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Ragged   /rˈægəd/   Listen
Ragged

adjective
1.
Being or dressed in clothes that are worn or torn.  "A ragged tramp"
2.
Worn out from stress or strain.
3.
Having an irregular outline.  "Herded the class into a ragged line"



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"Ragged" Quotes from Famous Books



... minutes of good light Jellicoe smashed up the first three German ships, but the mist came down, visibility suddenly failed, and the defeated High Seas Fleet was able to draw off in ragged divisions. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish

... began, "Mr. Fergus Duff brought a ragged little boy to Glashruach—the most innocent and loving of creatures, who had committed no crime but that of doing good in secret. I saw Mr. Duff box his ears on the bridge; and you, papa, gave him over to that wretch, Angus Mac Pholp, to whip him—so at least Angus told ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald

... hundred years ago, the monk patriot, with whom the Scottish warriors knelt to pray upon the field before engaging in the memorable conflict whose issue achieved for them their country's independence. A ragged wall, an arched chamber, several solid heaps of fallen mason-work are all that remain of ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various

... in 1729, and then called Oxford Street. But against this statement there is the fact that a stone built into a house at the corner of Rathbone Place was dated "Rathbone Place in Oxford Street, 1718." Pennant remembers Oxford Street "a deep hollow road and full of sloughs, with here and there a ragged house, the lurking place ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton

... opened, and a gentleman entered the room. He was wearing a shabby-looking dressing-gown, a couple of ragged quill pens were stuck in his mouth, and he carried in his hand a bundle of closely-written sheets of foolscap. Mr. Basil Fenleigh, to tell the truth, was about to issue an invitation to a "few friends" to join him in starting an advertisement and bill-posting agency business; to be conducted, so ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery

... under the glorious shroud of the centuries, but art was moving along new paths and he could not study there under the false glare of the skylights, where he saw reality only through the temperaments of other men. A bit of sea, a mountainside, a group of ragged people, an expressive head attracted him more than that palace, with its broad staircases, its white columns and its statues of bronze and alabaster—a solemn pantheon of art, where the neophytes vacillated in fruitless ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... arrayed in new uniforms and bearing orange-flowers in their caps, a bridal wreath for beautiful Guiana,—it is no wonder that the Creole ladies were in ecstasy, and the boyish recruits little foresaw the day, when, reduced to a few dozens, barefooted and ragged as filibusters, their last survivors would gladly reembark from a country beside which even Holland looked dry and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 31, May, 1860 • Various

... common saying of 'Do as I say, not as I do' is usually reversed in the actual experience of life." Goodness makes good. As a man who trims his garden in a straight row and makes it beautiful will induce in time all his neighbors to follow him, or at least to be ashamed of their ragged and ill-kept plots in contrast with his own, so is it that the upright, good life of a sincere Christian man ...
— Life and Conduct • J. Cameron Lees

... player had 74 in the | |morning, while Evans had approximately 72 in the | |afternoon. | | | |Fourteen of the thirty-five holes were won under par| |figures, ten were won at par, and two were ties | |under par, leaving only two holes at which both | |players were really ragged. | | | |Sawyer shot remarkably fine golf in the out round of| |the morning and at the tenth hole was 4 up, but from| |this point Evans began to whittle down the lead. | |Although Chick got on even terms four times, it was | |not until the sixteenth ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer

... must have hunted for that book for twenty minutes, pulling out whole blocks of volumes and peering with lighted matches behind, until my hands were covered with dust. At last I found it had fallen to the rear of a ragged regiment of French novels, and in triumph I took it to the area of light on the table and turned up the scene in question. Keeping my thumb in the place ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... fir-forest lay in long, continuous ridges before me; here and there was the green patch of a small birch-copse; the whole sky-line was hugged by the pine-wood; nowhere was there the white gleam of a church, nor bright stretches of meadow—it was all trees and trees, everywhere the ragged edge of the tree-tops, and a delicate dim mist, the eternal mist of the forest, hung over them in the distance. It was not indolent repose this immobility of life suggested; no—the absence of life, something dead, even in its grandeur, was what came to me from ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... them on their heads, by the help of the men, with a single quick, sharp motion, and thereupon setting off again, in groups that incessantly replace each other, toward the railway, passing and repassing their returning companions. Very picturesque in their ragged gowns of brilliant colors, they walk swiftly with lengthy strides, their long skirts defining the movements of their naked limbs and fluttering in the wind behind them, while their arms, with gestures like those of classic ...
— The Wonders of Pompeii • Marc Monnier

... were the feet, scant the clothing of our ragged Continentals, as, turning upon their foe, they recrossed the icy Delaware on Christmas night, surprised Rall and his revellers in Trenton's village, punished the left of Cornwallis's column at Princeton, and then, on their way to the mountains of Morris County, fell by the wayside ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various

... the morrow my Cid ordered a feast to be made, that he might do pleasure to the Count, but the Count said that for all Spain he would not eat one mouthful, but would rather die, since he had been beaten in battle by such a set of ragged fellows. And Ruydiez said to him, Eat and drink, Count, of this bread and of this wine, for this is the chance of war: if you do as I say you shall be free; and if not you will never return again into your own lands. And Don Ramond answered, Eat you, Don Rodrigo, ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various

... armed with sharp pieces of broken shells, which were stuck in, and at the junctures covered with resin: The lances that are thus barbed, are indeed dreadful weapons, for when once they have taken place, they can never be drawn back without tearing away the flesh, or leaving the sharp ragged splinters of the bone or shell which forms the beard, behind them in the wound. These weapons are thrown with great force and dexterity; if intended to wound at a short distance, between ten and twenty yards, simply with the hand, but if at the distance of forty or fifty, with ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr

... with his amphora broken beneath him, the stream of the purple wine lapped eagerly by ragged children. A money-changer had left the receipt of custom, eager to watch and shout, and a thief clutched both hands full of ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... full of allegories and symbols, Gothic and rococo, choleric, obstinate, serene, with a passion for life, and a great longing for death ...—he saw him in his school, a genial pedant, surrounded by his pupils, dirty, coarse, vagabond, ragged, with hoarse voices, the ragamuffins with whom he squabbled, and sometimes fought like a navvy, one of whom once gave him a mighty thrashing ...—he saw him with his family, surrounded by his twenty-one children, of whom thirteen died before him, and ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland

... dinnertime, washed down with mead or spirits. We children—and indeed our elders—were not seldom kicked and cudgelled by the Russian soldiers, when they were in liquor, but we could be merry enough romping about ragged and unwashed, and our real life was lived in the Holy Land, with patriarchs, kings, and prophets, and we knew that we should return thither some ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... cut into pieces one and a half inch square, filled into a cutch and beaten to about three inches square. It is then removed from the cutch and filled into a mold, and further beaten to the desired size. When the ragged edges are trimmed off, the foil is ready ...
— Tin Foil and Its Combinations for Filling Teeth • Henry L. Ambler

... ears I seemed to hear the voices of Theresa and Phaldoni. At length, however, I grasped the button, and, raising and straightening myself, stood humbly with clasped hands—looking a veritable fool! But no. First of all I tried to attach the button to the ragged threads, and smiled each time that it broke away from them, and smiled again. In the beginning his Excellency had turned away, but now he threw me another glance, and I heard him say to Evstafi Ivanovitch: "What on earth is the matter with the fellow? Look at the figure he cuts! Who to ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky

... the two cities, and also the number in each which altogether lack education, he would, if susceptible of statistics, be surprised also at that. But seeing and hearing are always more effective than mere figures. The female pupil at a free school in London is, as a rule, either a ragged pauper or a charity girl, if not degraded, at least stigmatized by the badges and dress of the charity. We Englishmen know well the type of each, and have a fairly correct idea of the amount of education which is imparted to them. We see the result afterward when ...
— Volume 1 • Anthony Trollope

... o'clock in the evening in Steve's boat, the Mayflower, a leaky little craft that kept one man pretty busy bailing out the water. She carried one ragged sail, and Steve sculled and steered with a rough oar about eighteen feet long. An hour after we got under way a blanket of grey fog, thick and damp, enveloped us; but so long are the Labrador summer days that there still was light ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace

... although a native of Minorca, came to this country in 1776 and lost no time in joining the ragged, starving patriots in their struggle for independence. His skill and gallantry won him the rank of major. When the war ended he settled on the western frontier, near Knoxville, Tenn., where at a place called Campbell's ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis

... him. He, too, as he stood on the left bank of the Rappahannock, was surrounded by able and famous generals, and others were to come. There was Meade, a little older than the others, but not old, tall, thin, stooped a bit, wearing glasses, and looking like a scholar, with his pale face and ragged beard, a cold, quiet man, able and thorough, but without genius. Then came Reynolds, modest and quiet, who many in the army claimed would have shown the genius that Meade lacked had it not been for his early death, for he too, like ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler

... poor, and the beggars are intolerable. One little blind boy, led by his brother, both frightfully ugly and ragged urchins, pursued us all over the city, incessantly whining "Signore! Padrone!" It was only on the threshold of the inn that I ventured to give them a few coppers, for I knew well that any public beneficence ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... Instead of those authentic cross-garterings in which your true bandit rejoices, like a new Malvolio, to tie up his legs, perhaps to keep them from running away, these false knaves wore, some of them, ragged boots up to their thighs, while others had no crural coverings at all, and only rough sandals, such as the Indians there use, between their feet and the ground. They were picturesque, perhaps, but not attractive to wealthy travellers. But the wealthy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various

... things went from bad to worse. He tried to get work, but no one would hire him, and it was not very long before the Heir of Linne, who had been so proud and reckless in his brighter days, was going about in ragged clothes, begging his bread from door to door. No one who saw him now would have known him to be the bright-faced, handsome lad of whom the old lord had been so proud a ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson

... martial spirit, then, if the lean animals have strength enough left in their dilapidated frames, the cortge, as it is well called, may proceed into the Park, where the hero, if it do not rain, may take off his hat to the multitude of rejected humanity, (such as ragged politicians and wasted vagrants,) there assembled. Having paused a few moments, (to the great impatience of his shattered admirers,) that the aldermen who accompanied him may quench their thirst, he will alight amidst the huzzas of the throng and ascend the platform, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"

... him when I observed that something projected from the front of his ragged jacket. It was this sketch-book, which was as dilapidated then as you see it now. Indeed, I can assure you that a first folio of Shakespeare could not be treated with greater reverence than this relic has been since it came ...
— The Lost World • Arthur Conan Doyle

... to preserve the beauty of pearl ornaments, they should be carefully kept from dampness. A piece of paper torn off and rolled up, so as to present a soft, ragged edge, is the best ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child

... and knew that he did not at all know where he was. There was a tall, thin, ragged man lounging against a stable door in the yard where the Punch and Judy show lived. He took his clay pipe out of his ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit

... would be charmed, I'm sure," Felix replied, smiling in spite of himself at so much Parisian courtliness under so ragged an exterior. "It is a great pleasure to us to find we are not really alone on this barbarous island. But you were going to explain to me, I believe, the exact nature of this peril in which we both stand—the precise distinction ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... loomed up in the distance, gradually separating itself from the background of villa roofs and casino terraces, resolved itself into a figure stolid and sturdy, very brown of leg, and insolent of demeanor—swaggering along as if conscious of there being a full-grown man buttoned up within a boy's ragged coat. The swagger was accompanied by a whistle, whose neat crispness announced habits of leisure and a sense of the refined pleasures of life; for an artistic rendering of an aria from "La Fille de Madame Angot" was cutting the air with ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... lithograph of a Turk and of a Turkish lady, . . . . and various showily engraved tailors' advertisements, and other shop-bills; among them all, a small painting of a drunken toper, sleeping on a bench beside the grog-shop,—a ragged, half-hatless, bloated, red-nosed, jolly, miserable-looking devil, very well done, and strangely suitable to the room in which it hangs. Round the walls are placed some half a dozen marble-topped tables, and a centre-table in the midst; most of them strewn with theatrical ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... the huckster's stall, and there was the owner herself, superintending the sale of her small wares—a few loungers and ragged idlers were hanging round her stall—for Biddy was 'a character,' and, in her way, was one ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

... surface of the ground. On this was a small cabin constructed of slabs of bark-covered wood. As a dwelling it might be crude, but it had an air of scrupulous neatness. A short distance to one side of the platform was a well-built chicken-run, now inhabited by five hens and a ragged-tailed cock. ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton

... welcoming her child which is on this Portail des Libraires and was copied from it (as is the case in six other instances) in the misericordes of the choir in 1467, or the man who steals clothes from the line as Falstaff's ragged regiment did (a ruffian who is no doubt commemorated also in the name of Rue Tirelinceuil at Rouen), or the burglar walking off with a chest upon the southern transept, while the owner soundly kicks him and tries ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook

... Tritons and Neptune's selfe would quake with chilling feare to behold such monstrous Icie Islands, mustering themselves in those watery plaines, where they hold a continuall civill warre, rushing one upon another, making windes and waves give back; nor the rigid, ragged face of the broken landes, sometimes towering themselves to a loftie height, to see if they can finde refuge from those snowes and colds that continually beat them, sometimes hiding themselves under some ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... always a sacred veneration for any one I observe to be a little out of repair in his person, as supposing him either a poet or a philosopher; because the richest minerals are ever found under the most ragged and withered ...
— Pearls of Thought • Maturin M. Ballou

... know, in spite of all that and our promise to meet her, we forgot every bit about it till half-past four! You see, it was election day, and we were frightfully busy. After the fifth hour recitation we hurried into the ragged blue overalls that we had worn in one of the torchlight parades. Lila punched up the crown of an old felt alpine hat, and I battered my last summer's sailor till it looked disreputable enough. Then we rushed over to the gymnasium to join ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz

... corporation, but it did pretty well for a one-man show. The outer office was a gantlet that Mike the Angel had to run when he came in the next morning after having spent the night at a hotel. There was a mixed and ragged chorus of "Good morning, Mr. Gabriel" as he passed through. Mike gave the nod to each of them and was stopped four times for small details before he finally made his way ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett

... lower corner of the supported stone to rest firmly upon a projection of the supporting stone, but in the few cases in which the construction could be observed no such treatment was seen, for they depended mainly on the interlocking of the ragged ends of the stones. This structure serves to support the body of the flue, usually with an intervening stone-covered space forming a shelf. At the present period the flue is usually built of thin ...
— Eighth Annual Report • Various

... hastily buttoning it beneath his worn jacket, made off as fast as his feet would carry him to bestow his prize upon Matty, who had expressed a longing desire for a bird. But the stolen gift brought naught but distress to Matty's tender heart; for, when the ragged jacket was unbuttoned, the little yellow ball ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews

... and provided with large baskets in which to convey away the soil as it was dug out. They were as unprepossessing a lot of specimens of female humanity as could well be imagined. Naked, save for a filthy ragged skin petticoat round their waists and reaching to the knee, their faces wore, without exception, an expression of sullen stupidity, and they looked as though they had never experienced a joyous moment in their lives; but they were ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood

... and a delay is proposed, Ulysses, the beggar, comes forward and asks to make the trial. Violent opposition rises on part of the Suitors, but Penelope in two speeches insists that he shall try. Here again we must ascribe to her unconscious nature some strong affinity with the ragged man before her. She praises the form of the stranger and notes his noble birth, though she denies the possibility of herself becoming his bride. Still she shows a deep attraction for him, which she ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... about hopeless that a handful of ragged homesteaders ever can make a stand against them. But they're usurping the public domain, and they'll overreach themselves one of these days. Chadron has title to this homestead, but that's every inch of land that ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden

... the heavy-eyed, harassed professors of his acquaintance, working nights and Sundays at hack work to satisfy the nervous ambitions of their wives to keep up appearances, and gave a sudden swift embrace to the ragged child on his lap, little Molly, who had developed an especial cult for him, following him everywhere with great pansy eyes ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... only letter which had fallen to her share. It was a tough-fibred envelope, hard to tear, and her heavily gloved hands made clumsy work of it. Finally she thrust a forefinger under the flap and wrenched it apart. A ragged scrap of yellowed paper fluttered out on to the step. Pink stooped and handed it ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston

... Barassin, was a robber and murderer by profession. Such was the chosen attendant on the Queen of France! A few days before her trial this wretch was removed and a gendarme placed in her chamber, who watched over her night and day, and from whom she was not separated, even when in bed, but by a ragged curtain. In this melancholy abode Marie Antoinette had no other dress than an old black gown, stockings with holes, which she was forced to mend every day; and she was entirely destitute ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... of the family's frequent movings; his taste for adventure made the sloop's cabin a home, and his love for reading turned the blacksmith shop and printing office into a schoolroom. As he read he forgot that he was poor, forgot that he was ragged, forgot that he was hungry. In his autobiography he tells of walking bare-footed six miles through the snow to borrow a history of the French Revolution, and of reading it at night in the blaze of a pitch-pine knot. Men found him lovable. He was large and awkward; but even ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... In a ragged school in the neighborhood of Posen where the children could hardly speak German they could sing; in a public school in Charlottenburg fifty boys, aged between eight and fifteen, sang the part-song known to every college man in America, "On a Bank Two Roses Grew," as well as a ...
— Germany and the Germans - From an American Point of View (1913) • Price Collier

... nations, being especially plants that are of some humble beauty, and (the crucifers) of endless use, when they are chosen and cultivated; but that run to wild waste, and are the signs of neglected ground, in their rank or ragged leaves and meagre stalks, and pursed or podded seed clusters. Capable, even under cultivation, of no perfect beauty, thought reaching some subdued delightfulness in the lady's smock and the wallflower; for the most part they have every floral quality meanly, and in vain,—they are white without ...
— The Queen of the Air • John Ruskin

... the dazzling and the flush Of softly sumptuous garden bowers, Or by some cabin door, a bush Of ragged flowers. ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman

... neighbouring square. Little direction was needed to band them into a marching mob, waving clubs, pikes, and bottles, dancing, quarrelling and howling, with ribald songs and shouts of "To the execution!" In one thing they differed notably from a similar crowd in this century, could such be imagined. Ragged and wretched though they were, they wore colour in profusion. The mass was a ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall

... nimbly ducked his head to dodge a ragged splinter of freshly torn wood which came whistling past, cast far away from the tornado proper by those erratic winds. And at the same instant the machine itself recoiled, shivering and creaking in all its cunning joints under a gust of wind which seemed composed of both ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.

... become weather-wise. Keep the door shut, to prevent an influx of visitors. Now and then a few people get in. Whilst eating my supper this evening, I was surprised at the appearance of two little ragged boys. I asked what they wanted, they returned, "Eat, eat, we want to eat." I went out to see them, for they stood on the terrace in the dark. Here I found one of the audacious urchins flourishing ...
— Travels in the Great Desert of Sahara, in the Years of 1845 and 1846 • James Richardson

... sitting on the trunk where Mary had sat, and when she began to speak she had looked down at her small hands that grasped the edge of the lid, their fingers picking nervously at the ragged flap. They ceased ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair

... the door, and reached it before the servant. I stared. There stood a girl about the size of Chrissy, with an old battered bonnet on, and a ragged shawl. She was standing on the door-step, trembling. I felt she was trembling somehow, for I don't think I saw it. She had Chrissy's eyes too, I thought; but the light was dim now, for the evening was ...
— Adela Cathcart - Volume II • George MacDonald

... a tavern brawl! Clancarty gave himself forth as a representative of the English Jacobites, but d'Argenson, in his 'Memoires,' says he could produce no names of men of rank in the party except his own. D'Argenson was pestered by women, priests, and ragged Irish adventurers. In September 1745, the Earl Marischal and Clancarty visited d'Argenson, then foreign minister of Louis XV. in the King's camp in Flanders. They asked for aid, and the scene, as described by the spy Macallester, on Clancarty's ...
— Pickle the Spy • Andrew Lang

... intellect, moving easily and with striking lucidity in the regions of accurate knowledge. Sometimes, in talking to his friend, Hugh became painfully aware of the weakness of his own slouching, pleasure-loving mind. It seemed to him that, in the intellectual region, he was like a dusty and ragged tramp, permeated on sunshiny days with a sort of weak, unsystematic contentment, dawdling by hedgerow-ends and fountain-heads, lying in a vacant muse in grassy dingles, and sleeping by stealth in the fragrant ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... sight not new; but in their midst he caught a glimpse of a crested helmet and the black cloak of a slave-driver. And then the crowd parted, and Nicanor saw a girl, a lean wisp of a thing, with burning eyes and a gray face framed in straight black hair, with chained wrists and a ragged frock which slipped aside to show a long red welt across her brown shoulders. The slave-driver held the end of the chain, his heavy whip tucked beneath one arm,—a squat man with a black and brutal face and small hard eyes. He was appraising the girl's good ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor

... but not a formidable old man. His cloak or mantle of brown stuff was worn and ragged, his turban was quite as dingy, but the long white beard that fell upon his breast made his swarthy face look even fiercer than it really was, and the stout staff, with which he helped himself over the uneven road, seemed ...
— Historic Girls • E. S. Brooks

... questions, and settling boundary lines; this kept him in continual feud with the neighboring sachems, each of whom stood up stoutly for his hand-breadth of territory; so that there is not a petty stream nor ragged hill in the neighborhood, that has not been the subject of long talks and hard battles. The sachem, however, as has been observed, was a medicine-man, as well as warrior, and vindicated his claims by arts as well as arms; so that, by dint of a little hard fighting here, ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... through the desert fields. He took for companions the associates, the accustomed ministers of his crimes. Wandering among broken graves and crumbling sepulchres, they discovered her, sitting sublime on a ragged rock, where mount Haemus stretches its roots to the Pharsalic field. She was mumbling charms of the Magi and the magical Gods. For she feared that the war might yet be transferred to other than the Emathian fields. The sorceress was busy therefore enchanting ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin

... through the green, and gold of pasture-lands,— And here and there a hamlet, a white rose,— And here and there a city, whose slim spires And palace-roofs and swollen domes uprose Like scintillant stalagmites in the sun; I saw huge navies battling with a storm By ragged reefs along the desolate coasts,— And lazy merchantmen, that crawled, like flies, Over the blue enamel of the sea To India ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various

... the Order of Charity. We met in scenes sanctified by religion. Oh, mother, the famine was sore, and he was kind to the famished people! 'The hunger is on us,' they would cry, as if it had been a plague of locusts. It was thus, with their shrill voices and wan faces, that the ragged multitudes followed us. Yes, mother, he was very, very kind ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine

... the crest of the Tigmore Hills, in the Ozark Uplift, raised in his stirrups, and looked the country through and through, as though he must see into its very heart. In the brilliant mid-afternoon light the Southwest unrolled below him and around him in a ragged bigness and an unconquered loneliness. As far as eye could reach tumbled the knobs, the flats, the waste weedy places, the gullies, the rock-pitted sweeps of table-land and the timbered hills of the Uplift. The buffalo grass trembled across the lowlands in long, shaking billows ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young

... known Lucette for years, even when she was a barefooted little tangle-hair, peeping at me with her great brown eyes from beneath her ragged straw hat. She wears high-heeled slippers now, and sometimes on Sundays dainty silk stockings, and her hair is braided down her back, little French Marguerite that she is, and her hat is never ragged any more, nor her hair tangled. Her eyes, though, are still the ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various

... pretence of kindness. That they kept him constantly at work could hardly be counted an evil, for his working hours were the only ones with happiness in them, except when he dreamed of home. Not the cold pavement chilling him through his ragged clothes, not the strange staring and jesting of the rough crowds, not even the hideous sense of the hunchback's vigilant oversight of him, could destroy his pleasure in the sense of the daily increasing powers of his fingers, in which genius seemed to tremble ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... inhospitably barren that even the snow could not find a lodgment on them, or over wide plains where the few trees that grew had been stunted and gnarled into mere shrubs by winter blasts. On every hand the mountains began to raise their ragged austere heads like grim giant sentinels placed there to guard the way. Finally they turned into a pass, which brought them, on the other side of the ridge it led through, to a comparatively well-wooded valley down which a wide river wound its way northward. ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace

... Nichols' ragged signals were coming through—or pounding through. They were worse than usual, and at first Kendall and Cole couldn't make them out. Then finally they got them in bursts. The man was excited, and his bad key-work made it worse. "—Randing stopped. They got him ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell

... much smoke and much laughter. Amusing experiences were narrated. You gathered that all who had passed their examination had done so by sheer luck, by astonishing flukes. Not one had ever worked. Each had been "ragged" on a subject of which he knew absolutely nothing. To the brilliancy with which he had gulled or bluffed his examiner, to the diplomacy with which he had headed him off the matters of which he knew absolutely less than nothing-to these alone were ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson

... nervously. "No, no; we mustn't spoil the magic of the ring." Her voice trailed off into a dreamy, wistful monotone. "Who knows—Cinderella's godmother came to her when it was only a matter of ragged clothes and a party; the need here was far greater. Who knows?" She caught her breath with a sudden in-drawn cry. "Why, ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer

... ground—even the most determined rushes—proved vain. While some made hopeless charges towards the walls, others crowded into a few straw shelters and mud huts which the troops had not found opportunity to remove, and thence maintained a ragged fire. After an hour's heavy fusillade the attack weakened, and presently ceased altogether. At ten o'clock, however, strong reinforcements having come up, the Dervishes made a second attempt. They were again repulsed, ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill

... I talked with a ragged Chinese boy through an interpreter just to find what his reactions to the Japanese were. He was a beggar. He said, "The Japanese has a heart like a dog and a liver ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger

... with the sight near the breech, and that which surmounted the extreme end of the deadly weapon. No sooner, however, had the head of the advancing column come within sight, than the trigger was pulled, and the small and ragged bullet sped hissing from the grooved and delicate barrel. A triumphant cry was next pealed from the lips of the warrior,—a cry produced by the quickly repeated application and removal of one hand to and from the mouth, while the other suffered the butt end of the now harmless ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson

... of England were astonished at the intelligence displayed in the opposition, by the rural population of America. They fancied the colonists to be an ignorant, ragged people, living in log cabins, scattered through the wilderness, and, in social position, two or three degrees below European and Irish peasantry. Great was their surprise to hear from all the colonies, and from the remotest ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott

... to the fragrant blossom The ragged brier should change; the bitter fir Distil Arabian myrrh! Nor that, upon the wintry desert's bosom, The harvest should rise plenteous, and the swain Bear home the ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant

... action of the two houses of Congress and the concurrence of the President could do it. If the Senate admitted their Senators, and the House their members, it would have no effect on the future action of Congress. The Fortieth Congress might reject both. Such is the ragged record of Congress ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes

... of the carriage, and simultaneously with it came the sound of crashing of glass and splintering of wood. So abrupt was the halt that Miss Durant was pitched forward, and as she put out her hand to save herself from being thrown into the bottom of the brougham, she caught a moment's glimpse of a ragged boy close beside her window, and heard, even above the hurly-burly of the pack of carriages and ...
— Wanted—A Match Maker • Paul Leicester Ford

... authoritative edition, revised and arranged by chapters, appeared. It created a tremendous stir. Saint-Simon had been merciless, from King down to lady's maid, in depicting the daily life of a famous Court. He had stripped it of all its tinsel and pretension, and laid the ragged framework bare. "He wrote like the Devil for posterity!" exclaimed Chateaubriand. But the work at once became universally read and quoted, both in France and England. Macaulay made frequent use of it in his historical ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... side, fills in with its walks and plantations an abrupt bend of the river, and the view from the up-going road at its back is very lovely, though the scene is purely pastoral. Overton Churchyard is one of the "seven wonders" of North Wales: it has a very trim and stately appearance, not that ragged, free if melancholy, outspreadedness which distinguishes many country cemeteries, that unpremeditated luxuriance of creepers and flowers, blossoming bushes and grasses, that make up at least half of one's pleasant ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various

... Down went his head! It struck the ragged edge of a fresh casting, and there he lay stunned and bleeding ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various

... of the hills, on whose backs we find extensive areas covered with reed-grass. Even a luxuriant forest does not look gay on a dull day, and this barren landscape looked most inhospitable in the grey mist of the afternoon. We slowly followed a coast of ragged coral patches, alternating with light sand beaches. Towards nightfall we anchored near a stony shore, flanked by two high cliffs, in about 10 fathoms of the most transparent water. We could see ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser

... bottling factory and membership of the ballet, up to the haven of matrimony. Through them all, Nance, the heroine, carries a very human and engaging personality, so that one is made to see the young woman who is clasped to the heroic breast on the last page as the logical development of the ragged urchin stamping her bare foot into the soft cement of Calvary Alley on the first. Moreover—wonder of wonders for transatlantic fiction!—the author is able to write about children, and the contrasted ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 24, 1917 • Various

... to take a brace and do better—honest I do, no kidding. But you know how it goes. Somebody wants me on the ball nine, or on the hockey team, or in the next play, and I say yes to every one of them. The first I know I haven't a minute to study and then I get ragged ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett

... the green trees of Honolulu, and the extinct crater of the "Punchbowl," its summit fallen in too. But a rent in its side showed us that it was bright and green within, forming a huge meadow with its ragged sides. All these opened before us, in delightful contrast to the desolated crater ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson

... tyranny and aristocratic avarice. Progress in the modern sense is a very dismal drudge; and mostly consists of being moved on by the police. We move on because we are not allowed to move back. But the really ragged prophets, the real revolutionists who held high language in the palaces of kings, they did not confine themselves to saying, "Onward, Christian soldiers," still less, "Onward, Futurist soldiers"; what they said to high ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton

... pitch of perfection, I was to paste on each a printed label, and then go on again with more pots. Two or three other boys were kept at similar duty down-stairs on similar wages. One of them came up, in a ragged apron and a paper cap, on the first Monday morning, to show me the trick of using the string and tying the knot. His name was Bob Fagin; and I took the liberty of using his name, long ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... ragged rock-teeth which showed through it, the trackless, unending forests that clothed the hills in every direction, awed her a little, yet gave her an unaccustomed feeling of freedom and contentment. The long wait out between the lonely islands, where the ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach

... those early ages to rear man in great abundance, it must be where nature would consent to work in partnership with herself; where warmth was to be had for nothing; where clothes were not so entirely indispensable but that a ragged fellow might still keep himself warm; where slight shelter might serve; and where the soil, if not absolutely richer in reversionary wealth, was more easily cultured. Nature must come forward liberally, and take a number of shares in every new joint-stock concern before it could ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey

... acorns grow; and you can never tell the eminent position to which the little bare-footed, ragged boy may climb if he has good luck. There is Governor Pinchback, of Louisiana. He was my boy. I raised him, and trained him. I took him out of a steamboat barber shop. I instructed him in the mysteries of ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol

... grey church on a hill-side; the church was ruinous and out of repair, the churchyard full of weeds and thistles; a storm had just broken, and an old shepherd in a ragged smock had taken refuge in the porch, his rough-looking dog at his feet. The bowed figure and knotted hands, and the peaceful look in the wrinkled face were wonderfully striking, the patient eyes turned upwards were gazing at the rainbow. ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey

... consequently heating. The sick were transferred from the Briton to the Runnymede. This afternoon the soldiers were paraded for the first time since the wreck. Their appearance, owing to their distressed situation, was somewhat similar to that of Falstaff's ragged regiment. ...
— The Wreck on the Andamans • Joseph Darvall

... cast side-glances at me, first dropped their conversation to whispers, next held their tongues altogether, and finally moved off, some going to their homes, others moving to a distance and then grouping together—even certain ragged boys who were playing and chattering near me became uneasy, first stood still, then stared at me, and then took themselves off and played and chattered at a distance. Now what was the cause of all this? Why, suspicion of the Saxon. The Welsh are afraid ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... hell and angels of heaven! We're here and we did it alone!" gasped the winded, ragged line ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... were now rising again to the surface, after being submerged for more than three hours. I climbed into the conning-tower and watched for the first glimpse of the sunlight. There was a sudden fluff of foam, the ragged edge of a wave, and then I saw, not more than a hundred feet away, a smack bound toward New York under full sail. Her rigging was full of men, gazing curiously in our direction, no doubt wondering what strange monster of the sea was ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... tapped, while liquor of a much stronger character was furnished without stint, it was not long before it was almost literally a huge reeling mass of drunkenness. Ever and anon some hero, smitten by the deadly shaft of king alcohol, would tumble from the ranks of the ragged regiment, his place being immediately supplied by another volunteer, who was also willing to vigorously tackle the enemy, though he should ...
— From Wealth to Poverty • Austin Potter

... as Americans take an interest in the history of their country, they will read with interest the strange story of this sick and suffering representative of sick and suffering Virginia. To the last, old Virginia wore her ragged robes with a kind of grandeur which was not altogether unbecoming, and which to the very last imposed upon tory minds. Scarcely any one could live among the better Southern people without liking them; and ...
— Famous Americans of Recent Times • James Parton

... there is one for every seven hundred square miles of territory, so that if you make a territorial distribution, I would remind the honorable Senator from Delaware, if I saw him in his seat, that the quota of his State would be three, 'one ragged sergeant and two abreast,' as the old song has it. That is the force ready to destroy the liberties ...
— Perley's Reminiscences, Vol. 1-2 - of Sixty Years in the National Metropolis • Benjamin Perley Poore

... better?" exclaimed the beggar in a great rage. "'Cause I'm poor and they're rich? Look at them now!" he said, pointing to the two corpses with his hooked stick, as he stood trembling and ragged, with the water dripping from him, and his battered hat, his matted beard, his long unkempt hair, making him look terribly dirty and miserable. "We're all equal when ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893

... taste, who had bestowed some considerable attention to the adornment of his grounds. Having died insolvent, it had been purchased, at a bargain, by Legree, who used it, as he did everything else, merely as an implement for money-making. The place had that ragged, forlorn appearance, which is always produced by the evidence that the care of the former owner has been left to ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... Freeport, Fresh Creek, Governor's Harbour, Green Turtle Cay, Harbour Island, High Rock, Inagua, Kemps Bay, Long Island, Marsh Harbour, Mayaguana, New Providence, Nichollstown and Berry Islands, Ragged Island, Rock Sound, Sandy Point, San Salvador ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency

... remaineth to try what force of reason the Bishop hath to back his opinion. As for the ragged rabble of human testimonies which he raketh together, I should but weary my reader, and spend paper and ink in vain, if I should insist to answer them one by one. Only thus much I say of all those sentences of the fathers and constitutions ...
— The Works of Mr. George Gillespie (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Gillespie

... faith. As the palaces rose from the ground, making a magnificent walled city, they looked solid and they looked old and they had distinct character. Moreover, through having the color in the texture, they would not show broken and ragged surfaces. ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry

... few days in the Stoddard family seemed almost unreal to Anne. She no longer watched for her father's boat, she no longer wandered about the beach, playing in the sand and hunting for shells. Her dresses were not now the soiled and ragged covering which had served as frocks, but stout cotton gowns, made from a skirt of Mrs. Stoddard's, and covered with a serviceable apron. A sunbonnet of striped cotton covered the dark head, and Anne was as neat and well-dressed as the other children of the settlement. To be ...
— A Little Maid of Province Town • Alice Turner Curtis

... and had some tea, and then me and Jim got on our horses and rode on. We were burned to bricks and ragged and dusty and parched up enough, and so were our horses. We only had a few shillings to carry us four or five hundred miles home, but it was mighty hot and dusty, and we felt that we must have a drink at the shanty. This was west of the sixpenny-line at that time—all drinks ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... officials belonging to the republic; and for the first time in my experience, I behold a negro policeman! We pause before an old picturesque archway where a sentry is on guard. The sentry is a black youth of not more than eighteen Dominican summers. His uniform consists of a ragged shirt, brown holland trousers, and a broad Panama hat. He has apparently an easy life of it, for his musket reposes in a corner of the gateway, while he himself is seated, half dozing, on ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman

... heard at any time within the memory of man of this expected "rising in the West"? It is the spectre rouge, or, to be more accurate as to local colour, the spectre vert of the Irish alarmist, and a poor, ragged, out-at-elbows spectre it is, altogether very much the worse for wear. Flesh and blood could not bear the mention of this shabby, worn-out old ghost with calmness, and I conveyed to the gentlemen who volunteered the information my opinion that the spectre vert was, in American ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker

... to Ogumkeok he found a hut, and in it, seated over a fire, the ugliest old hag he had ever seen, trembling in every limb, as if near death, dirty, ragged, and loathsome in all ways. Looking up at him with bleared eyes, she begged him to gather her a little firewood, which he did. And then she prayed him to free her from the wah gook(M.), or vermin, with which she was covered, and which ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland

... that he must have some new clothes before he could enter upon his place. At present his costume consisted of a ragged shirt, and a pair of equally ragged pantaloons. Both were of unknown antiquity, and had done faithful service, not only to Sam, but to a former owner. It was quite time ...
— Sam's Chance - And How He Improved It • Horatio Alger

... immediately after Lady Eversleigh's departure from the castle. But on this occasion it would have been very difficult for those who had seen him at the date of Sir Oswald Eversleigh's funeral to recognize, in the respectable-looking, well-dressed citizen of to-day, the ragged tramp ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... ragged woman sighed deeply, rose and went forth with humble step—went forth to who knows what miseries, what cruelties and despairs. But in her sigh ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing

... was here? That's a piece of the old city wall,' said Neigh, looking furtively around at the same time. Behind the bastion the churchyard ran into a long narrow strip, grassed like the other part, but completely hidden from it by the cylinder of ragged masonry. On rounding this projection, Ladywell beheld within a few feet of him a lady ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy

... three persons, two children and a French governess with much-frizzled hair, very black eyes, and a small waist. One of the children was a very little girl, richly dressed in a white frock with a blue sash that almost covered it, with big brown eyes and yellow ringlets; the other child was a ragged girl several years older, with tangled hair, gray eyes, and the ruddy, chubby cheeks so often seen in children of her class. The governess was in a state of great excitement, and was talking French so fast ...
— Gordon Keith • Thomas Nelson Page

... was liberated; but his funds were exhausted, his heart broken, and his constitution probably injured. He gradually sunk; and Wood says that he became very poor in body and purse, was the object of charity, 'went in ragged clothes, and mostly lodged in obscure and dirty places.' Alas for the Adonis of sixteen, the beloved of Lucasta, and the envied of all! Some have doubted these stories about his extreme poverty; and one of his biographers asserts, that his daughter and sole heir (but who, pray, was ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... narratives without an aim. Mr. Borrow has hit the English taste by his union of the clerical and scholarly with what we may call manly blackguardism. His sympathies are all with the blackguards. Not with the ragged nondescripts of the streets, but the poetic vagabonds of the fields—the Rommany Chals—the Gipsies, who are as great in "horse-taming" as Hector of old, and great in the art of "self-defence" as any Greek before the walls of Troy—not to mention ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various

... uncommonly fine example of what nature alone can do for a man. A character of nature's building is at best a very ragged affair, without religion's finishing hand; at the utmost a fine ruin—no more. And if that be the utmost, of nature's handiwork, what is at the other end of the scale?—alas! the rubble stones of the ruin; what of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner

... scars that encircle them. The sudden and violent changes of weather that take place among these watersheds would almost seem to be cause enough to explain the wearing down of the angularities of the heights. Even while we stand on the bridge at Hawes we can see three or four ragged cloud edges letting down on as many places torrential rains, while in between there are intervals of blazing sunshine, under which the green fells turn bright yellow and orange in powerful contrast to the indigo ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home

... Jesus. What do you mean when you sing 'I'll go with Him, with Him, all the way?' Do you mean that you are suffering and denying yourselves and trying to save lost, suffering humanity just as I understand Jesus did? What do you mean by it? I see the ragged edge of things a good deal. I understand there are more than five hundred men in this city in my case. Most of them have families. My wife died four months ago. I'm glad she is out of trouble. My little girl is staying with a printer's ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon

... discontent: all blank I stand, A mirror polished by thy hand; Thy sun's beams flash and flame from me— I cannot help it: here I stand, there he! To one of them I cannot say, Go, and on yonder water play; Nor one poor ragged daisy can I fashion— I do not make the words of this my limping passion! If I should say, Now I will think a thought, Lo, I must wait, unknowing What thought in me is growing, Until the thing to birth be brought! Nor know I then what next will come From out the gulf of ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald

... himself. This time it was rage, a cloud of fury rising in his mind, a ragged red haze across his ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson

... of Rembrandt (styled by some writers, "Titus, the Son of the Artist.") It represents a young man, with ragged frizzled hair falling on the shoulders. He is dressed in a habit ...
— Rembrandt and His Works • John Burnet

... said Richie Moniplies; "but I am mickle beholden to ye baith—and I am not a hair the less like to bear it in mind that I say but little about it just now.—Gude-night to you, my kind countryman." So saying, he thrust out of the sleeve of his ragged doublet a long bony hand and arm, on which the muscles rose like whip- cord. Master George shook it heartily, while Jenkin and Frank exchanged sly looks with ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott

... time ago, my mother gave me this Bible," he said. "She told me that as long as I carried it, and believed in it, no harm could come to me, and I guess she was right. It was her first Bible, and mine. It's grown old and ragged with me, and the water and snow have faded it. I've come to sort of believe that mother is always near this Book. I'd like you to have it, Josephine. It's the only thing I've got to offer you on ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood

... a kind of feeling which is essentially unlike our feeling at what is actually avowed. Still it is clear that his unlucky career as apprentice brought out in Rousseau slyness, greediness, slovenliness, untruthfulness, and the whole ragged regiment of the squalider vices. The evil of his temperament now and always was of the dull smouldering kind, seldom breaking out into active flame. There is a certain sordidness in the scene. You may complain that the details ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... inversion which reproduces everywhere the factory chimney without the church tower, which spreads a cockney commerce but not a Christian culture, has given many men a vague feeling that the influence of modern civilisation will surround these ragged but coloured groups with something as dreary and discoloured, as unnatural and as desolate as the unfamiliar snow in which they were shivering as I watched them. There seemed a sort of sinister omen in this strange visitation that the north had sent ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... man of brave adventure. The scene, the setting, the beauty, were all akin to the moment. Watson, stood bareheaded, looking down at the blinking lights of the city of the Argonauts. The moon in a starlit sky was drifting through a ragged lace of cloud. And over it all was a momentary hush, as though the man's ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... legitimate purposes, but then that ugliness must be humorous, grotesque, or sublime, and not flat, prosy, or revolting. A blemish is by no means necessarily an ugliness. A leaf nibbled by insects and consequently discolored, a lad with ragged jacket and soiled trowsers, a peasant girl with bent hat and tattered gown, are often more picturesque objects than the perfect leaf or the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... were early trained to form habits of self-denying benevolence. In 1844, the day scholars made as many as fifty garments for poor children. Early in 1845, when some mountaineers came to beg money for their ragged children, the question was put, "Who will give her own clothes and wear poorer ones till she can make others." Many responded at once, and she who gave her best dress was deemed the most happy. Some even wept because they could not do the same. In a letter written December, 1848, the pupils say, ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary

... up a winding staircase. She knocked at a door in the darkness, and a mute, like some familiar of the Inquisition, opened to her. In another moment we stood in a room hung with ancient, ragged tapestry, amid piles of old linen, crumpled muslin, and ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac

... and broken line, your hand should shake, or break off, as easily as a musician's finger shakes or stops on a note: only remember this, that there is no general way of doing any thing; no recipe can be given you for so much as the drawing of a cluster of grass. The grass may be ragged and stiff, or tender and flowing; sunburnt and sheep-bitten, or rank and languid; fresh or dry; lustrous or dull: look at it, and try to draw it as it is, and don't think how somebody "told you to do grass." So a stone may be round and angular, polished ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... Such is the jade who leads us up hill and down, through jungles and morasses, into deep waters and into swamps, through thick weather and thin, under blue skies and brown ones, in heat and in cold, hungry and thirsty and ragged, and heart-sore and foot-sore, now hopeful and now hopeless, now striding and now stumbling, now exultant and now despairing, now singing, now sighing, and now swearing, up to her dilapidated old temple. And when we get there, we find Dr. Beattie, in a Scotch wig, washing the face of young Edwin! ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various

... 'but, just now, he stood leaning upon his stick and looking at me, exactly as I told you I remembered him. He was dusty with walking, and poorly dressed—I think his clothes were ragged—but directly I saw him, the wet night, his face when he left me, the parlour I was left in, and the people that were there, all seemed to come back together. When he knew I saw him, he looked frightened; for he started, and shrunk away. I have thought ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens

... interrupted by the entrance of a little ragged boy into the hall, who timidly held out a card to the lady to whom Pigott ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard



Words linked to "Ragged" :   ragged robin, ragged orchid, worn, tired, ragged orchis, uneven



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