"Fag" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... at her obstinacy, and Frank and Die together sought the den of the Justice, to which they were guided by a high voice chanting the fag-end of ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... hard-fought game of football. In fact, he hardly knew what physical fatigue was; and only once, when he was suffering from a chill, and had to sit for his senior scholarship examination, do I recollect his exhibiting any sign of mental fag. He found rest in change of employment. Athletic exercises were a natural antidote to his strenuous intellectual work; and music lifted him into the region of pure emotion and soothed his soul with ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... sxerca. Facilitate faciligi. Facility facileco. Facsimile faksimilo. Fact fakto. Fact, in (adv.) ja. Faction sekto. Factious malpaca. Factor (agent) faktoro. Factory fabrikejo. Faculty fakultato. Faculty kapablo. Fade velki. Fading velkanto. Fag laboregi. Fagot brancxaro. Fail manki. Fail malprosperi. Fail (bankruptcy) bankroti. Failure malprospero. Failing (fault) kulpo. Faint sveni. Faint (swoon) sveno. Faint hearted timema. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Abigail Church. PF for Polly Frazior. I have presented one piece of ribbin to my aunt as you directed. She gives her love to you, & thanks you for it. I intend to send Nancy Mackky a pair of lace mittens, & the fag end of Harry's watch string. I hope Carolus (as papa us'd to call him) will think his daughter very smart with them. I am glad Hon^d madam, that you think my writing is better than it us'd to be—you see it is mended just here. I dont know what you mean by terrible margins vaze. I will endeavor ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... his fielding? It was all right. Make the rest of the team fag about, yes. But not a chap who, dash it all, had got his ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... the school, ruled over his subjects, and bullied them, with splendid superiority. This one blacked his shoes: that toasted his bread, others would fag out, and give him balls at cricket during whole summer afternoons. "Figs" was the fellow whom he despised most, and with whom, though always abusing him, and sneering at him, he scarcely ever condescended to hold ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... prosperous, famous, by far the most celebrated man in America, accepting without demur the difficult and dangerous mission to France, and whispering to his friend, Dr. Rush, "I am old and good for nothing, but as the store-keepers say of their remnants of cloth, 'I am but a fag-end, and you may have me ...
— The Americanism of Washington • Henry Van Dyke
... difficult to kill the fatted calf for the return of the Samaritan, but Giardini contributed the fag end of a salmon, the trull paid for wine, Gambara produced some bread, Signora Giardini lent a cloth, and the unfortunates all supped together in ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... realised it was the cigarette to which I had helped myself from the beautifully chased silver casket I had taken from the mantelpiece. I eyed the thing and concluded it was made of the very cheapest tobacco, and was what the street urchin calls a "fag." I learned afterwards that I was right. She purchased them at the rate of six for a penny, and smoked them in enormous quantities. For politeness' sake I continued to puff at the unclean thing until I ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... the same night, by a Mrs. Stanley, at the Coburg Theatre, of the parts of Lady Anne, Tressell, and Richmond, in "Richard III." A Mr. W. Rede once accomplished the difficult feat of appearing as Sir Lucius O'Trigger, Fag, and Mrs. Malaprop in a representation of "The Rivals," the lady's entrance in the last scene having been preceded by the abrupt exit of Sir Lucius and the omission of the concluding passages of his part. The characters ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... shall be too late for the summer's printing. If it isn't done by June, what will become of me? I shall go back to Italy in disgrace, and considerably poorer than I need be, which is of more practical consequence. So I fag. Then there's an hour and a half in the morning for Penini's lessons. We breakfast at nine, and receive nobody till past four. This will all prove to you two things, dearest friend—first (I hope) that I'm pardonable for making you wait a few days longer than should have ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... fag, this 'chay' to drag—the babbies too is cross, And Mrs. S is riled. 'Tis quite a bore; the task is more—more fitt'rer for an horse; And vith ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... smartly! there is another boat out there somewhere, and she must be prevented from coming alongside at all costs. Light another port-fire forward, there!" as the man in the fore-rigging dropped the fag-end of the first into the water alongside and the blackness of darkness once more enshrouded us as with ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... you cherish wrathful scorn for the English boy who makes another boy his fag, and you express a sneering pity for the boy who consents to fag. You have read Dr. Birch and His Young Friends, and you would like to break the head of Master Hewlett, who shies his shoe at the poor shivering, craven Nightingale, ...
— Ars Recte Vivende - Being Essays Contributed to "The Easy Chair" • George William Curtis
... and made others happy; and then it would rather be from some special piece of drollery that the joy of the moment would come, than from the discussion of ordinary topics. After so many years his old friends remember the fag-ends of the doggerel lines which used to drop from him without any effort on all occasions of jollity. And though he could be very sad,—laden with melancholy, as I think must have been the case with him always,—the feeling ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... furlong, and few odd yards from that oft-recorded good town, a dry stone wall, some thirty inches in height, runs from the lofty and perpendicular sea-banks, over a portion of what may be termed the fag-end of Lammermoor, and now forming a separation between the laws of Scotland and the jurisdiction of the said good town; and on crossing to the northern side of this humble but important stone wall, you stand on the lands of Lamberton. Rather more than a stone-throw from the sea, the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... did he take to saddle that the fag end of the dawn was still sweet in the air when he passed under the great limbs of the stragglers of the forests clothing his eastern hill-slopes. He noted how between the widely separated boles the grass was thick and rich and untrampled; reserved against ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... at San Damiano this morning," interrupted Bobbie, indignantly; "awfully good-looking—and the most affected cad I ever beheld. I'd like to have been his fag-master at Eton! I saw him making eyes at some American girls as we came in; then he came posing and sidling up to us, and gave us a little lecture on 'Ateismo.' Ferrier said nothing—stood there as meek as a lamb, listening to him—looking ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... will be the worse loss. You simple Ethel, you don't think that Charles Cheviot will let her be the dear family fag we have ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... with great force the misery caused by gin— 'liquid poison' he calls it—'which in the fag-end and outskirts of the town is sold in some part or other of almost every house, frequently in cellars, and sometimes in the garret.' He continues:—'The short-sighted vulgar in the chain of causes seldom can see further than one ...
— The Life Of Johnson, Volume 3 of 6 • Boswell
... having to do unscholastic duties. I dare say the daughter feels, "It isn't to please myself that I slave at my lessons; mother would be vexed if I didn't; and it's very hard that I should be both hindered in them and made to do other things as well,—it's quite bad enough in term-time to have to fag at lessons." But just consider, for a moment, this "fagging at lessons:" you feel that in so doing you are making a concession to your mother, for which she ought to show unbounded gratitude by all manner of sweetmeats in ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... month he had passed his first examinations and was made a sizar. Before this he had been fag to everybody, but now he was fag to the Seniors only. He not only made their beds and cleaned their rooms, but also worked their examples in mathematics, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... omnipotence. Gibraltar may be strong, but ideas are impregnable, and bestow on the hero their invincibility. "It was a great instruction," said a saint in Cromwell's war, "that the best courages are but beams of the Almighty." Hitch your wagon to a star. Let us not fag in paltry works which serve our pot and bag alone. Let us not lie and steal. No god will help. We shall find all their teams going the other way,—Charles's Wain, Great Bear, Orion, Leo, Hercules:—every god will leave us. Work rather for those interests which the divinities honor and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... admission of the indigenous, do duty as summer, the state of things is so evidently beyond a joke, that no idea of trifling therewith enters into the most unsophisticated mind. Life is reduced to something very like a resignation of the sturdy substance of the day, and a diligent employment of the two fag-ends. The intervening hours must be slept away, or read away, or somehow employed without the requisition of corporeal activity. And, considering that these are the hours during which musquitoes vex not, and lesser tormentors of the rampant kind are inactive, it is no slight boon to ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... they were dropping heavy stuff on the station, and he was getting some casualties out of a Red Cross train. A shell burst just down the embankment, and his two orderlies ducked for it under the carriage, but old Drennan never turned a hair. 'Better have a fag,' he said to the Scottie he was helping. 'It's no use letting Fritz ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... offensive character. Mr. Wyatt naturally resented such language, which you had no more right to address to him than you would have to address to me. If a magistrate forgets his position, and abuses a prisoner in the language of a fish-fag, he must expect to be answered in the same way by anyone of spirit. You say that, thereupon, he became abusive and used murderous threats? Now we should like to hear a little more about this. First of all, let us hear the abuse, will you? Tell the court, ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... was little at first, though now so great— For at Altorf, in student's gown he played By your leave, the part of a roaring blade, And rattled away at a queerish rate. His fag he had well nigh killed by a blow, And their Nur'mburg worships swore he should go To jail for his pains—if he liked it or no. 'Twas a new-built nest to be christened by him Who first should be lodged. Well, what ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... mob-cap, she would proceed to dust and wash her cherished china. From much loneliness she had formed a habit of talking quietly to herself during these operations; but no one could have understood her, for she only uttered the fag-ends ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... on board yesterday. He looks thin. The fag in a brig is very great; and I see no prospect of his either making prize-money, or being made post, at present: but, I shall omit ...
— The Letters of Lord Nelson to Lady Hamilton, Vol II. - With A Supplement Of Interesting Letters By Distinguished Characters • Horatio Nelson
... into six forms, of which the sixth ranks the highest. This, and the fifth form, comprise about half the number of boys, for whom the lower half fag. An upper boy may fag a lower one ...
— Confessions of an Etonian • I. E. M.
... school of "Impressionists," and, although he has a liking for exceptional situations, wherefrom humanity does not always issue without serious blotches, he yet is free from pessimism. He has no nervous disorder, no "brain fag," he is no pagan, not even a nonbeliever, and has happily preserved his wholesomeness of thought; he is averse to exotic ideas, extravagant depiction, and inflammatory language. His novels and tales contain the essential qualities which attract and retain the reader. Some of his works in chronological ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... Ned had said, the reverse of lively. It was a pretty country place, with a sort of fag-end by way of a little fishing village, huddled on a wind-swept bit of beach, locally known as the "Cove." Aunt Eleanor was one of those delightful people, so few and far between in this world, who have perfectly mastered the art of minding their own business ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... system. Its basis is the tyranny of brain force, which, among civilized men, is allowed to do what muscular force does among schoolboys and savages. The schoolboy proposition is: 'I am stronger than you, therefore you shall fag for me.' Its grown up form is: 'I am cleverer than you, therefore you shall fag for me.' The state of things we produce by submitting to this, bad enough even at first, becomes intolerable when the mediocre or foolish descendants of the clever fellows ...
— An Unsocial Socialist • George Bernard Shaw
... but it is true. And when I was at Harrow, his eldest brother, who is one of the best, was my fag. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... answer, when made, may be made by the lowest personage in the house. In this instance, however, Lotta Luxa did answer the bell, and not the stout Bohemian girl who acted in the household of Madame Zamenoy as assistant and fag to Lotta. And Lotta found Nina at the door, enveloped in her cloak. "Lotta," she said, "will you kindly give this to my cousin Ziska?" Then, not waiting for a word, she started away so quickly that Lotta had not a chance of speaking to her, no power ...
— Nina Balatka • Anthony Trollope
... had been resumed. Ivinghoe was philosophically declaring 'that in these days one must take up with everybody, so it did not matter if one was a little more of a cad than another; he himself was fag at Eton to a fellow whose father was an oilman, and who wasn't ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... radical and revolutionary type would be great, if only I could feel as I should so much like, that the Christian socialism to which you have consecrated the whole prime of your life, and the Marxian socialism, to which I have consecrated all of the little that remains of mine, the fag-end, are not utter incompatibilities, so much so that it is absolutely impossible that they can co-exist and co-operate to any ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown
... year; it really is rather a fag to think we shall have her for three weeks. Ethel, it's your turn to take her in tow; I had her all ...
— The Third Miss Symons • Flora Macdonald Mayor
... Peter cleaned plates for him in his study, and Ferris watched him. Ferris was kind and talked about many things out of his great wisdom, and then he asked Peter whether he would always like to be his fag, ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Letters. At the beginning of 1821, when he was fairly at work on his Lazarus, he confides to his Journal his conviction that difficulties are to be his lot in pecuniary matters, and adds: 'My plan must be to make up my mind to meet them, and fag as I can—to lose no single moment, but seize on time that is free from disturbance, and make the most of it. If I can float, and keep alive attention to my situation through another picture, I will reach the shore. I am now clearly in sight of it, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... industriousness, operoseness[obs3], operosity[obs3]. trouble, pains, duty; resolution &c. 604; energy &c. (physical) 171. V. exert oneself; exert one's energies, tax one's energies; use exertion. labor, work, toil, moil, sweat, fag, drudge, slave, drag a lengthened chain, wade through, strive, stretch a long arm; pull, tug, ply; ply the oar, tug at the oar; do the work; take the laboring oar bestir oneself (be active) 682; take trouble, trouble oneself. work hard; rough it; put forth one's strength, put forth a strong arm; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... tried. But I was extremely noisy, and I heard two or three of the bridesmaids, to say nothing of the maid of honor and the bridegroom's mamma, tapping their gentle hammers, at my expense, at the breakfast. It was a year afterward that I began to fag regularly for the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... directed to the lung, or even the chest. The best place to wear a chest-protector is on the soles of the feet, and poulticing the chest for pneumonia is about as effective as shampooing the scalp for brain-fag. ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... counsel. In the name of the Saviour, I charge you be true and tender to mankind.' He goes on to bid me 'live and labor for the fallen, the neglected, the suffering, and the poor'; and finally ends by advising me to help upset any, or all, institutions, laws, and so forth, that bear hardly on the fag-ends of society; and tells me that what he calls 'a service to humanity' is worth more to the doer than a service to anything else, or than anything we can gain from the world. Ah, well! ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... as the Senior Subaltern had been. He smoked the cigarettes he had been sent, persistently, and with obvious enjoyment. The men around him were hungry for a "whiff"; the sight of him calmly lighting a fresh "fag" at the stump of the old maddened them beyond endurance. At length one man could bear ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... It was a little of a fag, being in fact rather like a dish heated up a second time, as a duty twice done mostly always is. But the evening was particularly gay. Then the Yeomen were supposed to be enjoying themselves. Pleasant, if they had always ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... perhaps, a man whose heart was weighted by a great woe. You have seen the eye darken, the soul fag, and the spirit congeal under the breath of an icy disaster. At ten-thirty of this particular evening Cowperwood, sitting alone in the library of his Michigan Avenue house, was brought face to face with the fact that he ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... and doubtless, Wilson meant to put us on board, and send us thither to be delivered up. Should our conjecture prove correct, all we had to expect, according to our most experienced shipmates, was the fag end of a cruise in one of her majesty's ships, and a ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... many left that started out so cheerily; There was no bands a-playin' and we 'ad no autmobeels. Our tummies they was 'oller, and our 'eads was 'angin' wearily, And if we stopped to light a fag the 'Uns was on our 'eels. That rotten road! I can't forget the kids and mothers flyin' there, The bits of barns a-blazin' and the 'orrid sights I sor; The stiffs that lined the wayside, me own pals a-lyin' there, Their faces covered over wiv ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... otherwise, he positively looks younger than he did when he was a Cabinet Minister. There is colour where there used to be nothing but deadly pallor—freshness where the long and terrible drudgery of official life had left a permanent look of fag and weariness. Sir Charles Dilke has taken up the broken thread of his life just as if nothing had occurred in that long period of exile and suffering. He is never out of his place: attends every sitting as conscientiously as if he were in ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... both rules. He was inclined to despise rest. He used to say: "When I want a thing to be done quickly, I always go to a busy man: the unoccupied man never has any time." He, himself, did not know how to be idle; yet he was painfully conscious of overwork and brain-fag. He told his friend Castelli that he was tormented by sleeplessness, but still more by certain ideas which assailed him at night, and which he could not get rid of. He got up and walked about the room, but all was useless; ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... executing commissions; but this was not easy, as all the regular outlets were closed at an early hour. In such a dilemma, any route, that was barely practicable at whatever risk, must be traversed by the loyal fag; and it so happened that none of any kind remained open or accessible, except one; and this one communication happened to have escaped suspicion, simply because it lay through a succession of temples and sewers sacred to the goddesses Cloacina and Scavengerina. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... up-and-down cricket. Mr Dexter did not see a single ball of that match bowled. He was prowling in sequestered lanes and broken-down barns out of bounds on the off-chance that he might catch some member of his house smoking there. As if the whole of the house, from the head to the smallest fag, were not on the field watching Day's best bats collapse before Henderson's bowling, and Moriarty hit up that marvellous and unexpected fifty-three at the end of ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... be always pulling one way and he another. He wanted to drop the gentleman and go down into the ranks, beginning on the lowest rung of the ladder, where no one would know of his disgrace or mind it if he did know; his father and mother on the other hand would wish him to clutch on to the fag-end of gentility at a starvation salary and with no prospect of advancement. Ernest had seen enough in Ashpit Place to know that a tailor, if he did not drink and attended to his business, could earn more ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... the fag end of the London season; people were talking about Goodwood and the Ryde week, about grouse and about salmon-fishing. Members of Parliament went about, like martyrs at the stake, groaning over the interminable nature of every debate, and shaking their heads over ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... up a woman; "for 'tis best to get your family over and done with as soon as you can, so as to be all the earlier out of the fag o't." ...
— Stories by English Authors: England • Various
... hours, whether you accomplish anything or not. Before long you will find that you are writing madly, not waiting for inspiration. And you will have Clavey to criticize you. The rest is only stern self-discipline. Here is another suggestion: when you have brain fag go to bed for two days and starve. ...
— Black Oxen • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... to the fag of burying the swag?" said Tommy once they were safe within the shelter of The Cedars gates. "Let's take it to one of your bedrooms. Besides," he added; as if this were quite an afterthought, as indeed it was, "I don't ...
— The Rebellion of Margaret • Geraldine Mockler
... country become interesting to us who have been there. Men revisit the old school, though hateful to them, with ever so much kindliness and sentimental affection. There was the tree under which the bully licked you: here the ground where you had to fag out on holidays, and so forth. In a word, my dear sir, YOU are the most interesting subject to yourself, of any that can occupy your worship's thoughts. I have no doubt, a Crimean soldier, reading a history ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... went to Harrow, in 1868, there was an old woman, by name Polly Arnold, still keeping a stationer's shop in the town, who had sold cribs to Byron when he was a Harrow boy; and Byron's fag, a funny old gentleman in a brown wig—called Baron Heath—was a standing dish on ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... just as Fag told me, indeed!—Whimsical enough, 'faith! My father wants to force me to marry the very girl I am plotting to run away with! He must not know of my connection with her yet awhile. He has too summary a method of proceeding in ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... of journalism are no new thing belonging to the fag-end of this century. Young Adams wrote letters over the "nom de plume" of Pro Bono Publico, and then replied to them over the signature of Rex Americus. He did not adopt as his motto, "Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... Frinch an' the rale ould Oirish is as loike as two pays? Now, there's garsan is as Oirish a worrud for a young bhoy as ye'll find in Connaught. But juty is juty, moy dare sorr, so, as they say in the arrmy, 'Fag a bealach,' lave the way." The sergeant's next discovery was the doctor, borne in the arms of the lawyer and the dismounted parson. He had sprained his ancle in the rapid descent to which his zeal ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... lost a good partner; and so it falls out very suent and convenient like that we should wed. But now he hears tell as I ban't to have the cottage, he's off it. He won't hear of marrying if there's no cottage. So the fag end of my life's like to be ruined one ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... traversed a twilight passage, and entered a sort of ante-room, hung round with old maps, architectural elevations, and genealogical trees. A pair of folding-doors opened from this into Mr. Inglewood's sitting apartment, from which was heard the fag-end of an old ditty, chanted by a voice which had been in its day fit ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... forgot to put the poultry; the butler filled my father's glass with fish soy, and two of the men bolted tilt against each other and capsized the remains of a sirloin of beef over the carpet with which one of them was hurrying off after waiting to listen to the fag end of one ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... lateness with me, Mr. Narkom," said Cleek, as he tossed aside his hat and threw the fag-end of the cigarette he was smoking out through the open window. "You said in your note that there was no immediate necessity for haste, so I improved the shining hour by another spin down the river. It isn't often that duty-calls bring me to a little Eden like this. The air is like balm to-day, ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... committed other anomalies against nature in honor of their mistresses, belonged decidedly to a period of time anterior to that of Shakspeare, and went quite out with the age of chivalry, of which Shakspeare saw scarcely even the fag end. Your lover of Shakspeare's time was quite another animal. He had begun to take beer. He had become much more subtle and self-satisfied. He did sometimes pen sonnets to his mistress's eye-brow, and sing soft nothings to the gentle sighing of his "Lewte." He ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various
... of the Russian divisions at Nossi Be, Madagascar, January 9, 1905, came news of the fall of Port Arthur. The home government now concluded to despatch the fag-ends of its navy, though Rojdestvensky would have preferred to push ahead without waiting for such "superfluous encumbrances" to join. Ships, as his staff officer Semenoff afterward wrote, were needed, but not "old flatirons and galoshes"; guns, but not "holes surrounded by iron."[1] ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... parties nightly, dinners, luncheons, garden-parties; and yet there was a sense of waning in the glory of the world—everybody felt that the fag-end of the season was approaching. All the really great entertainments were over—the Cabinet dinners, the Reception at the Foreign Office, the last of the State balls and concerts. Some of the best people had already left town; and senators were ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the past. All progressive businesses are conducted this way. That is why the young business man of today is likely to accomplish more in a few years than his father did in all his life. There is no reason why your work or business should fag you out. When it does there is something wrong. You are attracting forces and influence that you should not, because you are not in harmony with what you are doing. There is nothing so tiring as to try to do the work for which we are unfitted, both ...
— The Power of Concentration • Theron Q. Dumont
... optician). It is frequently an accompaniment of inflammation of the eyes, and when this is cured the twitching of the lids disappears. When the eyes are otherwise normal the twitching is frequently one of the signs of nerve fag and overwork. ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume II (of VI) • Various
... were present, in the third he was a little boy, and a stupid one, and Fred had temper enough left to see that there would be nothing gained by quarrelling with him, so contenting himself with a secret but most ardent wish that he had him as his fag at school, he turned to Jessie, and asked her what she thought of the weather, if the white frost would bring rain, ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... average in such cases) because he is a fool. Secondly, like the rest of the well-to-do world, he has suffered the summer, wherein warmth and sunshine are really to be had, to slip by, and has only the fag end of it in which to take holiday. It is now or never—or at all events now or next year—with him. All his friends, too, are out of town, flattening their noses against window panes; his club is under repair, his house in brown holland, his servants on board wages. Like the ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... subject. Moreover, my Pegasus was visited with a very abrupt pull-up from other causes; it has been my fatality more than once or twice, as you will ere long see, to drop upon other people's topics—for who can find any thing new under the sun?—and I had already been mentally delivered of divers fag-ends of speeches, stinging dialogues, and choice tit-bits of scenes, (all of which I will mercifully spare you,) when a chance peep into Johnson's 'Lives of the Poets' showed me mine own fine subject as the work of some long-forgotten bard! This moral earthquake ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... made by some of the big boys to introduce a system of fagging into the school, bind ourselves to resist such a proceeding by every means in our power, and under no consideration to obey any boy who may order any of us to fag ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... flight" and reminded the fugitives that by this time they were in sufficient force to rally; and then they would return "to explore the plundered country and to bury the unfortunate scalped heads in the fag-end of the retreat"; whereas if there had been an appointed rendezvous where all could rally it would have prevented such a flight from what might possibly have been a body of Indians far inferior in numbers to ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Four - Louisiana and the Northwest, 1791-1807 • Theodore Roosevelt
... a little subdivision of the grand Utilitarian Armament come to light even in insulated England? A living nucleus, that will attract and grow, does at length appear there also; and under curious phasis; properly as the inconsiderable fag-end, and so far in the rear of the others as to fancy itself the van. Our European Mechanisers are a sect of boundless diffusion, activity, and co-operative spirit: has not Utilitarianism flourished in high places of ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... starting-point. As I drew within sight of the captain, he evidently comprehended my dangerous position, and came to my aid, shouting as he ran along, "Hold on; halt, if you can." But I could not halt, and it took me all my time to hold on. The animal was about at the fag end, and allowed the captain to take the bridle. When Captain Lloyd told me to dismount, I can truly say that I obeyed his injunction more readily than I did the one to mount. I thanked my stars that I had come off as fortunately as I did. The captain took my place in the saddle. ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... himself on not being able to roll a cigarette. If he were forced, at the point of the bayonet, to roll a fag, it would ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... take the chance. By taking the collar of their coat and tucking it around their faces, lighting the match under their coat next to their ribs, burying their faces in their coat, they get a light without much danger of detection. In puffing it a man will hold the fag in his closed fist to his mouth, take the inhale, and, if there should happen to be a provo or other suspicious guardian of the rules in sight, down into his stomach would go the smoke. I don't know why it is but it has always seemed to me that the more stringent the ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... joined the men, who were gradually pushing against the foremost cattle on the left so as to turn them to the right. When once the leaders were turned the rest blindly followed and thus, by constantly turning them to the right, the leaders were finally swung clear around, and overtook the fag end of the line. ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... [fag] Desfallecer desmayarse de cansancio; trabajar demasiado por otro. Mapat, mapagal; ...
— Dictionary English-Spanish-Tagalog • Sofronio G. Calderon
... proprietors of these concoctions seemingly flourish like green bay trees and spend many thousands of pounds per annum in advertising. From which it may be deduced that sufferers from nervous exhaustion and brain fag number millions. And surely only a sufferer from brain fag would suffer himself to be led blindly into wasting his money, and still further injuring his health, by buying and swallowing drugs about whose properties and effects he knows absolutely nothing. How much simpler, ...
— Food Remedies - Facts About Foods And Their Medicinal Uses • Florence Daniel
... one to look at them now, but Francis and Ada. Yet, if I want to send a few to a girl there's questions asked, and a sickening fuss made. I order them from the nurseryman rather than have the fag of it." ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... pretty well lubricated in the well-compensated adrenal type. Brain fag is closely associated with, if not dependent upon, adrenal fag, particularly of the cortex. Brain tissue and adrenal cortex tissue are near relatives, and a normal human brain never develops without a normal adrenal cortex. ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... Massachusetts. To us there was something hideous in the aspect of their mountains; but this may have been partly owing to our own hideous habitation, and low spirits. The same objects may have appeared charming in the eyes of a Scotch family, just arrived from the fag-end of the ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... in Chile than in any other South American country. A portion of the city of Valparaiso seems to be given over almost entirely to the liquor dealers and the people who throng that district are hard-looking folks. The fag ends of civilization seem to have gathered here. This is the only city in South America where I was accosted by both men and women and they almost try to hold one up in the ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... legally dissolved, and to set aside the Protector, who soon afterwards resigned. On the 21st April, Lenthall, the old Speaker, with as many members of the Long Parliament as could be brought together, met in the House, and opened their session. The Parliament thus formed, as being the fag-end of the old Long Parliament, obtained the name of the Rump Parliament. Lambert's hopes and aims were raised by his success against Sir George Booth in the August following, and jealousies soon arose between his ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... mind he cast Mrs. Wilder upon one side, as March throws February to the fag end of winter, and rushes on to meet the primrose girl bringing spring in her wake. He had dealt simultaneously with Mrs. Wilder's little part in the drama and the part of Francis Heath, Priest in Holy Orders. How they had both stood the test of detection he did not trouble ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... aristocratic; his birth was soon thrown in his teeth; he was fierce; he struck boys bigger than himself,—fought till he was half killed. My father was at school with him; described him as a tiger-whelp. One day he—still a fag—struck a sixth-form boy. Sixth-form boys do not fight fags; they punish them. Louis Grayle was ordered to hold out his hand to the cane; he received the blow, drew forth his schoolboy knife, and stabbed the punisher. After that, he left Eton. I don't think he was ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... hard to part from our charming friends; realising, too, that this was the end of our holiday, and that before us lay merely the toil and bustle of a return to commonplace, everyday life. At last, though, the final fag-end of a cheroot was thrown away, the last hand-grips ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... ministerial hacks who represented British constituencies, that they carried this and several other measures to which a similar opposition was offered. The remark that the railway scheme of Sir Charles Wood was the fag-end of Lord George Bentinck's measure, was received with loud cheers by the house, and was repeated much "out of doors." During these debates the grossest ignorance of Ireland, her people, resources, and financial relation to Great Britain, was evinced by English representatives. Mr. Hume ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... quarrel which ensued between the two houses, prevented the passing of every bill projected during the present session. One Dr. Shirley, being cast in a lawsuit before chancery against Sir John Fag, a member of the house of commons, preferred a petition of appeal to the house of peers. The lords received it, and summoned Fag to appear before them. He complained to the lower house, who espoused his cause. They not only maintained, that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... at this time that Lord William came to stay with us. He was introduced to me as a schoolfellow of my father's; at Eton he had been Sir John's fag, and indeed was his junior by only a few years. For some reason, unexplained to me, it was said he had been obliged to leave England, and my father offered him the suite of rooms left vacant by my grandfather. Lord William appeared to be rich; he brought over ...
— Major Frank • A. L. G. Bosboom-Toussaint
... minute, because it would be grand if I could say when Brian came back, "I have sold your cathedral for you." But I might have saved myself brain fag. Madame Mounet had settled everything in her head, and was merely playing me, like a ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... at the fag end of the summer, when all his well-laid plans had one by one gone agley, chance brought to Green an adventure—sheer chance and a real adventure. The circumstance of a deranged automobile was largely responsible—that and the added incident ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... wealth, and beauty in one charming person up to London from the country at the latter end of August? The town house long since dismantled for the grand tour now finished—the charms of the season abandoned for peaceful Suffolk—why should Lilian care to return thus at the fag end of London's feast of folly? Has the bronzed and bearded Barndale anything to do with it? Lady Dives Luxor gives a ball; and Lady Dives, being Lilian's especial patroness and guardian angel and divinity, insists on Lilian ...
— An Old Meerschaum - From Coals Of Fire And Other Stories, Volume II. (of III.) • David Christie Murray
... eyes and quick signs conveyed half his meaning; his excited sentences were so low that Garst only caught fag-ends of them. But they were emphasized unexpectedly by a faint bleating sound rising from the valley,—the helpless bleat of ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... of engines, iron puddling, rolling, etc.; a delegate to a national convention, thoughts of the death of a near relative; add to this a security debt to meet during a money panic. By this time the mind begins to fag below ...
— Philosophy of Osteopathy • Andrew T. Still
... gain to lose—bitter memories, defiled imaginations, stings of conscience, habits that it will be very hard to break, and the sense of having wasted the best part of your lives, and having but the fag end to bring to Him. And if you put off, as some of you are disposed to do, think of the risk you run. It is very unlikely that susceptibilities will remain if they are trifled with. You remember that Felix trembled once, and sent for Paul often; but we never hear ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... even before I had made an end of my bagful of pebbles, I had gotten great plenty of nuts; and as soon as my companions had in like manner gotten as many nuts as they could carry, we returned to the city, where we arrived at the fag-end of day. Then I went in to the kindly man who had brought me in company with the nut- gatherers and gave him all I had gotten, thanking him for his kindness; but he would not accept them, saying, "Sell them and make profit by the price; and presently he added (giving me the key of ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... received a sudden and marvellous increase. I seemed to tread on eider-down, and, cigar in mouth, strolled along Fleet-street and the Strand, towards my domicile in Half-Moon street—"nescio quid meditans nugarum"—sometimes humming the fag end of an Irish melody; anon stopping to stare in a print-shop window; and then I would trudge on, chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy as I conned over the various ups and downs that had chequered my life ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... and spruce, simple and yet nice. Snowy transparent curtains enclosed the bed as a protection against the mosquitoes, a crucifix of delicate workmanship hung above the head of the couch, and the seats were covered with good cloth of various colors, fag-ends from the looms. Pretty straw mats lay on the floor, and pots of plants, filling the little room with fragrance, stood on the window-sill and in a corner of the room where a clay statuette of the Good Shepherd looked down ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... in the voice of a tolerant teetotaler who would not force his principles upon any man but hopes sincerely that this one will say No; and when I am informed that he promised our bootboy a rapid and inevitable descent to a state of infamy and destitution upon discovering no more than the fag end of a cigarette behind his ear, then I am tempted to recall an incident of fifteen years back, lest it be forgotten that Thompson is a man like ourselves who has known, and even owned, a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 21, 1914 • Various
... in its supply of coal, its volume of trade, its accumulated capital, or its multiplication of railways. Above all—and this was to some of our Party the unkindest cut—he asserted for Religion the chief place among the elements of national well-being. We were just then living at the fag-end of an anti-religious time. The critical, negative, and utilitarian spirit which had seized on Oxford after the apparent defeat and collapse of Newman's movement had profoundly affected the Liberal Party. It was an essential ...
— Matthew Arnold • G. W. E. Russell
... days of the examinations, during which time I scarcely closed my eyes in sleep, devoting every moment to cramming and reviewing. And when I turned in my last examination paper I was in full possession of a splendid case of brain-fag. I didn't want to see a book. I didn't want to think or to lay eyes on anybody who was ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... objected when he was called "Carrots" the boys dropped that name, and the shortest one survived. The boys started to call him "Tims" and in a few months he had won their affection from the lowest fag to the highest lad ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... lady," said Casey severely, "what sort of a gold brick is this? Are you aware that we are in the fag end of July?" ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... containing seventeen other men, but he got a fat sleepy youth to sit on, and was passably comfortable. He crossed over in a wobbly boat packed from cellar to attic with Red Tabs invalided with shell shock, Blue Tabs with trench fever, and Green Tabs with brain-fag; Mechanical Transporters in spurs and stocks, jam merchants in revolvers and bowie-knives, Military Police festooned with pickelhaubes, and here and there a furtive fighting man who had got away by mistake, and would be recalled as soon ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various
... told us was from constant use of holystones. There was no foolish gilding and gingerbread work, to take the eye of landsmen and passengers, but everything was "ship-shape.'' There was no rust, no dirt, no rigging hanging slack, no fag-ends of ropes and "Irish pendants'' aloft, and the yards were squared "to a t'' by lifts and braces. The mate was a hearty fellow, with a roaring voice, and always wide awake. He was "a man, every inch of him,'' as the sailors said; and though "a bit of a horse,'' and "a hard customer,'' yet ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... he, "but if we do succeed, after the most strenious efforts in getting the duty off champagne, green turtle, olives, etc., and put on to sugar, tea, cotton cloth and such like, with all this brain fag and brain labor—" ...
— Samantha on the Woman Question • Marietta Holley
... the best plan? I walk apart with step I try so hard to render careless; but none follows, no little friendly arm is slipped through mine. Should one seek to win one's way by kind offices? Ah, if one could! How I would fag for them. I could do their sums for them—I am good at sums—write their impositions for them, gladly take upon myself their punishments, would they but return my service with a little love ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... only very often caned, but he was fag to a tyrannical private pupil, who made him suffer severely. The private pupils upheld the sacred institution of fagging, which gave them a pleasant sense of authority, and as they sat like gods above us, they were not in danger of retaliation. Brokenribs was fag to a young man who determined ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... have a particular fag to attend to him and his wishes, and no cadet could demand service of another fellow's fag without ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... FAG, the lying servant of Captain Absolute. He "wears his master's wit, as he does his lace, at second ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama, Vol 1 - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook • The Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D.
... glory' and Valencia St. Just, though not delicately beautiful, was as splendid an Irish damsel as man need look upon, with a grand masque, aquiline features, luxuriant black hair, and—though it was the fag-end of the London season—the unrivalled Irish complexion, as of the fair ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... right if—if—Longworth is dealing honestly with us. If he is not, then everything is all wrong, and I should feel a great deal easier if we had in our possession another three months' option of the mine. We are now at the fag-end of this option, and, it seems to me, as protection to ourselves, we ought either to write to Von Brent—By the way, have you ever written ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... curious the state I'm in before Aunt Paula sends me away," she said; "I was a nervous child, and though I've outgrown it, I still have attacks of nerve fag or something like it. I can feel them coming on and so can she. You know we've been together so much that it's like—like two bees in adjoining cells. The cell-wall has worn thin; we can almost touch. She knows ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... shadow, if you except the telephone poles. For the first time I realized there was danger in walking in such heat, and even contemplated the shade of the telephone poles as a possibility! Fortunately a light breeze sprang up—the fag end of the trade wind—and, though hot, it served to dispel that stagnation of the atmosphere which in sultry weather is so trying to the nervous system. Marysville is nearly one hundred miles due north of Stockton—of course, much farther by ...
— A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country • Thomas Dykes Beasley
... How time dragged on. But he did not move from his ambush, though he felt his limbs stiffening and his brain begin to fag. The thoughts of dire punishments had passed from his mind. That, indeed, had become a blank. What was he doing there? He couldn't quite remember at times—all his energies were so centered in his eyes, which not for a second even left ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... spurious waterfall pinned to the back of their heads down to the train that sweeps the muddy pavement. Their hair is infested with beads, bits of lace and of ribbons, or mock jewelry. A bonnet is an epitome of fag-ends. The poor crazy creatures in the asylum, who pick up any rag, or wisp of straw, or scrap of tin, they may find, and wear it proudly upon their frocks, are not ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... Newcome was accordingly sent, exchanging—O ye Gods! with what delight!—the splendour of Clapham for the rough, plentiful fare of the place, blacking his master's shoes with perfect readiness, till he rose in the school, and the time came when he should have a fag of his own: tibbing out and receiving the penalty therefore: bartering a black eye, per bearer, against a bloody nose drawn at sight, with a schoolfellow, and shaking hands the next day; playing at cricket, hockey, prisoners' base, and football, according to ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of course, as his natural enemies. Matters were not so comfortable in the house, either. The new praeposters of the Sixth Form were not strong, and the big Fifth Form boys soon began to usurp power, and to fag and bully the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... as if he knew before-hand what he had to expect, he tried and tugged at one of the door-handles. "Sacrament!" he muttered as he at last let go and began hunting in the boot of the coach, under the driver's cushion and in secret nooks and corners, which proved, at the best, mere receptacles for fag-ends ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... or mack; Or moskeneer, or flash the drag; Dead-lurk a crib, or do a crack; Pad with a slang, or chuck a fag; Bonnet, or tout, or mump and gag; Rattle the tats, or mark the spot; You cannot bag a single stag; Booze and the blowens ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... than moving furniture and tacking up pictures," proclaimed Jennie. "Brain-fag is the trouble ...
— Ruth Fielding At College - or The Missing Examination Papers • Alice B. Emerson
... the second evening of our voyage, I walked on deck. It was the "fag-end" of a gale, and the rain was pouring down upon the slippery planks. Brightly a skyrocket whizzed upwards from a distant ship, and burst in a shower of flame, followed by two others, signalling our old acquaintance the Canada, bound from Liverpool ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... most astonishing journeys about that fag end of the universe in the pursuit of knowledge. We read of his walking thirty-two miles in a soaking rain to the top of a mountain, and bringing home only a plant of white heather. On another day ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... sex. With a neckerchief over her shoulders, her hair clumsily braided—though it was lovely hair, thick and black, you could see that it was badly brushed—she stretched out towards a chair hands like those of a servant, and removed an infant's robe, a knife, a fag-end of packe-bread, an empty flower-pot, and a greasy plate left on the seat, which she then moved over towards ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant |
