"Rat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a club, which we called the Cock and Spur, and had a rat-pit and cock-fights in the cellar, on which occasions we invited out young actors from the Boston Museum and Howard Athenaeum stock companies. These in turn pressed us with invitations to similar festivities of ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... dog of Chihuahua and this is, perhaps, the smallest of all canine creatures. Full-grown specimens have been seen, whose dimensions did not exceed those of the common rat; and a singular fact, well authenticated, is, that this dog, when transported from Chihuahua to any other place—even to the city of Mexico itself— invariably becomes larger, or degenerates, as the Mexicans have it! There is also in Mexico a hairless dog. It ...
— Quadrupeds, What They Are and Where Found - A Book of Zoology for Boys • Mayne Reid
... influence egging on the Iroquois, the treachery of the Huron chief, The Rat, lashed the vengeance {165} of the Five Nations to a fury. He had come down to Fort Frontenac to aid the French. He was told that the French had again arranged peace with the Iroquois, and deputies were even now on their way ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... harbors: Dubrovnik, Dugi Rat, Omisalj, Ploce, Pula, Rijeka, Sibenik, Split, Vukovar (inland ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... is said to be tender and toothsome, but that overpowering smell of musk proved too much for our determination. You may break, you may shatter the rat if you will, but the scent of the musk-rose will cling to it still. There is a limit to every one's scientific research, and, personally, until insistent hunger gnaws at my vitals and starvation looms round the edge of the next iceberg, I draw the ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... Quick! quick! The police are here! The commissary is asking for you. Quick! Get away, or you'll be caught like a rat in a trap. You know the way. Leave ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... Pontiac, whose name is as prominent in the history of the past as the names of the Onondaga Garangula, the Huron Kondiaronk (Rat), the Mohawk Thayendenagea (Brant), and the Shawanoese Tecumseh. He was the son of an Ottawa chief and an Ojibway mother, and had a high reputation and large influence among the {271} tribes of the ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... was the silver, slimy trace of slugs in all directions; I could fancy, too, the hundred other creeping things that were about. As the match died out, a noise among the stones near the wall caused me hastily to strike another, just in time to see a large rat whisk into its hole. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 28, April 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... letters—a thing which took place constantly—he took a piece from the pile, wrapped it in the letter and sent it out by the servant. Money ran through his fingers. When he went to see Charles X. at Prague, and the king questioned him in reference to his affairs, his response was, "I am as poor as a rat." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... to Pagan poets and philosophers. The people were so ignorant, and such implicit believers, that it could be done with security. But now the case is altered. The people are beginning to "smell a rat." It dawns upon them that if so many fine things were said by those old Pagans—not to mention the still more ancient teaching of India and Egypt—Christianity can hardly merit such epithets as "unique" and "wonderful." Accordingly it is becoming the fashion in clerical circles to avoid ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... course, you do not know where to find a wife between the time the hawk stoops and the rat squeaks in its claws. How should you who have never thought of the matter? Also," he continued, with a smile, "it is well that you have not thought of it, since she whom I shall give to you could not live in the second hut in your kraal and call another 'Inkosikazi' ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... the ship and find me gone they'll telegraph to London," said the old man. "I won't be caught like a rat in a trap." ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... he had left Cloudsdale, for he never passed the house on any of his numerous expeditions without running in for ten minutes' chat, so that the girls were getting accustomed to see his head appear at the window as they sat at work, or to hear the loud rat-tat on the door which heralded his coming. They soon had practical demonstration of his "managing powers," for more than once, after definitely making up their minds that nothing would induce them to stir from the house, they found themselves meekly putting on hats and jackets to join a tobogganing ...
— Sisters Three • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that there was a rat in the nursery, and thus he forgot to tell her the wonderful news. It did not much matter, for Judy was only three and she would not have understood. But Punch was five; and he knew that going to England would be much nicer than a trip ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... am a Flemyng, what for all that Although I wyll be dronken other whyles as a rat. ...
— Early English Meals and Manners • Various
... that you are right. You know how to make yourself respected, I believe. But many women like to be beaten. I know that I should love the man who could beat me. But he would have to fight with me first. My husband is as timid as a Norway rat. You don't see him here often." Gudrid had never seen him. "He comes when I send ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... that the lady was a person of unblemished reputation, and that she was placed in a false position through no fault of her own. In plain English, she was divorced. Ah, my dear (to speak in the vivid language of the people), do you smell a rat? ...
— The Evil Genius • Wilkie Collins
... rabbit-hutch, they are as useless as they are harmless. The usual ornament of an animal's hind quarters is denied them; and were it not for this fact, and also for their difference in colour, the Shaksperean locution, "a rat without a tail," would designate them ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... the corporation as he sat Looking little though wondrous fat; Nor brighter was his eye, nor moister Than a too-long-opened oyster, Save when at noon his paunch grew mutinous For a plate of turtle green and glutinous), "Only a scraping of shoes on the mat Anything like the sound of a rat Slakes my heart ...
— The New McGuffey Fourth Reader • William H. McGuffey
... grew angry, and caught Theseus round the neck, and shook him as a mastiff shakes a rat; but he could not shake ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... being no particular detriment to the crab, would be but slightly affected by natural selection, though open to the cumulative effects of disuse. The disused but better protected eyes of the blind cave-rat are still "of large size" (Origin of Species, ...
— Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? - An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin • William Platt Ball
... adresse—c'est Leycesster Sqvare, Et pour reference j'espere Que la statue de Shakespeare vous suffira,' 'Ah! connais-tu ma mie, La fille du sergent?' 'Si; Mais elle est morte comme un rat!' ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... was as much at home in water as an otter or a musk-rat. Indeed he had been known among his playmates in the old country as the "Water-rat." When, therefore, he plunged into the river, as described, he took care to hold his breath as if for a long dive, and drifted with the current a considerable distance as motionless ...
— The Buffalo Runners - A Tale of the Red River Plains • R.M. Ballantyne
... a rat-tat sounded from without, and, having advised Lilian to lock the door, Mrs. Wade crossed to the other room. ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... stick in the wall," said Betty, contemptuously. "Find you the meat, and I'll find the deceit: for he is as poor as a rat into the bargain. Nay, nay, God Almighty will never have the heart to burn us two for such a trifle. Why 't is no more than cheating a froward child ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... breeding experiments. Tame rats, for instance, are very docile; their offspring can be handled without a bit of trouble. The wild rat, on the other hand, is not at ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... all the people were, Mr. Mouse picked up his feet and ran down a rat hole; but Miss Pussy Cat sat down by the side of the road to eat a little. She was sitting there, spreading out all her good country sausage and good country ham and such things, when a town cat came prowling ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... point about it, too. If this outsider who has taken on the job for them should really turn out to be Jocelyn Thew, I'd have banked on his working the scheme from Chicago. He knows the back ways of the city, or rather he used to, like a rat. Gee, it would be a queer thing if after all these years one were to get the bracelets ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... like a drowned rat." Kirkwood eyed him sheepishly. "I suppose you're the man who threw me that line? I'll have to wait till my head clears up before I can ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... confess, but to me more serious than L's and sky-scrapers; yes, than love. Mine is an infinite labor: first to shape the true tool, and then to master the material! I grant you I may die any day like a rat on a housetop, with only a bundle of musty papers, the tags of broken conversations, and one or two dead, distorted nerves. That is our common risk. But I shall accomplish as much of the road as God permits the snail, and I shall have moulded something; life will have justified ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... I had gone through I should still not succeed in carrying my prize into port. Had I been followed by the curse of some revengeful old witch I could scarcely have been compelled to encounter more difficulties and mishaps; such a witch as Shakespeare describes as sailing in a sieve, and like a rat without ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... shut one's eyes, but one can't do away with one's nose!" persisted Miss Barton. "There was the most horrible and peculiar and objectionable odour in the hall yesterday morning, all the time I was painting. I came to the conclusion that a rat must have died recently behind the panelling. Then Mrs. Marsden came in with some milk-cans, and she raised a lid from a big pot close to where I was sitting. What do you think was inside? Twelve pounds of beef that ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... Instead of the idea being horrid, we were glad to know that "necessity is the mother of invention," and that the idea had originated in the mind of genius. We at once acted upon the information, and started out rat hunting; but we couldn't find any rats. Presently we came to an old outhouse that seemed to be a natural harbor for this kind of vermin. The house was quickly torn down and out jumped an old residenter, who was old and gray. I suppose that he had been chased before. But we had ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... newes, that thou com'st in so bluntly? Rat. Bad news my Lord, Mourton is fled to Richmond, And Buckingham backt with the hardy Welshmen Is in the field, and still his ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... Bingo spent in our shanty, living the life of a blubbery, fat, well-meaning, ill-doing puppy; gorging himself with food and growing bigger and clumsier each day. Even sad experience failed to teach him that he must keep his nose out of the rat trap. His most friendly overtures to the cat were wholly misunderstood and resulted only in an armed neutrality that varied by occasional reigns of terror, continued to the end; which came when Bingo, who early showed a mind of his own, got a notion for sleeping at the barn ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... produced of his pace,—how he had beaten that horse, giving him two pounds; how he had been beaten by that, but only on a mile course; the Leger distance was just the thing for Prime Minister; how by a lucky chance that marvellous quick rat of a thing that had won the Derby had not been entered for the autumn race; how Coalheaver was known to have had bad feet. "He's a stout 'orse, no doubt,—is the 'Eaver," said Mr. Pook, "and that's why the betting-men have stuck to him. But he'll be nowhere on Wednesday. They're ...
— The Duke's Children • Anthony Trollope
... on the quarters, his fore feet about the horns, and drew the head backward with such force as to break the back of the animal. On another occasion the same hunter saw a lion who took a heifer in his mouth, and though its legs trailed on the ground, he carried it off as a cat would a rat, and jumped across a wide ditch without difficulty. These accounts of the lion's strength were articles of faith with James Rounders. He had been told that the royal Bengal tiger of Asia was the equal in strength, if not the superior, of the African ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... man's wrist protruding from holes in the cliff into which they were driven. Es-sat's four handlike members and his long, sinuous tail permitted him to move with consummate ease whither he chose—a gigantic rat upon a mighty wall. As he progressed upon his way he avoided the cave mouths, passing either above or below those that ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... some four feet above the smooth grass below, he sprang down. Scarcely had he touched the ground when a man, leaping suddenly out of a thick clump of bushes near that side of the house, caught him in a savage grip and shook him with all the fury of an enraged mastiff shaking a rat. Taken thus unawares, and rendered almost breathless by the swiftness of the attack, Clifford struggled in the grasp of his assailant and fought with him desperately for a moment without any idea of his identity,—then as by a dexterous twist of body he managed to partially extricate himself, ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... the ship's cat coming across the deckload toward him, in his yellow eyes a singularly pleased expression and in his mouth a singularly large rat. ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... "The Rat Catcher then said 'Look behind.' I looked behind, and there on the seat was strapped a larger cake. This contained 145 live ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various
... abut on pitchy darkness! I wonder why it is not enough that these distrustful genii stand agape at one's dreams all night, but there must also be round open portholes, high in the wall, suggestive, when a mouse or rat is heard behind the wainscot, of a somebody scraping the wall with his toes, in his endeavours to reach one of these portholes and look in! I wonder why the faggots are so constructed, as to know of no effect but an agony of heat when they are lighted and replenished, and an agony ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... ants, musquitoes, nor any of the tormenting insects so common in tropical climates; no beast of prey, no destructive worm nor serpent; even the scorpion (of which a small sort is to be met with) here loses its poison. The only plague of this kind is a large rat, which does much mischief in the fields, and sometimes even bites the Tahaitians ...
— A New Voyage Round the World in the Years 1823, 24, 25, and 26. Vol. 1 • Otto von Kotzebue
... and purges for the use of poorer neighbors. The daily business of this good lady was to scold the maids, collect eggs, feed the turkeys and assist at all lyings-in that happened within the parish. Alas! this being is no more seen, and the race is, like that of her pug dog and the black rat, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... from it all at the last moment. Presently, however, he was aware that the Corn-chandler had seated himself on the other side of the chiffonier, puffing, and panting with heat, and indignation,—where he was presently joined by another individual,—a small, rat-eyed man, who bid Mr. Grimes a ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... gross and barbarous composition, which would not be supported by the lowest populace in France and Italy. Hamlet goes mad in the second act, Ophelia in the third; he takes the father of his mistress for a rat, and runs him through the body. In despair, the heroine drowns herself. Her grave is dug on the stage, while the grave-diggers enter into a conversation suitable (!) to such low wretches, and play, as it were, with dead men's bones! Hamlet ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 552, June 16, 1832 • Various
... feeling his pocket, "what does the rogue want with his friendship? I'm as poor as a rat. Who is he?" ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... me to quit," he muttered. "I'd be a blooming jackass to waste any more time here. I'll have to work it naturally, though, or Lynch will smell a rat." ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... old mouse, or rat—the rabbis of Talmud have not yet agreed concerning the species—perceiving by this perfume that this shrew-mouse was appointed to guard the grain of Gargantua, and had been sprinkled with virtues, invested with full powers, and armed at all points, was alarmed lest ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... time to get out of the ship, you rat," Pyotr Stepanovitch was thinking as he went out into the street. "Well, if that 'imperial intellect' inquires so confidently of the day and the hour and thanks me so respectfully for the information I ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... but life was sweet to him, and to die like that—like a drowned rat in a hole—to be able to do nothing but wait for that swift and sure oncoming death! He reeled against the damp rock wall, and for a moment sea and sky and prisoning headlands and white-lined tide whirled ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... no difference; but I should rather make a struggle for my life before I die, than be drowned like a rat in a hole." ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... longer than me, so I suppose I mustn't object to the order of precedence." She looked at him mockingly, then, with a quick, fierce movement, she took his face between her hands. And an intelligent and bewhiskered old water rat regarded the subsequent proceedings with ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... hardly a man as 'ud speak civil to each other, and the wimmen was a'most as bad. Cats and dogs and such-like began to act as if the place belonged to 'em, and seven people stopped Mr. Bunnett one day to tell 'im that Joe Parsons 'ad been putting down rat-poison and killed five little baby ...
— Ship's Company, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... scampered and scurried now behind the wainscoting as though conscious of their release. "Even the rats are glad," Maggie thought to herself. In the uncertain candle-light the fancy seized her that one rat, a very large one, had crept out from his hole, crawled on to the bed, and now sat on the sheet looking at her father. It would be a horrible thing did the rat walk across her father's beard, and yet for her life she could not move. She waited, fascinated. She fancied that the beard ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... again; for although the fellow had probably not understood a single word of what Jose had said, he had sense enough to know that the two ruffians before him had scuttled the ship, and that if locked up in his pantry again he would probably drown there, like a rat in a trap. His entreaties, how ever, were of course unavailing with two men who knew not the meaning of mercy; there was a Spanish oath or two, the sound of a scuffle, mingled with further cries of distress from the steward, the slamming of a door, the sharp click ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... cat in the garden laying for a rat, There's a boy with a catapult a-laying for the cat, The cat's name is Susan, the boy's name is Jim. And his father round the corner is a-laying ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier
... others. It is rather exciting wandering about in front of the line, as lights go up every now and then and show a bright white light in the air for a minute or two like a rocket. When one goes up you fall flat and pretend you are a sandbag or a milk-can or a rat. You may meet Fritz on the same job sometimes; I always have a bomb handy to ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... Messrs. Omer and Joram. All the mixed mirth and sadness of the story are skilfully drawn into the handling of this portion of it; and, amid wooings and preparations for weddings and church-ringing bells for baptisms, the steadily-going rat-tat of the hammer on the ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... burst my stays all to pieces in saving it from being squeezed out of shape, and now this old brute has made a brandy-bottle of it."—"Oh! oh! my young Miss in disguise," replied the farmer, "I thought I smelt a rat when the Captain left the coach, under pretence of walking up the hill—what, I suppose vou are bound for Gretna, both of ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... gazed at them with intense relish. He realized the joy of a coup. He had never been very important in his own estimation nor that of others. Now he knew what it was to be important. "Yes," he said, gayly; "they say she give her rat poison. They've sent for the ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... a little money," said Mr. Watson, "is just like a cat with a bell around its neck. Every rat knows exactly where it is and what it ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... rutting leopardess, the liver of a forest rat, the tongue of a Baroto bird—these must I have to mix with thy blood to be drunk by thy man when the ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... filled up and useless. We left Delemy's castle in the afternoon, about two or three o'clock, and we went at a pace called by the Arabs el herka[119], over a plain country infested with rats, and the haunts of serpents, our horses continually stumbling over the rat-holes. We were, to the best of my recollection, about four hours going. We found Tomie, an open road, not altogether calculated to form an advantageous commercial establishment. Its situation with respect to the sea being somewhat objectionable. ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny
... dislocated wrist. But there was no accident. The engine started as smoothly as it had never done before. Mr. and Mrs. Anderson went to the Railway refreshment rooms. There they were informed that no tea was available. A dead rat had been found under one of the tables in the first class refreshment room, and as plague cases had been reported earlier in the week, the station master had ordered the rooms to be closed till they had been thoroughly disinfected. ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... the rats at Harwan, but their conduct was exemplary compared with that of the rats of Rainawari! I had been writing my journal, according to my custom, before going to sleep, and hardly had "lights out" been sounded than a rat went off with my candle, literally from below my very nose. Then, from the inadequately partitioned chamber where the invalid vainly sought repose, came sounds of strife—boots and curses flying—followed by an extraordinary scraping and scuffling. ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... the seaman. "D—n your rat's eyes! none of your—hang thee! fish my top-masts! if the rope was fairly reeved, and the tackle sound, d'ye see"—Mr. Clarke, who was present, began to stare, while the knight assured Ferret, that if he was really able and willing to serve Captain Crowe in ...
— The Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves • Tobias Smollett
... falling in love with each other was not a result to justify much surprise. Indeed, there was a special propriety in their doing so. The Shackfords had always been reputable people in the village,—down to Lemuel Shackford, who of course as an old musk-rat. The family attributes of amiability and honesty had skipped him, but they had reappeared in Richard. It was through his foresight and personal energy that the most lucrative branch of the trade had been established. His services entitled him to a future interest in the ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... the spot where a man can pick and choose, so I wiped the shell grit from my drill suit and told myself that I had better accept the berth instead of waiting in expectation of something better turning up. Pierre the Rat, who ran "The Rathole," where penniless seamen and beachcombers lodged, was my creditor, and when Pierre was very solicitous in obtaining employment for one of his boarders, it was a mighty good intimation that the boarder's credit had ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... sun dipped, and ever dipped toward the west, when suddenly a sound afar rekindled her fainting spirits. Listening more attentively, she was assured imagination had not deceived her; it was the faint patter of a horse's hoofs. Nearer it drew; quicker beat her pulses. Moreover, it was the rat-a-tat of galloping. Some one was pursuing the coach on horseback. Impatient to glance behind, she only refrained ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... his reply, "the woman will give the whole thing to the newspapers. They have smelled a rat so long they would pay well for a tip. She has all the documents. So if you want to swing and ruin everybody concerned, just ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... completed, being interrupted by a thundering rat-tat-tat at the front door, followed by a pealing at the bell, which indicated that the visitor was manfully following the printed injunction to "Ring also." The door was opened and a man's voice was heard in the hall-a loud, confident voice, at ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... only in memory. That part of the county seat is a ghost town. Timbermen and loggers gather no more for revelry at the riverfront saloon. And should you ask the reason, the old river rat will answer with a slow-breaking smile, "See off yonder—locks and dams! Can't run the logs ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... the horse again spoke to the boy, and said: "Wa-ti-hes Chah-ra-rat-wa-ta." To-morrow the Sioux are coming in a large war-party. They will attack the village, and you will have a great battle. Now, when the Sioux are drawn up in line of battle, and are all ready to fight, you jump on me, and ride as hard as you can, ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... bushy tail which serves you for ornament. This reminds me that you are not like the dogs I used to know—the dogs that talked with their tails, caressed with their tongues, and were never over-clean or well-behaved. Where are they now—collies, rat-worrying terriers, hounds, spaniels, pointers, retrievers—dogs rough and dogs smooth; big brute boarhounds, St. Bernard's, mastiffs, nearly or quite as big as you are, but not so slender, silky-haired, and sharp-nosed, and without your refined expression ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... Chinese cigar-makers," cried Marcus, in a passion, brandishing his fist. "It's them as is ruining the cause of white labor. They are, they are for a FACT. Ah, the rat-eaters! Ah, ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... from before me, moving backwards and keeping his eyes fixed upon mine, as I have seen a rat do when a snake is about to swallow it. Now we were upon the edge of the crater, and looking over I saw an awful sight. For there, some thirty feet beneath us, the red-hot lava glowing sullenly beneath a shifting pall of smoke, rolled and spouted ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... picture he presented as he poked and pried in those dim regions, by the dim rays of the lamp. Spiders, roaches and a great gray rat or two were his only companions—those, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... interfere with no-one and no-one didn't interfere with us. We 'ad some old 'tatoes about, but mocely we lived on rats. Ours was a old 'ouse, full of rats, and the famine never seemed to bother 'em. Orfen we got a rat. Orfen. But moce of the people who lived hereabouts was too tender stummicked for rats. Didn't seem to fancy 'em. They'd been used to all sorts of fallals, and they didn't take to 'onest feeding, not till it was too late. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... than once, stealing into the room, when it was her watch off, she would catch the two men glaring ferociously at each other, wild animals the pair of them, in Hans's face the lust to kill, in Dennin's the fierceness and savagery of the cornered rat. "Hans!" she would cry, "wake up!" and he would come to a recollection of himself, ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... He did not believe that Akers cared a penny piece for a membership, and pooh-pooh it as he would, this trifling affair would not let him alone. It gnawed under the great sorrow of Jane's absence, like a rat gnawing under his ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... from which dangled rags of uniform and rags of flesh: falling on faces of the unburied dead that it was helping to dissolve into, their primal pulp of clay. War! always war! and no theatre of scarlet and gold and cavalry charges, but a rat's war of mud and cold and fleas and unutterable, nerve-dissolving fatigue. Not far off occasionally the rustle of clothes or the tinkle of an entrenching tool, as a sleeper turned over or the group sentry shifted arms ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... he took her hand, "it was a hunt where I came upon unexpected game, but how could you ever feel any love for a poor river-rat?" ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... that little rat. I mean the big fellow with the heavy jaw and a face like a rattlesnake. He's trying to charm ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... pointed to one spot where he supposed they were, and then to others, and demanded by signs how they should get there. The black clapped his hands, and began looking about the cabins as a terrier hunts for a rat. ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... and divines applaud, and schoolmasters usher him into the polite world, and English scholars carry on the jest, while Horne Tooke's genuine anatomy of our native tongue is laid on the shelf. Can it be that our politicians smell a rat in the Member for Old Sarum? That our clergy do not relish Parson Horne? That the world at large are alarmed at acuteness and originality greater than their own? What has all this to do with the formation of the English language or with the first conditions and necessary ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... worked and eased my pig off under my cloak till I got him to roll down behind the bed. I knew," said Mr. Ringgan, laughing, "I knew by the captain's eye, as well as I knew anything, that he smelt a rat; but he kept our counsel, as well as his own; and when he was gone we took the pig out into the woods behind the shanty and roasted him finely, and we sent and asked Capt. Sears to supper; and he came and helped us eat the pig with a great deal of appetite, and never asked no questions ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Nobody knew what was the matter of the animals, until an old negro, who lived near, came out and said, "You uns ought to know better than to let you horses eat dat sneeze weed. Dat is poison. Kills animals, just like rat poison." And then he showed us a weed, with a square stem, that grew there, and which was called sneeze weed. He said native animals would not touch it, but strange animals eat it because it was nice and green. Well, ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... little. Ha! What is't thou says't?—Her voice was ever soft, Gentle, and low; an excellent thing in woman:— I kill'd the slave that was a hanging thee. And my poor fool is hang'd! No, no, no life: Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, And thou no breath at all? O, thou wilt come no more, Never, ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... long night wore away, till at length Rachel woke with a start thinking that a hand had been laid upon her face, to see by the faint light of dawn which struggled into the hut through the cracks of the door-boards that the hand was only a great rat that had crawled over her and now nibbled at her hair. She sat up, frightening it and its companions away, then rose and washed herself with water that stood by in great gourds while without she heard the women ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... mind with the morning; I have no guess what I should do. 'Tis easy to say that the public duty should brush aside these little considerations of personal dignity; so it is that politicians begin, and in a month you find them rat and flatter and intrigue with brows of brass. I am rather of the old view, that a man's first duty is to these little laws; the big he does not, he never will, understand; I may be wrong about the Chief Justice and the Baron and the state of Samoa; ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wild fowl, now falling to ruin for want of use. Guided by the radiant moonlight, I could see the very spot on which Mary and I had stood to watch the snaring of the ducks. Through the hole in the paling before which the decoy-dog had shown himself, at Dermody's signal, a water-rat now passed, like a little black shadow on the bright ground, and was lost in the waters of the lake. Look where I might, the happy by-gone time looked back in mockery, and the voices of the past came to me with their ...
— The Two Destinies • Wilkie Collins
... actually the whole rat's nest was stamped out without attention being brought to it so far as the Magnitogorsk public is concerned." He nodded heavily again. "You can almost always be depended upon to do the right thing, Ilya. If you ...
— Freedom • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... and fetch the mouse-trap out of the cellar," said her Godmother, and Cinderella hurried to get it. There were six mice in the trap, and the old woman harnessed them to the pumpkin, put a rat on the top to drive them, and two lizards behind, and then waved her wand over them. Immediately the pumpkin turned into a gorgeous coach, the mice into six beautiful horses, the rat into a stately coachman, and the lizards into tall footmen, with powdered hair and silk stockings. "There," said ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... "You rat!" he yelled. "Double-cross me, will yeh?" He heard the sound of a body moving over loose stones and halted, weaving in his tracks and peering into ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... him, "you can't stay here. You'd starve to death like that poor devil that some prospectors found in that gulch yonder—turned to dusty bones, with a pack rat's nest in his chest and a rock under his head. You'd ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... hippopotamuses, mended watches and musical boxes for black chiefs, patched his own clothes and made clothes for some of his men, invented rat-traps and machines for making rockets, tamed baby lions and baby hippopotamuses, cleaned guns, raided the camps of slavers, nursed the sick, and fed the hungry. And day and night he worked to rid the land of slavery; to teach ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... put his hand to his mouth and yelled: "Spad, spad," at the top of his voice. Oliver understood the epithet, it meant that he wore clean linen, polished shoes, and perhaps, now and then, a pair of gloves. He had heard the same outcry in his own city, for the slang of the street-rat is Volapuk the world over. But he did not resent the assault. He was too tired to chase any boys, and too despondent to ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... enough, rat." Nick spat contemptuously, and a puff of gray smoke spread rapidly over walls, ceiling and floor. "That will hold you," he jeered, and opened the door. Aping the Minister's important waddle, he walked over to ...
— Satan and the Comrades • Ralph Bennitt
... wet as a drowned rat, Pink," struck in Clancy, "and if you don't go back to town Chip and I will worry our ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... business altogether," returned young Ashiel. "I don't know which part of it is the worst. There's my uncle dead, shot down like a rat by some cold-blooded scoundrel; and now my cousin David, poor chap, in jail, and under charge of murder. It seems impossible to believe it of him, and yet, what is one to believe? One can only suppose that ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... which would follow upon the deed, the package of rat-poison would be found under the chest of drawers in the maid's room, half empty. It would be discovered that every alternate paper of Matilde's medicine had been tampered with, and it would be supposed that Matilde had at the first time taken one of those containing ...
— Taquisara • F. Marion Crawford
... to himself.) There's a sight! There's sound! The greyheaded woodpecker tapping the hollow tree! Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See! that thing rests on two line-tubs, full of tow-lines. A most malicious wag, that fellow. Rat-tat! So man's seconds tick! Oh! how immaterial are all materials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts? Here now's the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign of the help and hope of most endangered life. ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... sound behind, such as a rat might have made, and Hampton glanced aside apprehensively. In that single second Slavin was upon him, grasping his pistol-arm at the wrist, and striving with hairy hand to get a death-grip about his throat. Twice Hampton's left drove straight ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... that isn't a rat!" cried the little boy. "Rats can scratch, but rats can't mew. Only cats can do that! Here, pussy!" he called. "Come ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... out for that, sir," replied the captain. "He and his chum were looking for this fellow this morning, and found out where he lay, from the shore. I think he will be able to locate him from the water, and if he does I'll have the rat out of his hole in a brace of shakes, provided you will ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... I'd be sorer'n a scalded wharf rat in a barrel of pepper. But I don't count. There's the real one ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... arm through the wind and rain, summoned a kind of little, white, wooden sarcophagus which was skipping near us on the waves, sculled by two yellow boys stark naked in the rain. The craft approached us, I jumped into it, then through a little trap-door shaped like a rat-trap that one of the scullers threw open for me, I slipped in and stretched myself at full length on a mat in what is called ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... thought well of him, every one had believed that his future career would be brilliant. Now it had ended in this obscure and dreadful fashion, as ends the life of a trapped rat. ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... temperament as Murphy's, a life like this was happiness itself. He was sociable, and loved company intensely, though preferably the company of Man. Solitude he abhorred; games were his delight; for killing things, even were it a rat from one of the thousand holes he met with when walking by the river, he never cared, and indeed appeared never quite to understand. "Live and let live" was his motto, while playing always the game ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... which resolved itself into two ideas: to leave the house, and get to the wharves. He did not think these ideas, he saw them written in fiery letters on the darkness. Once at the wharves he could hide all day, return at night for his treasure, then conceal himself, like a rat, in the hold of some vessel and escape without any one suspecting his whereabouts. But to do all this, money, gold, was his first necessity,—and he ...
— Juana • Honore de Balzac
... crazed with funk. It was no time for gentlemanly reproof, so I turned round and felled him like an ox. He up and at me. We closed just as an awful sea made for the ship. All hands saw it coming and took to the rigging, but I had him by the throat, and went on shaking him like a rat, the men above us yelling, "Look out! look out!" Then a crash as if the sky had fallen on my head. They say that for over ten minutes hardly anything was to be seen of the ship—just the three masts and a bit of the forecastle ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... as a continual remembrancer. But Mrs. Moggs never exulted over his defeat; and, though once compelled to harshness, continued to be to Montezuma a most excellent wife. The shop looks lively now—and the bell to the door is removed; for Moggs, with his rat-tat-tat, is ever at his post, doing admired execution on the dilapidated boots and shoes. The Moggses prosper, and all through the efficacy of a bucket of cold water. We should not wonder if, in the end, the Moggs family were to become rich, through the force of industry, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... many diverse paths had crossed and re-crossed each other, that the dog had a hard task to retain any hold on the track he followed. But he kept on his way, though the cold pierced him to the bone, and the jagged ice cut his feet, and the hunger in his body gnawed like a rat's teeth. He kept on his way, a poor gaunt, shivering thing, and by long patience traced the steps he loved into the very heart of the burgh and up to the ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... rat when I came through this car a time back. You say you caught sight of this fellow when ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... can get him to stay will you stay too, Jombateeste? I don't like to see a rat leaving a ship; the ship's sure to sink, if he does. How do you suppose I'm going to run Lion's Head without you to throw down hay to the horses? It will be ruin to me, sure, Jombateeste. All the guests know how you play on the pitchfork ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... weasel of New England is about the size of a big rat; that is, it is sixteen inches long and all brown with the exception of white chin, throat, breast, and paws, and black tip to the tail. In winter it turns white except the tail tip; that does ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... way between a mouse and a rat, five or six inches long, with a tail perhaps five inches more, about as big around as a man's thumb, bushy, but of even size the whole length, top of head dark gray, yellowish circles about the shining black ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... says Mrs. Bear. Growl in the house. Mrs. Bear says, says she, 'Oh, you can rip and rear, but Brother Rabbit goes about with his head combed, and he looks lots better that way than them that go about with rat nests ...
— Little Mr. Thimblefinger and His Queer Country • Joel Chandler Harris
... the warriors of our day, and which is in conformity to the custom of ancient heroes, who scorned to defend themselves in rear. His face, rendered exceeding terrible and warlike by a pair of black mustachios; his hair strutting out on each side in stiffly pomatumed ear-locks, and descending in a rat-tail queue below his waist; a shining stock of black leather supporting his chin, and a little but fierce cocked hat, stuck with a gallant and fiery air over his left eye. Such was the chivalric port ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... wholesale business. They leave the small necessity of their next-door neighbor to the retailers, who are poorer in statistics and general facts, but richer in the every-day charities. Mr. Bernard felt, at first, as one does who sees a gray rat steal out of a drain and begin gnawing at the bark of some tree loaded with fruit or blossoms, which he will soon girdle, if he is let alone. The first impulse is to murder him with the nearest ragged stone. Then one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... attachment. And it took all the principle I had by me to git up even a emotion of pity for the one-eyed watcher, whose only recreation seemin'ly durin' that long, long day wuz to watch our party as clost as any cat ever watched a rat hole, and to kinder hang round us. Faith kep' pretty clost to me all day and seemed to take a good deal of comfort watchin' the ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... death.... We have seen an American sun, and an American moon, and American stars, and we think they "get up these things better than we do." We have had several fresh squalls, and one heavy gale; we have shipped sundry seas; we have had rat-hunting and harpooning of porpoises; we have caught several ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble |
