"Patch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gardener's interval of paradise when flowers grow faster than the weeds among them. Harrison Miller, having rolled his lawn through all of April, was heard abroad in the early mornings with the lawn mower or hoe in hand was to be seen behind his house in his vegetable patch. ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... upon deck once more, and crept aft under the shadow of the bulwarks. They were almost there when De Catinat stopped suddenly and ground out an oath through his clenched teeth. Between them and the rope ladder there was standing in a dim patch of murky light the grim figure of a Franciscan friar. He was peering through the darkness, his heavy cowl shadowing his face, and he advanced slowly as if he had caught a glimpse of them. A lantern hung from the mizzen shrouds above ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... meadow lane, Laughing at bruise and scratch; Come, with your hands all rich with stain Fresh from the blackberry patch; Come where the orchard spreads its store And the breath of the clover greets; Quick! they are waiting you here once more,— Grandfather's ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... it trace the noble thoughts of great men, till it finds them mouldered into the common dust of conversation, and used to stop men's mouths, and patch up theories, to keep out the flaws of opinion. Such, for example, are all popular adages and wise proverbs, which are now resolved into the common mass of thought; their authors forgotten, and having no more an individual ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... into a lot of brush and blackberry bushes that are down there, and just then I got that back knot untied, and I stepped over and looked down at Mr. Dog, who had lodged in a brier patch on a shelf about ten feet below the edge, where Mr. Man would have to get him up with ...
— How Mr. Rabbit Lost his Tail • Albert Bigelow Paine
... speak, and with no addition, We go to gain a little patch of ground That hath in it no profit but the name. To pay five ducats, five, I would not farm it; Nor will it yield to Norway or the Pole A ranker rate, should it be ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... perfect muddle of competing crude projects and vested interests, and is likely to end in a worse muddle, as anything but a patch up is, I believe, outside ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... of mending a woolen or silk dress in which a round hole has been torn, and where only a patch could remedy matters, is the following: The frayed portions around the tear should be carefully smoothed, and a piece of the material, moistened with very thin muscilage, placed under the hole. A heavy weight should be put upon it until it is dry, when it is only possible to ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... was followed; and the Boy Slaves soon found themselves by the side of a large patch of barley, ready for the reaping-hook. A sickle of French manufacture was then placed in the hands of each, and they were ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... he will do, if we call him hither, the man for whom that dog, a black hound with a white patch, is barking ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... flying clouds and turquoise skies. Over it all brooded the deep solemn silence of eternity. Not a sound reached the ear from earth or air. Far up in the sky an eagle poised and looked below in silence. Not a house could be seen as far as the eye could reach; only here and there a white patch on the dark blue mountain-side showed like a farmer's scar that hadn't healed. These were the fields of farmers on the lower ranges, but their houses were ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... him. There was a great steaming red splotch on the snow, and a strange odor in the air that made him dizzy; but only for a moment. Another white shape rushed by. A tawny streak followed, and then, in a patch of moonlight, Satan saw the yellow cur with his teeth fastened in the throat of his moaning playmate. Like lightning Satan sprang at the cur, who tossed him ten feet away and went back to his awful work. Again Satan leaped, ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... hundred in number—were dotted about, here and there, irregularly. There are in this place, and in every other town which I saw in California, no streets, or fences, (except here and there a small patch was fenced in for a garden,) so that the houses are placed at random upon the green, which, as they are of one story and of the cottage form, gives them a pretty effect when seen ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... exclaimed. "Without bridles or stirrup leathers, they can scarce make a start; and it will take them some minutes to patch them up. We will ride hard for a bit. That will put us far enough ahead to be able to take any byroad, and throw them off our traces. I have no fear of their catching us by straight riding. The masters' horses may be as good as ours, but those of ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... ring, but discipline, and the degrees of rank, were not so severely defined as now; and Amyas, as a "gentleman adventurer," was, on land, in a position very difficult to be settled, though at sea he was as liable to be hanged as any other person on board; and on the whole it was found expedient to patch the matter up. So Captain Raleigh returning, said that though Admiral Winter had doubtless taken umbrage at certain words of Mr. Leigh's, yet that he had no doubt that Mr. Leigh meant nothing thereby but what was consistent with the profession ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... visiting Henry II. under pretence of hospitality at Dublin, and throughout all his difficult diplomacy with the Normans, we are free to conclude. With the Normans for foes—with a decayed and obsolete national constitution to patch up—with nominal subordinates more powerful than himself—with rebellion staring him in the face out of the eyes of his own children—Roderick O'Conor had no ordinary part to play in history. The fierce family pride of our fathers and the vices of ...
— A Popular History of Ireland - From the earliest period to the emancipation of the Catholics • Thomas D'Arcy McGee
... small, isolated brick house in very bad condition, standing in an out-of-the-way road somewhere between Putney and Wimbledon. It stood, somewhat back from the road, in the midst of a little patch of ground abounding in privet and laurel bushes, and it was evident that its cheapness had been its chief attraction to the two men who had rented it, although, on entering, it was found to possess at the back a sort of extension, with top and side ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... the brief patch of sunlight that smiled into their apartment for about eight minutes of ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... hand we have shown by as good and respectable testimony as can be had in any cause, that from 1833 to 1854, a period of twenty-one years, Hussey's invention was most efficient and satisfactory, every year; not by cutting a patch of the fraction of an acre, but by reaping hundreds, nay thousands of acres annually, by the few machines placed in the hands of the ...
— Obed Hussey - Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap • Various
... the bunk Lawler was bathing, with ineffable tenderness and care, a face that had been swathed in the scarf he had previously removed. The long, glistening, black hair had been brushed back from its owner's forehead by Lawler; and a corner of a blanket had been modestly folded over a patch of white breast, exposed when Lawler had ruthlessly torn ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... New York principally. The girls there are as hard as nails—try to imitate the English. Ours are not a patch, not even Aileen, although she does her best. But I hadn't finished—I even powder my face." Alexina grinned up at her still rudderless sister. "After mother is asleep and I am ready to ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... often been supposed to be the paths trod by the departed, who require sustenance for so long a journey. The Aztecs laid a water-bottle beside the bodies to be used on the way to Mictlan, the land of the dead. Bow and arrows, a pair of mocassins with a spare piece of deerskin to patch them if they wear out, and sinews of deer to sew on the patches with, together with a kettle and provisions, are still placed in the graves by the North American Indians. The Laplanders lay beside the corpse flint, steel, and tinder, to supply light for the dark journey. A coin was placed in the ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... very animated and striking in the lovely autumn setting of the mountains when the ling was red, the rowan berries hung like clusters of coral over the brown burns, and a field of oats here and there came out like a patch of gold among the heather. To put the finishing-touch to the picture, the grey tower of Gawin Douglas's Cathedral, still and solemn, kept watch over the tomb of ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... their favourite place beneath the elms, and stood with their hands in their pockets and their shoulders against the park-palings—the patch that looked newish, but which was gradually growing grey under the influence of the weather that was oxidising the new nails and sending a ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn
... the westering sun, but cut with one deep portal where a pass ran into Westmoreland—the scaur-gate whence the house was named; and through this gate of mountain often, when the day was waning, a bar of slanting sunset entered, like a plume of golden dust, and hovered on a broad black patch of weather-beaten fir-trees. The day was waning now, and every steep ascent looked steeper, while down the valley light and shade made longer cast of shuttle, and the margin of the west began to glow with a deep wine-color, as the sun came down—the tinge of many mountains ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... its creators exile, imprisonment, starvation, and death. With one mighty assault its opponents have often razed to the ground the work of years. Yet, as soon as the eyes of its destroyers were turned, a multitude of loving hands and broken hearts set to work to patch up its scattered fragments and build it anew. The labor movement ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... patch have the part to be patched pressed smooth, baste the patch on the wrong side of the garment before cutting out the worn place. (If the garment or article to be mended is worn or faded and shrunken by laundering, boil the piece in soap, soda and water to fade the patch, ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... feet of the cow, Fred knelt on one knee and brought his rifle to a level. The cow was still advancing, "head on," when he made a noise similar to that which comes natural to you when you wish to drive the hens out of your garden-patch. The cow stopped abruptly, threw up her head and stared at the hunter. The sight of the crouching figure must have suggested to the stupid animal that every thing was not right, for with a frightened whiff, she bounded ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... through cultivated lands, corn and clover, flax and beet, and all the various crops with which the industrious German yeoman ekes out his little patch of soil. Past the thrifty husbandman himself, as he guides the two milch-kine in his tiny plough, and stops at the furrow's end, to greet you with the hearty German smile and bow; while the little fair-haired maiden, walking beneath the shade of standard cherries, walnuts, ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... whole countrey to be as common. 4 To neglect all daintinesse and varietie of meates, and to content themselues with that which commeth next to hand, for more hardnesse, and readines in the executing of their affaires. 5 To weare any base attire, and to patch their clothes whether there be any neede or not: that when there is neede, it be no shame to weare a patcht coate. 6 To take or steale from any stranger whatsoeuer they can get, as beeing enemies of all men, saue to such as will subiect themselues to ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation v. 4 • Richard Hakluyt
... references prove. A fine illustration of his power in this respect, is his explanation of the apparent rest of bodies whose atoms are in motion. He employs the image of a flock of sheep with skipping lambs, which, seen from a distance, presents simply a white patch upon the green hill, the jumping of the individual lambs ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... the wooding party and the natives, as I could now be pretty confident that the latter were not likely to give the former any disturbance, I left them, and went over to the grass-cutters on the east point of the bay, and found that they had met with a fine patch. Having seen the boats loaded, I left that party, and returned on board to dinner; where, some time after, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... hear the water splashing on the rocks. I had to grab hold of the railing when the wind blew. I looked away off along the tracks, but I couldn't even see where the bridge ended; only I could see a kind of a big patch of dark that was blacker than the regular dark, and I thought it was a mountain. I guessed maybe a headlight would show suddenly around that. Connie came out, but didn't say anything, and then went back through to the other platform. I could ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... if we had them, of their historical accuracy? Secondly, is it at all credible that so fragmentary and fortuitous a record as survives in monuments (allowing again their very dubious historical worth) should just happen to coincide with the surviving fragments of our patch-work Manetho, king for king and dynasty for dynasty, as Mr. Laing would have us believe? On the contrary, nothing would throw more suspicion on the interpretation of these monuments than the assertion of such an improbable coincidence. What, then, is the force of this argument ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... but she did, however," said Margery, searching in her basket of clothes for some particular pieces. "A beautiful mender she was, to be sure! look here, Miss Ellen just see that patch the way it is put on so evenly by a thread all round; and the stitches, see and see the way this rent is darned down oh, that was the ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... different man from the cleverest versifier, and is it not well for the world to be taught the difference? The divineness of poetry is far more to me than either pride of sex or personal pride, and, though willing to acknowledge the lowest breath of the inspiration, I cannot the 'powder and patch.' As powder and patch I may, but not as poetry. And though I in turn may suffer for this myself—though I too (anch' io) may be turned out of 'Arcadia,' and told that I am not a poet, still, I should be content, I hope, that ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1 of 2) • Frederic G. Kenyon
... about two, and I don't remember anything about it. Dad came on to the back verandah, and saw me sitting by a patch of dust, stroking something. He couldn't make out what it was at first, and then he came a bit nearer, and saw that it was a big snake. It was lying in the dust sunning itself, and I was stroking ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... silence, a low groan near at hand; then abruptly it stopped. We saw, within twenty feet of us, two dark figures lying on the pavement grid in a black patch of shadow where the mailtube came down in a curve and disappeared ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... that the north wind had carried a true message, for the king and his followers were ahead of him on their way to the Limberlost. Mile after mile, a thing of pulsing fire, he breasted the blue-black night, and it was not so very long until he could discern a flickering patch of darkness sweeping the sky before him. The Cardinal flew steadily in a straight sweep, until with a throb of triumph in his heart, he arose in his course, and from far overhead, flung down a boastful challenge to the king and his followers, as he sailed above ...
— The Song of the Cardinal • Gene Stratton-Porter
... town of Ravenglass. Next, almost due west, look down into, and along the deep valley of Wastdale, with its little chapel and half a dozen neat dwellings scattered upon a plain of meadow and corn-ground intersected with stone walls apparently innumerable, like a large piece of lawless patch-work, or an array of mathematical figures, such as in the ancient schools of geometry might have been sportively and fantastically traced out upon sand. Beyond this little fertile plain lies, within a bed of steep mountains, the long, narrow, stern, and desolate ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... century ago. The large manufactory, the large shop, the large estate, the large farm, swallows up the small ones. The yeoman, the thrifty squatter who could work at two or three trades as well as till his patch of moor, the hand-loom weaver, the skilled village craftsman, have all but disappeared. The handworker, finding it more and more difficult to invest his savings, has been more and more tempted to squander them. To rise to ...
— The Ancien Regime • Charles Kingsley
... altogether when he reached the bottom. A road ran beside the angry water, but the valley was deeply sunk in the dark fells and their summits were hidden by drifting mist. There was no hint of life in the dreary landscape except a moving patch that looked like a flock of sheep, and a glance at the map showed that his path led on across the waste to the south. It would be a long march to Hawick, which was the town he meant to reach, particularly ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... Snap's proposal to go over was nothing unusual. Side by side the boys started out and took their time. They did not attempt to stem the current but allowed it to carry them down the river for several hundred feet. They landed where there was an old orchard, backed up by a large strawberry patch. ...
— Young Hunters of the Lake • Ralph Bonehill
... was so small and pale, and though she was still a pretty child, it was in a different way from the old prettiness. Katy and Clover were very kind and gentle always, but Elsie sometimes lost patience entirely, and the boys openly declared that Curly was a cross-patch, and hadn't a bit of fun ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... while serving her, acknowledged that not only was it "by rights" her "afternoon off;" but that Mr. Patch, the coachman, had volunteered to drive her into Marychurch to see her parents when he exercised the carriage horses. But, while thanking him very kindly, she had refused. Was it likely, she said, she would leave the house with Sir Charles and Mr. Hordle away, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... on a coral patch, in two fathoms, not marked on the chart (in lat. 6 deg. 40' N., long. 117 deg. 52' E.), which rather astonished us, and caused us to go still more slowly and carefully for some time. The sea being absolutely smooth, ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... like the creeks and lagoons of the Niger or a Guiana river rather than anything I looked for in India. The densest tree jungle covers the shore down into the water. For miles no sign of human habitation, but now and then at rare intervals one sees a patch of hillside rudely cleared, with the bare stems of the burnt trees still standing.... Sometimes, too, a dark tunnel-like creek runs back beneath the thick vault of jungle, and from it silently steals out a slim canoe, manned by two or three wild-looking ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... scores of houses in it that have sent their sons to college (by what a struggle!), some to make their way to the front in their professions, and others, perhaps, despite their broadcloth, never to be a patch on their parents. In that literary club there were men of a reading so wide and catholic that it might put some graduates of the universities to shame, and of an intellect so keen that had it not had a crook in it ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... not know whether my aunt had any lawful right of way over that patch of green, but she had settled it in her own mind that she had, and it was all the same to her. The passage of a donkey over that spot was the one great outrage of her life. In whatever occupation or conversation she was engaged, ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Dick Cronk. He's too blamed good, all of a sudden. That brother of his might try the job, but—no, he'd bungle it. Besides, he'd probably stick a knife into Davy if the kid made a motion." He began chewing a fresh cigar; his pop-eyes were leveled with unseeing fierceness at a certain patch in the "main top"; his brain was seeing nothing but that packet of banknotes. How to get it into his possession: that was the question that produced the undiverted stare and the lowering droop at the corners ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... and also a patch of timber land. Then they swept around a turn and came in sight of Valley Brook, with its broad fields and its gurgling brook flowing down to ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... Stanhope Forbes still continues at the point where Bastien-Lepage began to curtail, deform, and degrade the original inspiration. Mr. Clausen, I said, overcame the difficulty of the trousers by generalisation. Mr. Stanhope Forbes copied the trousers seam by seam, patch by patch; and the ugliness of the garment bores you in the picture, exactly as it would in nature. And the same criticism applies equally well to the faces, the hands, the leather aprons, the loose ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... went out in the curagh that had been damaged on the day of my visit to Kilronan, and as we were putting in the oars the freshly-tarred patch stuck to the slip which was heated with the sunshine. We carried up water in the bailer—the 'supeen,' a shallow wooden vessel like a soup-plate—and with infinite pains we got free and rode away. In a few minutes, ...
— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge
... heavy step sounded on the sidewalk, and the old doctor came into the patch of light ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... a difficult matter to get the girls along, so many interesting discoveries were made on the way—first a patch of pink-fringed buck-bean, growing at the edge of the stream; then a clump of butterfly orchis; and last, but not least, a quantity of the beautiful "Grass of Parnassus", the delicate white blossoms of which ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... orifice of the corolla; this deep colour is also seen outside of the central and most elevated portions of the lower lip. In the peloria the deep colour at the base of the tube represents that which is near the orifice under ordinary circumstances, while the outer patch of colour at the apex corresponds to that formed on the upper surface of the lower lip. On the other hand, in peloric flowers of Cytisus Laburnum, Clitoria Ternatea, Trifolium repens, and other Papilionaceae, it is the ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... made of plastic in a maroon and blue plaid pattern. But where the box had rested there was a dirty grey rectangular patch that hadn't been ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... Patch himself up he must. But how? He had tried the tables, but luck was against him; he made a desperate venture upon the turf, a grand coup that would have set him on his legs for some time, but the venture turned ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... means. The book-cases on the walls held old college classics and law-books underneath, and above a miscellaneous literary library, of which the main bulk was French, while the side-wings, so to speak, had that tempting miscellaneous air—here a patch of German, there an island of Italian; on this side rows of English poets, on the other an abundance of novels of all languages—which delights the fond heart of the book-lover. The pictures were mostly autotypes and photographs ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Lowland of the Eglantine or Narcissus; Nisrin is also in dictionaries an island where amber abounds. There is a shade of difference between Buk'ah and Bak'ah. The former which is the corrector forma patch of ground, a plain (hence the Buka'a Coelesyria), while Bak'aha hollow where water collects. In Chavis we find "the plain of Harrim" and in Gauttier la plaine de Baschrin; and the appointment was "for the first of the month ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... elated. She overlooked the matter of duplicates, and accepted graciously every article that was tendered—from a patch-work quilt to a hem-stitched handkerchief. "You can't have too many of some things," she remarked to Esther. But later she reversed this statement. Match-safes, photograph-frames, and pretty nothings ...
— Different Girls • Various
... the door with a brush, and a large jar of red paint, and as each man went out of the room, Arthur made a huge cross upon his bare pate. The poor wretches in their attempt to rub it off, merely converted the cross into a red patch, and as they were made to walk across the market-place with their bald red heads, they gave rise to shouts of laughter, not only from the royalists, but from the inhabitants ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... heat, and on top of it the chill of the long swim, seemed to have struck at him. Alone on the dark sea, for soon the current and his own exertions were taking him away from the rocks, the light of the burning ship was ceasing to be effective. It was just enough to hinder his vision; looking from the patch of light which bathed the light and him he could just see far off the white water which marked the cliff fronts, and on the edge of his horizon the grim moving white wall where the waves broke ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... Homeburg is one long bereavement because of this fact. Seems as if the world was always looking Homeburg men over, the way a housewife looks over an asparagus patch, and yanking out the ones who stick up a little higher than the rest. We don't worry about the good who die young in Homeburg; but the interesting who go early and forget to come back make us sad and sore. No sooner does a Homeburg man begin to broaden out and get ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... have another word or two with the Tinker. So, holding Miss Kimmeens (with whom he was now on the most friendly terms) by the hand, he went out at the gate to where the Tinker was seated at his work on the patch of grass on the opposite side of the road, with his wallet of tools open before him, and his ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... the right of Fort Saunders, on a cold, wet day, the colonel commanding the brigade to which I was attached directed his quartermaster to furnish me with a tent. There was sent round an old sibley tent and my men pitched it a short distance in rear of the line, on a slightly elevated dry patch of ground. I went inside, but found that as the top of the tent was above our parapet, the rebels were shooting bullets through the top in a lively manner. I went outside and estimated about how low the shots could come through the tent. ...
— Campaign of Battery D, First Rhode Island light artillery. • Ezra Knight Parker
... Jurgis struck through a patch of woods, and then a field of winter grain, and came at last to another road. Before long he saw another farmhouse, and, as it was beginning to cloud over a little, he asked here for shelter as well as food. Seeing the farmer eying him dubiously, ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... character was now little better than that of his son. In the fourth place, he never thought of Phelim, that he did not see a gallows in the distance; and matrimony, he thought, might save him from hanging, as one poison neutralizes another. In the fifth place, the half-acre Was but a shabby patch to meet the exigencies of the family, since Phelim grew up. "Bouncing Phelim," as he was called for more reasons than one, had the gift of a good digestion, along with his other accomplishments; and with such energy was it exercised, that the "half-acre" ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... spraying will make a tree satisfactory in inhospitable soil. As pears will endure wet places better than apples, it would seem to be wise to make the substitution, providing the situation is not too bad for any fruit tree. In that case you can use it for a summer vegetable patch. ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... exclaimed Thorndyke, as the two parts fell asunder; and for a few moments we stood silently regarding the dismembered cheroot. For, about half an inch from the small end, there appeared a little circular patch of white, chalky material which, by the even manner in which it was diffused among the leaf, had evidently been ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... blazed out across the patch of grass; fell on the child's green bucket with the gold line round it, and upon the aster which trembled violently beside it. For the wind was tearing across the coast, hurling itself at the hills, and leaping, in sudden gusts, on top of its own ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... figured out that all you've spent on making Ellen comfortable for life isn't a patch on what she and the boys cost me, so it's high time you set about your natural destiny of making some ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin
... I stared in the direction of the patch of shadow for several moments. It may be said that there was nothing to occasion alarm or even curiosity in the appearance of a stray pedestrian at that hour; for it was little after midnight. Indeed thus I argued with ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... of Mechlin at his throat was drenched, empurpled and ruined beyond redemption, and on the breast of his blue satin coat a dark patch was spreading ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... head and looked at the spectral forest where dead pines towered, ghastly in the moon's beams. That morning he had cut the last wood on his own land; he had nothing left to sell but a patch of brambles and a hut which ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... Goil. I didn't know. This asteroid patch, or vein, as we like to call it, has a better than average content of metal ores and compounds. As you can see, we have swept the loose ends, so to speak, together. And there you see the result. In the center of that nebulous sort ...
— Jack of No Trades • Charles Cottrell
... would do so I would let them avail themselves of the proceeds of their labor, but if these patches should be neglected, I should assign them to other men, and their planting labor would be forfeited. Thus far I find but one neglected patch, and unless this is soon hoed by some of the friends of the sick woman to whom it belongs, I shall have to assign it to some one else. It is a common practice among them to hire each other to hoe their tasks, ...
— Letters from Port Royal - Written at the Time of the Civil War (1862-1868) • Various
... The man of the most moderate means may cultivate many elegant tastes, and may have flowers in his little garden that the greatest sovereign in the world might enthusiastically admire. Flowers are never vulgar. A rose from a peasant's patch of ground is as fresh and elegant and fragrant as if it had been nurtured in a Royal parterre, and it would not be out of place in the richest porcelain vase of the most aristocratical drawing-room in Europe. The poor man's flower is a present for a ...
— Flowers and Flower-Gardens • David Lester Richardson
... the field seemed leagued against this devoted patch of sugar-cane. The wild elephants came, and browsed in it; the jungle hogs rooted it up, and munched it at their leisure; the jackals gnawed the stalks into squash; and the wild deer ate the tops of the young plants. Against all these marauders there was an obvious remedy—to build ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... four in a hill. You must not have your hills too near together,—they should be five feet apart, and then the vines will cover the ground all over. I should think there would be room for fifty hills on this patch of ground.' ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... fell into utter despair; and so great a change took place in her appearance that no one would have known her. Her nose, before so beautiful, grew long and large, and was covered with pimples, over each of which she put a patch; this had a very singular effect; the red and white paint, too, did not adhere to her face. Her eyes were hollow and sunken, and the alteration which this had caused in her face cannot be imagined. In Spain they, lock up all the ladies at night, ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... down to the river's brink is covered with a wilderness of shrubbery; while to the right of the garden-fence spreads a magnificent grove of white pines, once making a famous play-ground for us children. Down yonder, in that old field waving with long grass, beyond the grove, is a patch of splendid blackberry bushes; and near that old ivy-bound oak on the bank, leaning so gracefully over the placid waters, as if to greet his image reflected in its vast mirror, is a fine place to hunt summer grapes. At the building, that little right-hand ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... come down with a handsome tip). To their coarse-fibred minds there was nothing pathetic or tragic about the affair at all. (At the very moment when the train began to glide out of the station Uncle John was heard to remark that, in his opinion, these Bocks weren't a patch on the old shaped Larranaga.) Among others present might have been noticed Saunders, practising late cuts rather coyly with a walking-stick in the background; the village idiot, who had rolled up on the chance of a dole; Gladys ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... Billy as they trudged along beneath trees that shot up to unknown heights with great rope-like creepers dangling from their upper branches, looking like ladders leading up into "Jack in the Beanstalk-land." Occasionally a patch of blue could be sighted through the tree-tops, but for the most part the hunters progressed along the floor of the forest under a regular roof of greenery. There was plenty of life in this tipper story of the earth jungle. Troops of monkeys with ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... I am admitted when her Face is stark naked: She frowned, and cryed Pish when I said a thing that I stole; and I will be judged by you whether it was not very pretty. Madam, said I, you [shall [5]] forbear that Part of your Dress; it may be well in others, but you cannot place a Patch where it does ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... fellow now," said Cousin Egbert almost gleefully, and our host entered. He carried a patch over his right eye and was not attired for sport on the lake, but in a dark morning suit of quietly beautiful lines that I thought showed a fine sense of the situation. He shot me one superior glance from his left eye and turned ...
— Ruggles of Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... it don't seem so bad now we come to think of it. See-saw knows all about these parts, sir, and it would be a pity for him to come to find us, and walk into this patch of trees and find ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... the good old stock assertion, as in duty bound; but she could not help recollecting that there were several Popish books of devotion at that moment on her table, which seemed to her to patch a gap or two ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... Great masses of long black hair hung dripping with rain about her shoulders. Her dress was torn and wet, and soiled with clay from the road and earth from the shrubbery. One cheek was white, and the other had a red patch on it. ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... boys and young men dearly love the sport. The party sets out about eight or nine o'clock of a dark, moonless night, and stealthily approaches the cornfield. The dog knows his business, and when he is put into a patch of corn and told to "hunt them up" he makes a thorough search, and will not be misled by any other scent. You hear him rattling through the corn, hither and yon, with great speed. The coons prick up their ears, and quickly take themselves off on the ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... Jones's losing their cow; it comes hard for them. It's better for our potato patch, particularly if they do not have another. Cyrus ought ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... instincts of the savage, hers was the natural love found in civilized and savage alike, and she could not bring herself to tell the Father what she felt must be true. So, silently, the two hastened to her home. Juan's father was in the garden back of the house, weeding his vegetable patch, As soon as he saw his wife and the priest he ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... without coming in contact with their crowns, and so they live on, and on, and spread by a multiplication of their roots until they often gain entire possession of the soil, in spots. When this happens, the best thing to do is to spade up the patch, and rake every weed-root out of it, and then reseed it. If this is done early in spring the newly-seeded place will not be noticeable ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... was a thin and wiry little fellow, a total stranger to the soap and water beloved of Unbelievers. He could not have been more than five feet high, and he was burnt brown. His dark outer garment of coarse native wool had the curious yellow patch on the back that all Berbers seem to favour, though none can explain its origin or purpose, and he carried his slippers in his hand, probably deeming them less capable of withstanding hard wear than his naked feet. He had no Arabic, but spoke only "Shilha," ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... Yes, this must be a thorn in the flesh for the lord of the manor! The corn-patch was small; but it stretched out amid the turnip-fields like a long arm that could hold its own, and that would not brook encroachment. Rich fruitful soil it was, that scarcely needed ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... and I went ahead. In our anxiety to reach the summit, unable to discern the track, now covered by several feet of snow, we mistook our bearings, and with great fatigue climbed up an extremely steep incline. Here we were on a patch of the troublesome loose debris, on which we struggled for over half an hour until we reached the top of the range, 18,750 feet, considerably higher than the pass itself. Four men had come with us, the others, to whom we ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... India Rubber dissolved in Bisulphide of Carbon. Add Bisulphide until of proper consistency to apply. After applying hold a moderately warm iron over the patch. ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... period of the war at sea. The British government had been so anxious to avoid war, and to patch up peace again after war had broken out, that they purposely refrained from putting forth their full available naval strength till 1813. At the same time, they would naturally have preferred victory to defeat; ...
— The War With the United States - A Chronicle of 1812 - Volume 14 (of 32) in the series Chronicles of Canada • William Wood
... the hour before daybreak, and Drumsheugh wandered through fields he had trodden since childhood. The cattle lay sleeping in the pastures; their shadowy forms, with a patch of whiteness here and there, having a weird suggestion of death. He heard the burn running over the stones; fifty years ago he had made a dam that lasted till winter. The hooting of an owl made him start; one had ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... where the ground sloped gently upward into a low bluff. Still keeping to the trail, they ascended this eminence, finding the forest not so dense, and the walking easier than it had been hitherto. Gaining the top, they emerged upon an open patch, which had been cleared of its erect, massive pines, and the long-hidden earth laid bare to the sky by the ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... sea there is very little ground elevated above highwater mark; while for many miles further inland, the banks of the main stream and its numerous tributaries are swampy, and in the wet season hooded for a considerable distance. Palembang is built on a patch of elevated ground, a few miles in extent, on the north bank of the river. At a spot about three miles from the town this turns into a little hill, the top of which is held sacred by the natives, shaded by some fine trees, and inhabited ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... pirates were all visited by the searching Italian, and we were convinced, from what we knew of their movements, that Whisky Bob and Nicky the Greek were the guilty parties. But where was the salmon boat? Hundreds of Greek and Italian fishermen, up river and down bay, had searched every slough and tule patch for it. When the owner despairingly offered a reward of fifty dollars, our interest increased and the ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... every sprig and leaf was glistening in the brilliant sunshine with its frosty dew, Preuss led Van away up the ravine to picket him on a little patch of grass he had discovered the day before and as he passed the colonel's fire a keen-eyed old veteran of the cavalry service, who had stopped to have a chat with our chief, dropped the stick on which he was whittling and stared ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... might have been paralyzed by a defection which left him almost without an army, and would have taken the course of sending envoys to the rebels to attempt to make terms and by concessions to patch up a treaty, Cesare, with characteristic courage, assurance, and promptitude of action, flung out officers on every side ...
— The Life of Cesare Borgia • Raphael Sabatini
... the long drag after them. They were in a valley and suddenly they came to a broad patch of ice and Sam went sprawling on his back. His brother helped him to arise, and onward they went once more, but with ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... shadow cast by a patch of flowering azalea in the moonlight about ten yards from where they sat. Dacre raised himself with leisurely self-assurance and peered in the same direction. It was not his nature to be ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... second terrace, Feller, the Gallands' gardener, a patch of blue blouse and a patch of broad-brimmed straw hat over a fringe of white hair, was planting bulbs. Mrs. Galland came down the path from the veranda loiteringly, pausing to look at the flowers and again at the ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... to the identity of any one man among the crowd who might have attracted her attention, but all that she could tell me was that she had a vague impression of a wizened hunchback with evil face, shaggy red beard and hair, and a black patch covering the left eye. ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... she pointed down the steep to a small garden patch near by—mere pot of rifled loam, half rounded in by sheltering rocks—where, side by side, some feet apart, nipped and puny, two hop-vines climbed two poles, and, gaining their tip-ends, would have ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... here and there on the mountains, crawling like a deerstalker across ledges and stretches of bracken—a few dots on the higher slopes, visible for a moment, then again invisible, then glimpsed against some lower snow patch, and gone again beyond the ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... clutching old man had lost his grip on life, was left as he had left it. There was the old grisly four-post bedstead, without hangings, and with a jail-like upper rim of iron and spikes; and there was the old patch-work counterpane. There was the tight-clenched old bureau, receding atop like a bad and secret forehead; there was the cumbersome old table with twisted legs, at the bed-side; and there was the box upon it, in ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... state he was led out again presently, and set on a horse. And while a man attached one foot to the other by a cord beneath the horse's belly, he looked like a child at the arched doorway of the house; at a patch of lichen that was beginning to spread above the lintel; at the open ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... self-contempt, to find inexplicable tears in his eyes. And just then an interruption came, not altogether unwelcome, in the greeting of a familiar voice. It was Lightmark, who had discovered him in the course of a rapid walk down the Row, and had crossed over the small patch of intervening grass to make ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... not see how that was possible. He opened his office door, and stood listening. Presently he stepped through; went walking without noise down the long hall, which was pitch-black but for a dim haze of light just perceptible at its extreme farther end. When he came to this small patch, the young man lifted ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... be mounted - we have one girth-sore and one dead-lame in the establishment - were due at a picnic about 10.30. The morning was very wet, and I set off barefoot, with my trousers over my knees, and a macintosh. Presently I had to take a side path in the bush; missed it; came forth in a great oblong patch of taro solemnly surrounded by forest - no soul, no sign, no sound - and as I stood there at a loss, suddenly between the showers out broke the note of a harmonium and a woman's voice singing an air ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a meadow, and primroses (P. vulgaris) in an adjoining wood, each in abundance, but not often intermingled. And for the same reason the old turf of a pasture or heath consists of a great variety of plants matted together, so much so that in a patch little more than a yard square Mr. Darwin found twenty distinct species, belonging to eighteen distinct genera and to eight natural orders, thus showing their extreme diversity of organisation. For the same reason a number of distinct grasses and clovers are ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... distance we caught a distant view of the Beka' el Basha, or Pasha's meadow, where we were to encamp at night, but turned aside westwards in order to visit the town of Es-Salt. Upon a wide level tract we came to a small patch of ground enclosed by a low wall, to which a space was left for entrance, with a lintel thrown across it, but still not above four feet from ground. On this were bits of glass and beads and pebbles deposited, as votive offerings, ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... the corn-patch Whistling negro songs; Pussy by the hearth-side Romping with the tongs; Chestnuts in the ashes Bursting through the rind; Red leaf and gold leaf Rustling down the wind; Mother "doin' peaches" All the afternoon,— Don't you think ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... in a chamois bag that she safety-pinned under her shirt-waist. Then she dismissed it from her mind also. There is very little time in a Liberry Teacher's life for meditation. Only once in a while would come to her the vision of the wistful Harrington wolfhound following his inadequate patch of sunlight, or of the dusky room where Allan Harrington lay inert and white, and looking like a wonderful carved ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... with their favorite mates, but said nothing about the new arrangement, fearing it would be spoilt if generally known. They told their mother, however, and she gave them leave to lend their books and encourage Ben to love learning all they could. She also proposed that they should drop patch-work, and help her make some blue shirts for Ben. Mrs. Barton had given her the materials, and she thought it would be an excellent lesson in needle-work as well as a useful gift to Ben,—who, boy-like, never troubled himself as ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... She felt that it would be an utter impossibility to sit still, waiting until the men came into the drawing-room, and she paced slowly backwards and forwards across the lawn, a slight, shadowy figure in the patch of silver light. ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... of the 22nd. Our march to the capital of Georgia was one of pleasure and plenty; plenty sat smiling on every hand, tauntingly inviting the Yankee boys on. The Eighty-sixth was now in the height of its glory, making itself free in every man's potato patch, poultry yard and smoke house, thus assuring the inhabitants of its sincere regard and thankfulness for their unswerving devotion as enemies. Thus the command passed merrily on in its wild paroxysms of frantic joy, living as sumptuously as kings are wont to live in their marble palaces and wanton ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... first seen Bram. By lighting an occasional match Philip continued to keep a record of direction and time. It was three o'clock, and they were still traveling west, when to his surprise they struck a small patch of timber. The clump of stunted and wind-snarled spruce covered no more than half an acre, but it was conclusive evidence they ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood |
