up a journey between stage-coaches and friends" coaches—for you are as arrant a Cockney as any hosier in Cheapside. I have often had it in my head to put it into yours, that you ought to have some great ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... applied to Venice for help, quoting the great assistance that they were rendering her in occupying the Turks; but the Queen of Cities, who was at that moment occupied in patching up a treaty with the Sultan, turned a deaf ear to their entreaties. Montenegro found then, for the first time—and all through her history she was destined to find the same—that she must fight her battles alone. Allies have used her always for their own ends and then shamefully deserted her. Yet ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... which ran through his complex and slightly confused character. "He would destroy any of his works rather than leave a careless or inexpressive touch within the limits of the frame. He would begin again a hundred times over rather than attempt by patching to make his work seem better ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... it up in his. He had decided that Jan was a nobleman in disguise, and that his father was a duke, or a "jook," as he called him. Jan's active imagination could not quite resist the influence of this romance, and he lay awake at night patching together the hunchback's reference to the nobs, and the incredulous glance of the dark-eyed gentleman who had given him the half pence, and who was certainly a nob himself. And never did he leave the house on an ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... of teacups in Lady Garnett's primrose and gray drawing-room would be a bearable change from the din of a hundred hammers, which had pelted him through the open windows all the morning. They were patching a little wooden barque with copper, and he paused a moment in the yard, leaning on his slim umbrella to admire the brilliant yellow of the renewed sheets, standing out in vivid blots against the tarnished verdigris of the old. To pass from Blackpool to the West, however, is a tardy process; ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... no little tired-out boy to undress, No questions or cares to perplex you, There'll be no little bruises or bumps to caress, Nor patching of stockings to vex you; For I'll rock you away on a silver-dew stream And sing you asleep when you're weary, And no one shall know of our beautiful dream But you ...
— A Little Book of Western Verse • Eugene Field
... or a signature becomes loose in any volume, it should be at once withdrawn from circulation, or the loss of an important part of the book may result. The remedy commonly resorted to, of patching up the book by pasting in the loose leaves, is a mere makeshift which will not last. The cause of a loose signature is generally to be found in a broken thread in the sewing, and the only permanent cure is to take the book out of its cover, and re-sew it, when it may usually be ...
— A Book for All Readers • Ainsworth Rand Spofford
... date. They think that President Kruger has astonished the world, and they wag their heads, and give one to understand that the same old gentleman has a good many more surprises in store for us. It is impossible to get a direct statement of any kind from them, but by patching fragments together I incline to the opinion that they really count on Cape Colony rising when Kruger wants a rising. Personally, from my own limited observations, I would not give a fig of tobacco for the alleged loyalty of the ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... way, as a dutiful son, Was to do as Old Royalty's self would have done.[3] So I sent word to say, I would keep the whole batch in, The same chest of tools, without cleansing or patching: For tools of this kind, like Martinus's sconce.[4] Would loose all their beauty if purified once; And think—only think—if our Father should find. Upon graciously coming again to his mind,[5] That improvement had spoiled any favorite ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... heart watches . . . as I work I say, All simply, to Him: "Come! And if to-day, Then wilt Thou find me thus: just as I am— Tending my household; stirring goose- berry jam; Or swiftly rinsing tiny vests and hose, With puzzled forehead patching some one's clothes; Guiding small footsteps, swift to hear, and run, From early dawn till ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... was all ready, nice and clean, but his shoes badly needed repairing, and this fact caused his devoted wife much anxiety. She took from her own feet the thick woollen stockings she was wearing, and gave them to Polikey. She then began to repair his shoes, patching up the holes so as to protect his feet ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... preparation, if it has been thoroughly well learned. And the strangest things come of use, too, at the strangest times. A sailor teaches you to tie a knot when you are on a fishing party, and you tie that knot the next time when you are patching up the Emperor of Russia's carriage for him, in a valley in the Ural Mountains. But "getting ready" does not mean the piling in of a heap of accidental accomplishments. It means sedulously examining the coming duty or pleasure, imagining it even in its details, ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... no dress and make it, but I can use a needle on patching and quilting. Can't nobody beat me doin' that. I can knit, too. I can make stockings, gloves, and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... outward man. Whenever they observed this dubious expression gather upon his countenance, accompanied with a glance that fixed now upon the sleeve of his coat, now upon the knees of his breeches, where he probably missed some antique patching and darning, which, being executed with blue thread upon a black ground, had somewhat the effect of embroidery, they always took care to turn his attention into some other channel, until his garments, 'by the aid of use, cleaved to their mould.' The only remark he was ever known to ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... celebrated statue in the world. This is the renowned 'Capitoline Venus' you've heard so much about. Here she is with her little blemishes 'restored' (that is, patched) by the most noted Roman artists—and the mere fact that they did the humble patching of so noble a creation will make their names illustrious while the world stands. How strange it seems this place! The day before I last stood here, ten happy years ago, I wasn't a rich man bless your soul, I hadn't a ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... house, on unhealthy ground, with water in the cellar, a crumbling foundation, the beams like sponge, the roof leaking, the chimney full of cracks, would not spend large sums of money year after year, generation after generation, in patching up the old house on the same old spot, but with ordinary wisdom and economy, they would build anew, on higher ground, with strong foundations, sound timber, substantial chimneys, and solid roofing. True, they would patch up the old at as little cost as ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... the young roughs of the village regarded our pond to all winter intents and purposes as theirs, and my father as only so far and so objectionably concerned in the matter that he gave John Binder a yearly job in patching up the wall which it took them three months' trouble to kick a ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... with its case, and would have liked to find more definite proof of Lanrivain's complicity than the statement of the herb-gatherer, who swore to having seen him climbing the wall of the park on the night of the murder. One way of patching out incomplete proofs in those days was to put some sort of pressure, moral or physical, on the accused person. It is not clear what pressure was put on Anne de Cornault; but on the third day, when she was brought in court, she "appeared weak and wandering," and after being ...
— Kerfol - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... said Uncle Remus—adjusting his spectacles so as to be able to see how to thread a large darning-needle with which he was patching his coat—"one time, way back yander, 'fo' you wuz bomed, honey, en 'fo' Mars John er Miss Sally wuz bomed—way back yander 'fo' enny un us wuz bomed, de animils en de creeturs sorter 'lecshuneer roun' 'mong deyselves, twel at las' dey 'greed ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... stands on the site of the mill. The view is particularly fine both Downwards and seawards, though the hill is not half the altitude of Cissbury. Northwards are the beautiful woods of Castle Goring, once the residence of the Shelleys, through which we may walk to Clapham and Patching, villages on southern spurs of the Downs; the latter has a restored Early English church with a very beautiful modern reredos. Clapham has a Transitional church containing memorials of the Shelley family. Notice the blocked-up Norman arch which proves the existence of an ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... contiguous cottages, mostly whitewashed, and with thatched roofs. It has nothing sylvan or rural in the immediate village, and is as ugly a place as mortal man could contrive to make, or to render uglier through a succession of untidy generations. The fashion of paving the village street, and patching one shabby house on the gable-end of another, quite shuts out all verdure and pleasantness; but, I presume, we are not likely to see a more genuine old Scotch village, such as they used to be in Burns's time, and long before, than this of Mauchline. The church stands about midway up the ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... breathe more freely and began to frame her own laws, these, since they were blended with ancient ordinances which were bad, could not themselves be good; and thus for the two hundred years of which we have trustworthy record, our city has gone on patching her institutions, without ever possessing a government in respect of which she could truly be ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... "brother" stands before me and loads up his flintlock rifle; it is a fearful and wonderful process; it takes him at least two minutes; he does not seem to know on which particular part of his wonderful paraphernalia to find the slugs, the powder, or the patching, and he finishes by tearing a piece of rag off a by-standing villager to place over the powder in the pan. While he is doing all this, and especially when ramming home the bullet, he looks at me as though expecting me to come and pat him approvingly on the shoulder. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Only the old squaw was still up. She had been looking over the travellers' boots and "mitts," and now, without a word or even a look being exchanged upon the subject, she sat there in the corner, by the dim, seal-oil light, sewing on new thongs, patching up holes, and making the strange men tidy—men she had never seen before and would never see again. And this, no tribute to the Colonel's generosity or the youth and friendly manners of the Boy. They knew the old squaw would have done just ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... clergyman that the "poor go on living in wretched places, but have much ill-health." He showed from Mr. Burdett's figures that the London voluntary hospitals and dispensaries cost nearly 600,000 a year to administer—an expenditure incurred mainly for the purpose of "patching up" the wretched poor who had been injured by bad drainage, want of ventilation and the like; and he urged that it might be safely assumed preventive measures would bring down the death-rate of the wage class to one-half, reducing also the sickness rate in at least a similar proportion. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 358, November 11, 1882 • Various
... I have been singularly incapable of mastering any language. Especial attention was paid to verse-making, and this I could never do well. I had many friends, and got together a good collection of old verses, which by patching together, sometimes aided by other boys, I could work into any subject. Much attention was paid to learning by heart the lessons of the previous day; this I could effect with great facility, learning forty or fifty lines of Virgil or Homer, whilst I was in morning chapel; but ...
— The Autobiography of Charles Darwin - From The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin • Charles Darwin
... sufficient supply of these to cover their disgusting bodies. Many among them possessed no clothing except the remnant of those garments which they wore when first brought on board; and were unable to procure even any material for patching these together, when they had been worn to tatters by constant use. * * * Some, and indeed many of them, had not the means of procuring a razor, or ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... great relief to all having the care and responsibility of the concern, rendering the task of keeping things tidy and in comfortable order much easier than formerly. It is better and more economical for the State. That constant patching up and fixing over in numerous places, swallowing up money, no one hardly knowing how, is now nearly ended, permitting the real gains of the institution to accumulate and stand prominently in view, though everything there is ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... a day one who has gotten the true perspective? Here is the outer side: a humble home, a narrow circle, tending the baby, patching, sewing, cooking, calling; or, measuring dry goods, chopping a typewriter, checking up a ledger, feeding the swift machinery, endless stitching, gripping a locomotive lever, pushing the plow, tending the stock, doing ...
— Quiet Talks on Prayer • S. D. (Samuel Dickey) Gordon
... motive. He had reverted utterly to type. He spent his leisure writing a monograph. When inspiration ran low, he occupied himself doctoring books. Eternally, he hunted for the flat stones between which he pressed their swollen bulks back to shape. Eternally he puttered about, mending and patching them. He used to sit for hours at a desk which he had rescued from the ship's furniture. The others never became accustomed to the comic incongruity of this picture—especially when, later, he virtually boxed himself in with a ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... constantly at work mending garments apparently unmendable, pressing, steaming, patching, sewing on buttons. The ragged uniforms come out of that big bare room clean and whole, ready to be tied up in new burlap bags, tagged, and placed in racks of fresh white cedar. There is no odour in this room, although innumerable old garments are ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... girl of about fifteen, dressed in European clothes. I fainted from loss of blood, and don't remember anything else until I found myself in a tent, with two Cossacks patching up my wound. When I came to, she rushed forward, and thanked me profusely for saving her. To my surprise, she spoke in French, and on inquiry I found that she was the daughter of a certain Baron ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... she laughed to herself. "And here I've been hiring my own mending done! Theodosia Baxter, see what you are doing; you are patching a shirt for a man! No, I'm not, either! I'm doing it for Stefana—what ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... balloon silk, big shears, a quick-drying gum solution and a pot of gasproof varnish, ready for the job of patching up the hole. But first they had to empty the big bag of gas. This was speedily done, for already enough had escaped to wrinkle the bag like a walnut, with ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... scarcely had they travelled five miles next morning before they came on an outpost of it: a large hut, half dwelling-house, half boat-shed. It stood in a clearing on the left shore, and close by the water's edge was a young man, patching the bottom of an upturned canoe. Two children—a boy and a girl—had dropped their play to watch him. A flat-bottomed boat lay moored ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... valet; you will need him, her Grace insists on dressing for dinner. Likewise my Trafalgar coat begins to need skilled patching, here and there; it is getting ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... which they were leading unfortunately suggested no remedy. They thought they could drive women back to the water pitcher and the loom, but that was impossible. The clock of time will not turn back. Neither is it by a return to hand-sewing, or a resurrection of quilt-patching that women of the present day will save the race. The old avenues of labor are closed. It is no longer necessary for women to spin and weave, cure meats, and make household remedies, or even fashion the garments ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... only once that he remembered—the day they had brought Ned Shelley in, dank and dripping, after the August storm ten years before. Mrs. Shelley sat by the crooked, small-paned window and looked out down the harbour. The coat she had been patching for her husband when the Camerons came still lay in her lap, and she had folded her hands upon it. She was a big woman, slow of speech and manner, with a placid, handsome face—a face that had not visibly stirred even when she ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... I want you to go right in and order at Madame's—on me, understand, dearie. I'm going to blow myself to a new one, too. Won't the girls be surprised when they hear of this? The joke will be on them, I'm thinking. Probably you and Breck will be patching up your little difference, too. I don't pretend to fathom Mrs. S.'s change of front, but it's changed anyhow! That's all I care about. Good-by. Must hurry to catch mail. ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... cry of Northern anti-slavery aggression and neglect of constitutional obligations, deemed it his duty to assist in making a united effort to save the Union. If he believed the present state of public sentiment of the North was to be enduring, he would say it is folly to talk about patching up the Union; but he looked forward to a reaction of public sentiment. Amendments to the Constitution, legal enactments, or repeal of personal liberty laws are not worth a straw unless the popular sentiment or the strong arm of the Government goes with them. He proposed ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... size, the hut was frail, and the winter wind blew coldly through its many cracks; but compared with the soldier's billets, it was a cozy palace. The Salvationists spent hours each week sitting on the roof in the driving rain patching ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... determined to make her his wife, believing that never could a girl of such lofty descent fail in her duty. This marriage was soon celebrated, because the Sire de Rohan had seven daughters, and hardly knew how to provide for them all, at a time when people were just recovering from the late wars, and patching up their unsettled affairs. Now the good man Bastarnay happily found Bertha really a maiden, which fact bore witness to her proper bringing up and perfect maternal correction. So immediately the night arrived when it should be lawful for ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... was in great straits for want of money at this time. She had scarcely enough to pay for their meagre fare, and her own clothes and the children's were almost beyond patching and darning. Beth surprised her several times sitting beside the dining-table with the everlasting mending on her lap, fretting silently, and the child's heart was wrung. There was some legal difficulty, and letters which added to her mother's ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... efficient member of society; and it is obvious that if every man did this there would be very little work for the professional philanthropist. It is not help that men need most, but opportunity. Philanthropy is, for the most part, engaged in patching up the sick anaemic body of society; which is equivalent to minimising the distress of ill-health without producing good health. The wise physician knows very well that no amount of medicine will do much for the anaemic child; what the ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... "lies a pair of slippers that want patching. They belong to William Webster, the weaver, round the corner. They're very much down at heel too. But isn't it an honour to patch or set up slippers for a man who keeps his neighbours in fine linen all the ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... his shoulder just as the tall man in the doorway turned his face toward us. "That? Why, girl, that's Von Gerhard, the man who gives me one more year t' live. Look at everybody kowtowing to him. He don't favor Baumbach's often. Too busy patching up the nervous wrecks that are washed up ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... in matters of social arrangement, can be effected under a state of things like that of England; so easy there for a peculiar grievance to get heard, so easy for a local or class interest to obtain redress against any form of injustice, that legislation must be 'patching.' Next to impossible to reorganise a community without ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... established than that till nearly the end of the nineteenth century it was the general belief that the ancient industrial system, with all its shocking social consequences, was destined to last, with possibly a little patching, to the end of time. How strange and wellnigh incredible does it seem that so prodigious a moral and material transformation as has taken place since then could have been accomplished in so brief an interval? The readiness with ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... the Victorian age in all its very English and unique elements: its praise of Puritan politics and abandonment of Puritan theology; its belief in a cautious but perpetual patching up of the Constitution; its admiration for industrial wealth. But above all he typifies the two things that really make the Victorian Age itself, the cheapness and narrowness of its conscious formulae; the richness and humanity of its unconscious tradition. There were two Macaulays, ...
— The Victorian Age in Literature • G. K. Chesterton
... a long and confidential talk; and I perceived that, though he had finally given up all intention of getting me into the church, in the hopes of patching up the holes in the old roof with a mitre, he had fully made up his mind on the subject of a widow. I rejoiced that Mrs Coutts was already disposed of. He talked a long time of jointures, three per cents, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... did our Lord proclaim the newness and completeness of His gospel. It was in no sense a patching up of Judaism. He had not come to mend old and torn garments; the cloth He provided was new, and to sew it on the old would be but to tear afresh the threadbare fabric and leave a more unsightly ...
— Jesus the Christ - A Study of the Messiah and His Mission According to Holy - Scriptures Both Ancient and Modern • James Edward Talmage
... "Oh, indeed! Patching your shoes, eh? Then if you can't see to do that by the same light that does for me, you may take yourself off with your pare into the bath-house or behind it ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... early years, the author of the plays (Bacon, by the theory) had to work over old pieces. All this is the work of the hack of a playing company; it is not work to which a man in Bacon's position could stoop. Why should he? What had he to gain by patching and vamping? Certainly not money, if the wealth of Shakespeare is a dark mystery to the Baconian theorists. We are asked to believe that Bacon, for the sake of some five or six pounds, toiled at refashioning old plays, and handed the fair manuscripts ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... point, cant without character, sentiments as dull as they were false, and a continual outrage on manners, morals and common sense, were its leading features. Yet, strange to tell, the audience endured it all; and, by copious retrenchments and plaistering and patching, this very piece had what ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... mighty crash, amid a wild confusion of the elements, and when the storm cleared the two old hulls lay shattered but safe on the surface of the ice-pack. The whole larboard side of the Dorothea was smashed, but they brought her somehow to Spitzbergen, and there by wonderful patching enabled her to ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... tunnel, step by step, He winked his prying torch with patching glare From side to side, and sniffed ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... three, four, five, six hours they drifted. Their wireless kept going out of commission, and their radio operator kept patching it up and getting it going again. S O S—he never let up with that call. It was midnight when a British mine-sweeper bore down and hailed. By then they could hear the high seas breaking on the rocks abeam. The Britisher got the word ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... nature to subdue. You had better not press them too far. Do not drive them to the goal of last resort. Give them justice while you have it in your power to do so. Satisfy them that ultimately they shall have equality in this broken Government, or Union, if you will. But, sir, I leave the patching up of the Constitution to the distinguished Senator from Kentucky and other gentlemen, especially my friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. BIGLER], who has labored harder to patch up the Constitution than any ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... bearing burdens in the street, trotting along with a couple of heavy baskets swung from her shoulders, or they stop to stare at the neatly dressed mothers sitting on their low stools in the narrow alleyways, patching clothing or fondling their children. They see and hear the boat-women, the women who have the most freedom of any in all China, as they weave their sampans in and out of the crowded traffic on the canals. These same tourists visit the tea-houses and see the gaily dressed "sing-song" ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... Burgundy and Orleans had once before sworn a solemn friendship, and yet a week or two later Orleans lay dead in the streets of Paris, murdered by the order of Burgundy. Was it likely that the present patching up of the quarrel would have a much longer duration? On the former occasion the quarrel was a personal one between the two great houses, now all France was divided. A vast amount of blood had been shed, there had been cruel massacres, executions, ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... returning home, and the young men of the capital from commonplace courses. Though he has been accredited with much authorship, I think he wrote nothing; living among books, he had rather a contempt for them,—as things at the best for patching up and cosseting life, new windings and wrappings for its cocoon;—whereas he would have had the whole cocoon stripped away, and the butterfly beautifully airing its wings. Be that as it may, there are, shall we say, stenographers among his disciples, and his sayings come down ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... of you: here's a lad that has been half-killed for standing by his colors to-day. Look here, Armstrong, would you mind going for Dr. Maverick? this poor chap needs some patching-up. And, Kit, give me some water and a napkin: we'll get his face a little ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... and a roof over his head; but who will give him a roof if mine be taken from me? Is not this so? All seemed in agreement, and Peter continued: I am thinking, John, that our new brother might help us to buy the Master a new cloak, for his is falling to pieces and my wife's mother is weary with patching it. He cured her of the fever, but she thinks that a great cost is put upon me and would ask the Master something for his keep. Whereupon John spoke out that the story of his mother-in-law was for ever the same; and ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... Devil has come over those sisters of mine? Pray are they still behind the stove patching their old stockings? No time forsooth—Rediculous—Could not the lazy wretches have only wrote me the scratch of a pen merely to wish me a good New Year? Mr. McCord to be sure mumbles something about time; it is highly diverting to have country lasses talk about want of time, ...
— A Canadian Manor and Its Seigneurs - The Story of a Hundred Years, 1761-1861 • George M. Wrong
... awaits him. Five physicians now attend him closely. I have seen him often, and he says, 'All is well, all will be well,' Of the physicians he said, 'Yes, yes, it is very well; they are useful men in God's hand; they may be instrumental in patching up the tabernacle a little. If it be raised to usefulness, I am content; if not to usefulness, I do not desire it. I feel no concern about the issue of this; the will of ...
— The Power of Faith - Exemplified In The Life And Writings Of The Late Mrs. Isabella Graham. • Isabella Graham
... their excellent uncle had made it unnecessary for them to go to such extremes as Cyril's Etons or Anthea's Sunday jacket for the patching of the carpet. ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... and setting him beside the tree returned to his own folk and the caravan loaded and left the place. Presently Mohsin swarmed up the trunk; and, taking seat upon a branch of its branches, fell to cropping the leaves and patching them upon either eye as he had heard the Jinni prescribe; and hardly had two days gone by when he felt healed of his hurt and opened his eyelids and saw what was around him. Then, after taking somewhat of its foliage, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... the portion of the chamber used for sleeping quarters was covered with a thick mattress of dry "snake-grass," and the whole interior was remarkably clean. After blocking and patching up the hole and covering the place with snow, the hunters threw water over it until it froze into a solid mass, then they removed the stakes from the runways and left the rest of the beavers in peace. Loading their catch upon their toboggans, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... latter to provide for the naturalization of foreign words and their proper treatment before they could take care of themselves; the former for furnishing a supply to meet the growing demand mentioned at the beginning of this article, and for patching up several of the most obvious imperfections we now suffer from. We want a word for the opposite of a compliment. Not that this is as great a defect as the lack of the word compliment would be in these smooth-spoken ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... after I had done my best to explain the technicalities of male politics, and fancied that I had made some impression, the answer would be: "Well, I'd go, I'm sure, just to oblige you, but then there's the tomatoes to be canned"—or, "I'm so behindhand with my darning and patching"—or, "John'll be sure to go, and there's no need of two from the same house"—and so on, until I was mightily discouraged. There were just nine of us, all told, to about a hundred men. I won't deny that our situation that night, at the Wrangle House, was awkward and not entirely agreeable. ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... dish aside and began to sew. Now and then she paused in her work to lean back in her chair, and tears welled up in her eyes. Perhaps she remembered that the rent was due, or she may have been reflecting that Peter's jacket was past further patching. In either case she began to count over in her mind a certain small stock of savings which she had laid by in a money-box, and to puzzle her poor head what she should turn her hand to next to earn the wherewithal to buy the boy some decent clothes. Nothing ...
— Miscellanea • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... I said, and was about to explain that I was from another world, thinking that by patching a truce with these fellows and fighting with them against the therns I might enlist their aid in regaining my liberty. But just at that moment a heavy object smote me a resounding whack between my shoulders that nearly felled ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... my life of nineteen years I can look back and see a time when she was all gentleness and refinement, but the polish has been worn off it by years and years of scrubbing and scratching, and washing and patching, and poverty and husbandly neglect, and the bearing of burdens too heavy for delicate shoulders. Would that we were more companionable, it would make many an oasis in the desert of our lives. Oh that I could take an all-absorbing interest in ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... Washing, starching, ironing, darning, patching, and an immense deal of talk and consultation, occupied that and a good deal of the following day, the rest of which was given up to the repairing of an immense pair of green baize shoes, without which Aunt Patsy could not be persuaded to go into ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... arts was she But dressing, patching, repartee; 40 And, just as humour rose or fell, By turns a slattern or a belle; 'Tis true she dress'd with modern grace, Half naked at a ball or race; But when at home, at board or bed, 45 Five greasy nightcaps wrapp'd her head. Could so much beauty ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... pleasure. This pleasure is all the more pleasurable because the matter is always presented in a thoroughly workmanlike form. The shapelessness, the incoherence, the necessity for endless annotation and patching together, which mar so many even of the finest Elizabethan plays, have no place in Beaumont and Fletcher. Their dramatic construction is almost narrative in its clear and easy flow, in its absence of puzzles and piecings. Again, their stories are always interesting, ...
— A History of English Literature - Elizabethan Literature • George Saintsbury
... I beheld a number of coquettes briskly at work, doing and repeating all their former follies upon earth. Some were twisting their mouths, some were pulling their front locks with irons, some were painting themselves, some patching their faces with sooty ointments, to make the yellow look more fair; some quite mad at seeing their visages, after all their pains in coloring and variegating, more hideous than those of the very devils, were endeavouring to break the mirrors, or were tearing ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... ever raising its call to service. He who in war has flung himself, without thought of self, on the bayonet and braved a hail of bullets often does not hear that quiet music. It is the business of the sacred work to quicken his ear to it. Of little use to man or nation would be the mere patching-up of bodies, so that, like a row of old gossips against a sunlit wall, our disabled might sit and weary out their days. If that were all we could do for them, gratitude is proven fraudulent, ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... Itinerant Tinker said, "but I ran out of paper and gave it up. Then, when the night fell," he resumed dolefully, after another long interval of silence, "I tried to prop it up. But I met with the same difficulty that confronted me in patching up the day, and was forced to abandon ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... his water skins for the journey, which as usual required patching and supplying with fresh handles after long ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... supported that view of the despatches taken by the Governor and the Intendant. All agreed upon the necessity of completing the walls of Quebec and of making a determined stand at every point of the frontier against the threatened invasion. In case of the sudden patching up of a peace by the negotiators at Aix La Chapelle—as really happened—on the terms of uti possidetis, it was of vital importance that New France hold fast to every shred of her territory, both ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... he had on one of these occasions, when, from his account, he must have been in considerable danger of his life. He ended his story by making me admire his boots, which he said he still wore, patched though they were, and all their excellent quality lost by patching, because they were of such a first-rate make for long pedestrian excursions. "Though, indeed," he wound up by saying, "the new fashion of railroads would seem to supersede the necessity ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... the good gift of making everybody laugh. I remember once seeing him patching his trousers with a Union Jack, and singing, "We'll never let the Old ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... ears rang again. Well, to tell truth, we had so much playing in the convent garden, and such a long walk home in the evening, that we were generally rather tired and glad to get quickly to bed as mamma bade us. She, poverina! always sat up, patching and darning, long after we were in bed, so that we might ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... doorway in this street struck me particularly, from the exquisite ornamentation of its stone doorway; but the palace to which it opened is abandoned, and in ruins. Most of the better class of these houses are in the same state, modern repair being only a shabby patching up and whitewashing. The quarter is inhabited almost entirely by Mussulmans; and, though habitable houses are greatly in demand in the business parts of Canea, and many of these old palaces could ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... willing, if I knew how," instantly flashed back the other, "but unfortunately my education was neglected when it came to patching up boats, and tinkering with machinery. I'm ashamed to confess to that, but it's the whole sad truth. But, thank goodness, we've got a scoutmaster who can do the job mighty near as well as any machinist going. I'll back Thad, yes, and Allan in the bargain, to make a decent ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... of inconsistency in the rubrics of our Communion Office referred to in the comment on the last rubric, and which is caused by successive attempts at patching (instead of revoking) the alterations made at the revision ...
— Ritual Conformity - Interpretations of the Rubrics of the Prayer-Book • Unknown
... commands, and like a flood poured with sudden violence upon the fortunes of a great number of people, making his path through manifold slaughter and destruction, loading the bodies of free-born men with chains, and crushing some with fetters, while patching up all kinds of accusations far removed from the truth. And to this man is owing one especial atrocity which has branded the time ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... the block-house, to which level the water had not yet reached, Ross found the boat. Moreover, to his great delight, he saw that Anton had been patching it up, so that it was now more serviceable ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... all those articles which have received a large share of wear and tear during the dark winter days. In direct reference to this matter, we may here remark, that sheets should be turned "sides to middle" before they are allowed to get very thin. Otherwise, patching, which is uneconomical from the time it consumes, and is unsightly in point of appearance, will have to be resorted to. In June and July, gooseberries, currants, raspberries, strawberries, and other summer fruits, should be preserved, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the knob and entered a lighted room, where sat his sister and Bernard Higginbotham. She was patching a pair of his trousers, while his lean body was distributed over two chairs, his feet dangling in dilapidated carpet-slippers over the edge of the second chair. He glanced across the top of the paper he was reading, showing a pair of dark, insincere, sharp-staring eyes. Martin Eden ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... this. He neither represented his age, nor led it; he opposed it. His outlook upon the world was truly revolutionary. In his eyes, the reforms which his contemporaries were so busy introducing into society were worse than useless—the mere patching of an edifice which would never be fit to live in. He believed that it was necessary to start altogether afresh. And what makes him so singularly interesting a figure is that, in more than one sense, he was right. It was necessary to start afresh; and the new world which was to spring from ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... absent buttons. With this experience, it will not be long before she will begin to take an interest in her own clothes, and so will not need to be warned that a button is coming off or that the hem of her skirt is coming out. But, of course, she could not begin by sewing or patching her own clothes, nor by mending intricate tears. First see that she sews on buttons correctly and then ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... get somewhere. I suppose it is useless for me to ask," he added, "but have you, by any chance, a bit of canvas—an old sail or hammock?—I don't need much. That's what I came for—and some shellac and wire, and a screwdriver of sorts? We need patching as well as petrol; and we're ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... crew was patching the Argo and pumping the water from her hold, the lookout yelled that another sail was making for them. Without hesitation Talbot somehow got this absurdly impudent one-masted craft of his under way and told those of his sixty men who survived ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... polishing which will determine whether or no you are serious in your endeavor to break into literature, for here the real labor of authorship begins. All that went before was simply child's play compared to this grubbing, plodding, tinkering, and patching, and pottering; so if you have no stomach for this, you had better learn a trade. "Whatever you do, take pains with it. Try at least to write good English: learn to criticise and correct your work: put your best into every sentence. ...
— Short Story Writing - A Practical Treatise on the Art of The Short Story • Charles Raymond Barrett
... managed to stumble backwards, somehow or other, into a large receptacle of lime which was being slaked for patching up a wall. Lime, in that condition, is boiling hot. Mr. Keith's trousers were rather badly scalded. He was sensitive on that point. He suffered a good deal. People came to express their sympathy. The ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... on banks. Attempts to deal with the difficulty without clear perception of its cause took the form of legislative tinkering and patching. Taxes were gathered from corporations by any device that seemed workable. The banks, being the earlier important corporations, were first experimented upon. Taxes on capital stock and on circulation were tried first (in 1805, ...
— Modern Economic Problems - Economics Vol. II • Frank Albert Fetter
... him for his greatness, and despised myself for my pettiness. All the same it was unendurable, and it was a relief to see Joe Braggs tiptoeing carefully across the yard dairywards. The rascal should have been patching a gap in the hedge of Ten-acres, and here he was, foraging for a jug of ale. He could wheedle Jane as easily as he could snare a rabbit, but I would scarify him out of his ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... with all the discussion. I understood, however, that they were revising the creed. You might as well try to patch up your grandfather's overcoat. It will be much better to get a new one. The recent sessions of the Presbytery had been divided into two parties. One was in favour of patching up the old overcoat, the other in favour of a new one. Dr. Briggs had pointed out the torn places—at least five of them. He had revealed it, shabby and somewhat threadbare. Presbyterians had practically discarded the garment. ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... them, for he had long lost the habit of reading, but he liked to turn the pages, look at the illustrations if they were illustrated, and mend the bindings. He welcomed wet days because on them he could stay at home without pangs of conscience and spend the afternoon with white of egg and a glue-pot, patching up the Russia leather of some battered quarto. He had many volumes of old travels, with steel engravings, and Mrs. Carey quickly found two which described Palestine. She coughed elaborately at the door so that Philip should have time to ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... next afternoon when Dick drove slowly along the trail. The three men were flat on their backs under the absorber, patching leaks, when they heard the squeak of the wagon and the soft tread of horses' hoofs in the sand. They made no ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... room to be like any one else's; neither did she look for an easy and successful termination to her quest. Sometimes she got what she asked for, but she asked for little. And to-day Francis Madigan had been tinkering at the old house, hammering here and patching there, a process that specially tried his temper, being a threatening indication of change, which he resented by declaring that "everything goes to ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... here to-day. For weeks past all the Conservative Ladies of Billsbury have been hard at work, knitting, sewing, painting, embroidering, patching, quilting, crocheting, and Heaven knows what besides, for the Bazaar in aid of the Conservative Young Men's Club and Coffee-Room Sustentation Fund. You couldn't call at any house in Billsbury without being nearly smothered in heaps of fancy-work of every kind. When I was at the PENFOLDS' ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... upon a time in the God-guarded city of Cairo a cobbler who lived by patching old shoes.[FN1] His name was Ma'aruf[FN2] and he had a wife called Fatimah, whom the folk had nicknamed "The Dung;"[FN3] for that she was a whorish, worthless wretch, scanty of shame and mickle of mischief. She ruled her spouse and abused him; and he feared her malice and dreaded her misdoings; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... use the wrong patching material. A Number Three suit is as near hydrogen-proof as any flexible material can be, but, even so, it can't be worn for long periods—several days, I mean. But the stuff Vaneski used to patch my suit is a polymer that leaks hydrogen ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... on two dogwood forks, rested the long rifle with its fishtail sight and the brass plate on the stock for the bullets and the "patching." Below it hung the old powder-horn, its wooden plug dangling from a string,—tools of the long ago. Closing one's eyes one could see the tall grandsires fighting in the beech forest, a brown patch of hide sighted over the brass knife-blade bead, and death, and to load again ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... were driven in and forced to join the main ranks for safety. The Mormon troops were placed in position by the officers, so as to guard every point. We all had a large supply of bullets, with the patching sewed on the balls to facilitate the loading of our guns, which were muzzle loaders. The Mormon force was about eight hundred strong, poorly armed; many of the men had no guns; some had single-barrel pistols and a few homemade swords. These ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... making a man of me. I was content to be master, but she said there was better behind; She took the chances I wouldn't, and I followed your mother blind. She egged me to borrow the money, an' she helped me clear the loan, When we bought half shares in a cheap 'un and hoisted a flag of our own. Patching and coaling on credit, and living the Lord knew how, We started the Red Ox freighters—we've eight-and-thirty now. And those were the days of clippers, and the freights were clipper-freights, And we knew we were ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... my country, O son of Hur," she said, presently, "workmen who make pictures by gathering vari-colored shells here and there on the sea-shore after storms, and cutting them up, and patching the pieces as inlaying on marble slabs. Can you not see the hint there is in the practice to such as go searching for secrets? Enough that from this person I gathered a handful of little circumstances, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
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