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More "Patching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Vawse, to beg her help in the mending and patching line. Her old friend was very glad to see her take up anything with interest, and readily agreed to do her best in the matter. So some old clothes were looked up; pieces of linen, cotton, and flannel gathered together: a large basket found to hold all these rags of shape and no shape; and for the ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Ludar told me, had been found on the coast, a half wreck, some weeks since, and, by dint of great labour and patching, had ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... broken old clerk who went wrong and was found out, and who steadied down in jail, and there's more than one poor girl that's been deceived. I could easily replace 'em. And the Lost Souls' Hotel might be the means of patching up many wrecked lives in that way—giving people with pasts the chance of ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... little turret that remains On the plains, By the caper overrooted, by the gourd Overscored, While the patching houseleek's head of blossom winks Through the chinks— Marks the basement whence a tower in ancient time Sprang sublime, And a burning ring, all round, the chariots traced As they raced, And the monarch and his minions and his ...
— Robert Browning: How To Know Him • William Lyon Phelps
... are constantly at work mending garments apparently unmendable, pressing, steaming, patching, sewing on buttons. The ragged uniforms come out of that big bare room clean and whole, ready to be tied up in new burlap bags, tagged, and placed in racks of fresh white cedar. There is no odour in this room, ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... laid in his coal. They all said the same. "Now," said he, "the coal of this crowd for this winter will cost a thousand dollars, if you add in the kindling and the matches, and patching the furnace pots ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... ready, nice and clean, but his shoes badly needed repairing, and this fact caused his devoted wife much anxiety. She took from her own feet the thick woollen stockings she was wearing, and gave them to Polikey. She then began to repair his shoes, patching up the holes so as to protect his ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... tumbling about on the grass. The oldest girl was grinding at the rude mill, a boy was making something out of birch branches, interlaced with willow. A round, cheerful face glanced up from patching a boy's garment, and smiled. Madame Gaudrion's mother had been a white woman left at the Saguenay basin in a dying condition, it was supposed, but she had recovered and married a half-breed. One daughter had cast in her lot with a roving tribe. Pierre Gaudrion had seen the other ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... in the least care about your son-in-law's visits; you brought him here—take him away again! If you have any authority in your family, it seems to me that you may very well insist on your wife's patching up this squabble. Tell the worthy old lady from me, that if I am unjustly charged with having caused a young couple to quarrel, with upsetting the unity of a family, and annexing both the father and the son-in-law, I will deserve my reputation by annoying them in my own way! Why, here is Lisbeth ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... and remonstrance. When these failed, he only did his duty in attempting—vainly, as it proved—a compromise; and it was with disgust as well as weariness that he turned away from the degrading and hopeless task of patching up the strife that was undermining all his efforts at reconstruction. The Court which he dreamed of restoring, chastened by adversity, enhanced in dignity, resting upon a sound constitutional foundation, and fenced ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... moss upon the north side, and on the west the whole framework inclined over the river, as though the timbers of the old galleon regretted their proper element and strained towards it tenderly, quietly, persistently. But careful patching and repairing had kept the building to all appearance as stout as ever; and any doubts of its stability were dispelled in a moment by a glance at Master Simon, the landlord. Master Simon's age by parish register fell short of forty, ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Mademoiselle Reisz's front room door and entered, she discovered that person standing beside the window, engaged in mending or patching an old prunella gaiter. The little musician laughed all over when she saw Edna. Her laugh consisted of a contortion of the face and all the muscles of the body. She seemed strikingly homely, standing there in the afternoon light. She still wore the shabby ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... "I'll have to try to get somewhere. I suppose it is useless for me to ask," he added, "but have you, by any chance, a bit of canvas—an old sail or hammock?—I don't need much. That's what I came for—and some shellac and wire, and a screwdriver of sorts? We need patching as well as petrol; and we're a ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... even afterwards, when she could breathe more freely and began to frame her own laws, these, since they were blended with ancient ordinances which were bad, could not themselves be good; and thus for the two hundred years of which we have trustworthy record, our city has gone on patching her institutions, without ever possessing a government in respect of which she could truly be ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... a serious danger, though the allies are said to have formed a plan for the partition of all the Angevin empire among themselves. For some reason their campaign does not seem to have been vigorously pushed. The young duke was able to force his brother to come to terms, and he succeeded in patching up a rather insecure truce with King Louis. On this, however, he dared to rely enough—or perhaps he trusted to the situation as he understood it—to venture at last, in January, 1153, on his long-deferred expedition ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... heartily when the same pensioner whom I had seen patching his uniform in the Commandant's ante-room, came in with an invitation to dinner for me ...
— The Daughter of the Commandant • Aleksandr Sergeevich Pushkin
... lantern and a big bowl of soup, good soup such as we get in the Islands, and half a loaf of bread, and a pannikin of water. He set the things beside me, and untied my hands, and placed the light so that it fell upon me, and stood patching ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... the carpenters were busily employed in patching up some of the boats, so that the prisoners might be removed from the prize, while the rest of the crew were engaged in clearing away the wreck of the masts, and in preparing to make sail on ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... some of his visits to the Hawk's Lynch, in which we have accompanied him. Then they talked on about Katie, and East, and the Englebourn people, past and present, old Betty, and Harry and his wife in New Zealand, and David patching coats and tending bees, and executing the Queen's justice to the best of his ability in ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... her duty. This marriage was soon celebrated, because the Sire de Rohan had seven daughters, and hardly knew how to provide for them all, at a time when people were just recovering from the late wars, and patching up their unsettled affairs. Now the good man Bastarnay happily found Bertha really a maiden, which fact bore witness to her proper bringing up and perfect maternal correction. So immediately the night arrived when it should be lawful for him to embrace her, he got her with a child so roughly that ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... ashes. My unfortunate workman, having blundered on for certain millions of years tinkering and patching and improving his dismal colony, will give the thing up; and God will laugh and show him the mistakes and then blot the essay out, as a master runs his pen through the errors in a pupil's exercise. The earth grows cold at last, and the herds of humanity die, and the ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... since, with those wonderfully-patched trousers in her hands, and the boy beside her, gnawing at his lump of bread. But many a long seam had passed through her fingers since then, for she worked at a clothes-shop all the week with the sewing-machine, whence arose the possibility of patching Charley's clothes, for the overseer granted her a cutting or two ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... average healthy, fine American girl brought up in a normal, small-town American family. As the eldest, she had been her mother's assistant. She had served her apprenticeship in cooking, nursing babies, patching small clothes, turning old things around and upside down, in order to make them over. She could market wisely, she could ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... ridicule to the officials: they even refused it the noble name of cloak, and called it a cape. In fact, it was of singular make: its collar diminishing year by year, but serving to patch its other parts. The patching did not exhibit great skill on the part of the tailor, and was, in fact, baggy and ugly. Seeing how the matter stood, Akakiy Akakievitch decided that it would be necessary to take the cloak to Petrovitch, the tailor, who lived somewhere on the fourth floor up a dark stair-case, and ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... thoroughly well learned. And the strangest things come of use, too, at the strangest times. A sailor teaches you to tie a knot when you are on a fishing party, and you tie that knot the next time when you are patching up the Emperor of Russia's carriage for him, in a valley in the Ural Mountains. But "getting ready" does not mean the piling in of a heap of accidental accomplishments. It means sedulously examining the coming ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... right by patching up wrong. A new and effective system cannot be created by changing the features of an old and putrid one. An entirely new foundation must be constructed in order to insure solidity and strength. That was the reason ...
— Born Again • Alfred Lawson
... best only copying, patching and imitating went on here; which he fancied to be owing to some temporary and local cause. He did not at that time see that mediaevalism was as dead as a fern-leaf in a lump of coal; that other developments were shaping ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... turn back? Such a thing had never been known in the history of the Northwest Fur Company. It would disgrace them forever. Think of the honor of conquering disaster. Then he vowed that he would go ahead, whether the men accompanied him or not. Then he set them to patching the canoe with oil-cloth and bits of bark; but large sheets of birch bark are rare in the Rockies; and the patched canoe weighed so heavily that the men could scarcely carry it. It took them fourteen hours to make the three-mile portage of ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... that concerning the Eucharist grows so directly and necessarily out of the great doctrine of Christ's Person, that for me to give up those doctrinal points alleged to be non-essential is to give up all, to give up the whole Gospel. And what good would come of patching up such a hollow peace? At the first favorable opportunity Schmucker would break it, and even if he seemed to keep quiet, he would be secretly and incessantly working and machinating against our side of the house. And, what is ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... dress and make it, but I can use a needle on patching and quilting. Can't nobody beat me doin' that. I can knit, too. I can make stockings, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... find her talking to a young man, a shoemaker like myself. No, he was but a cobbler. On the following day, going again to see her, I find this cobbler there. I remonstrate with her, but in vain. And what is worse, she had sent to him the shoes I made, to be repaired. He was patching my own work! I swallowed my ire and went back to my shop. A week later, to be brief, I went there again, and what I beheld made my body shiver. She, the wench. Forgive me, Allah! had her hands around his neck and her lips—yes, her lying lips, on ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... solemn warnings, that all might become our zealous fellow laborers for the accomplishment of the glorious promises, and that especially President Buchanan might give to others good example and come from patching the old house which must crumble to pieces, in our peace union and give powerful assistance for the introduction of the promised New Era. Great mercy was shown through him to the country while he is yet in Babylon, but was quenching ...
— Secret Enemies of True Republicanism • Andrew B. Smolnikar
... without character, sentiments as dull as they were false, and a continual outrage on manners, morals and common sense, were its leading features. Yet, strange to tell, the audience endured it all; and, by copious retrenchments and plaistering and patching, this very piece had what is ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... motherly roof reached over and sheltered a snug little porch. There we sat, after the long hot drive, drinking cool water,—the talkative little storekeeper who is my daily companion; the silent old black woman patching pantaloons and saying never a word; the ragged picture of helpless misfortune who called in just to see the preacher; and finally the neat matronly preacher's wife, plump, yellow, and intelligent. "Own land?" said the wife; "well, only this house." Then she added quietly. "We did buy seven ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... cause the mixture to be well distributed throughout. The wet concrete was well spaded in an effort to secure a smooth surface next to the forms. This was generally accomplished, but some rough places which showed after the removal of the forms required patching up. ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... neither represented his age, nor led it; he opposed it. His outlook upon the world was truly revolutionary. In his eyes, the reforms which his contemporaries were so busy introducing into society were worse than useless—the mere patching of an edifice which would never be fit to live in. He believed that it was necessary to start altogether afresh. And what makes him so singularly interesting a figure is that, in more than one sense, he was right. It was necessary to start afresh; and the ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... [FOOTNOTE: "Grosses Concert in E moll. Op. 11." Bearberet von Carl Tausig. Score, pianoforte, and orchestral parts. Berlin: Ries and Erler.] I shall only say that his cutting-down and patching-up of the introductory tutti, to mention only one thing, are not well enough done to excuse the liberty taken with a great composer's work. Moreover, your emendations cannot reach the vital fault, which lies in the conceptions. A musician may have mastered the mechanical trick of instrumentation, ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks
... over which her empty central gas-bags spread in canopies and festoons. Nothing, however, had caught fire, and her men were speedily at work upon her repair. They behaved with a confidence that verged upon indiscretion. While most of them commenced patching the tears of the membrane, half a dozen of them started off for the nearest road in search of a gas main, and presently found themselves prisoners in the hands of a hostile crowd. Close at hand was a number of villa residences, whose occupants speedily developed from an unfriendly curiosity to aggression. ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... acquaintance; for occasionally a flash of foreign individuality would break through the husk of satisfaction in which he had inclosed himself, compelling him to feel that another man might have claims. And hitherto he had been very successful in patching up and keeping entire his eggshell of conceit. But that affair with Alec was a very bad business. Had Beauchamp been a coward, he would have suffered less from it. But he was no coward, though not quite so courageous as ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... be right by your side to help, sympathetic, experienced, strong; and He will stay with you all the time. In the kitchen, in the sitting-room, the sick-room, with the children, when work piles up, when things jangle or threaten to, when the baby's cross, and the patching and sweeping and baking, and all the rest of it seem endless, on the street, in the office, on the campus, in the store, when tempted—almost slipped, when opportunity opens for a quiet personal word, everywhere, every ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... was seated in the breakfast-room at her usual employment, mending and patching; no sinecure now. Fleda opened the kitchen door and came in folding up a calico apron she ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... sudden violence upon the fortunes of a great number of people, making his path through manifold slaughter and destruction, loading the bodies of free-born men with chains, and crushing some with fetters, while patching up all kinds of accusations far removed from the truth. And to this man is owing one especial atrocity which has branded the time of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... taking in water in case of a storm. Meanwhile the fo'c's'le was in as filthy a state as could well be imagined. Herriot thrust his head down the hatch once during the morning and as he caught the sickening stench of the place he called the two boys, who had been up forward helping the patching. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... branches we are trying to lop off. A family living in an old house, on unhealthy ground, with water in the cellar, a crumbling foundation, the beams like sponge, the roof leaking, the chimney full of cracks, would not spend large sums of money year after year, generation after generation, in patching up the old house on the same old spot, but with ordinary wisdom and economy, they would build anew, on higher ground, with strong foundations, sound timber, substantial chimneys, and solid roofing. True, they would patch up the old at as little cost as ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... the morning, and commit the kingdom to his charge." It happened that the first man that presented himself at the city gate was a beggar, who had passed his whole life in scraping broken meat and in patching rags. The ministers of state and nobles of the court fulfilled the conditions of the king's will, and laid the keys of the treasury and citadel at ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... concentrating its power. Behind him that nation was patching up its one great quarrel, and now a gray phantom stalked out of the past to the music of drum and fife, and Crittenden turned sharply to see a little body of men, in queer uniforms, marching through a camp of regulars toward him. They were old boys, and ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... Paris, giving the geography, history, and commerce of Coulmiers. One can fancy in the "Atlantic cable" columns of the "Morning Meteor" the tokens of a standing prescription to dilute foreign facts with nine parts domestic verbiage; and this kind of "editing" educates mankind to padding and patching ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... Varney up the road to Stanhope's that afternoon, much less of any shock that could conceivably have come to him. But he set himself to find out. By the next morning, partly through inquiry, partly through patching two and two together, he had worked out a theory. Guesswork, of course, was rather dangerous in a delicate matter such as this; but the doctor's report after breakfast had been the very worst yet. Peter ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... activity of inoccupation. Idleness, partly induced by the temperature of the climate, and partly consequent on the decaying prosperity of the nation, leaves indications of its influence on all his undertakings. He prefers patching up a ruin to building a house; he raises shops and hovels, the abodes of inactive, vegetating, brutish poverty, under the protection of aged and ruined, yet stalwart, arches of the Roman amphitheater; and the habitations of the lower orders frequently ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... your bidding and must first of all apologize for some little delay; the cause being that your messenger found me busy patching up a bullet-hole in ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... both Downwards and seawards, though the hill is not half the altitude of Cissbury. Northwards are the beautiful woods of Castle Goring, once the residence of the Shelleys, through which we may walk to Clapham and Patching, villages on southern spurs of the Downs; the latter has a restored Early English church with a very beautiful modern reredos. Clapham has a Transitional church containing memorials of the Shelley family. Notice the blocked-up Norman arch which proves the existence of an earlier building. ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... accoutrements about them to depart; my "brother" stands before me and loads up his flintlock rifle; it is a fearful and wonderful process; it takes him at least two minutes; he does not seem to know on which particular part of his wonderful paraphernalia to find the slugs, the powder, or the patching, and he finishes by tearing a piece of rag off a by-standing villager to place over the powder in the pan. While he is doing all this, and especially when ramming home the bullet, he looks at me as though expecting me to come and pat him approvingly ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... days. This pressure of work relieved him, at first, from too close consideration of his relation to Bessy. He had yielded up his dearest hopes at her wish, and for the moment his renunciation had set a chasm between them; but gradually he saw that, as he was patching together the ruins of his Westmore plans, so he must presently apply himself to the reconstruction ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... concluded should be of a permanent nature; no perfunctory patching up should be permitted. The horror of all the civilized nations of the Old World slaughtering one another, every one convinced of the perfect righteousness of their own cause—a recurrence, if it could not be avoided absolutely, should ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... his Tongue, as the dint of his Sword. Seeing then we borrow (and that not shamefully) from the Dutch, the Britaine, the Roman, the Dane, the French, the Italian, and Spaniard, how can our Stock be other than exceeding plentifull? It may be objected, that such patching maketh Littletons Hotch-pot of our Tongue, and in effect, brings the same rather to a Babelish Confusion, than any one entire Language. It may again be answered, that this Theft of Words is no less warranted by the Priviledge of a Prescription ancient and universall, than ...
— The Survey of Cornwall • Richard Carew
... place on his outward man. Whenever they observed this dubious expression gather upon his countenance, accompanied with a glance that fixed now upon the sleeve of his coat, now upon the knees of his breeches, where he probably missed some antique patching and darning, which, being executed with blue thread upon a black ground, had somewhat the effect of embroidery, they always took care to turn his attention into some other channel, until his garments, 'by the aid of use, ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... pickets guards were driven in and forced to join the main ranks for safety. The Mormon troops were placed in position by the officers, so as to guard every point. We all had a large supply of bullets, with the patching sewed on the balls to facilitate the loading of our guns, which were muzzle loaders. The Mormon force was about eight hundred strong, poorly armed; many of the men had no guns; some had single-barrel pistols and a few homemade swords. These ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... placing the best pieces in the pawnbroker's shop. But among very large numbers, especially among the Irish, the prevailing clothing consists of perfect rags often beyond all mending, or so patched that the original colour can no longer be detected. Yet the English and Anglo- Irish go on patching, and have carried this art to a remarkable pitch, putting wool or bagging on fustian, or the reverse—it's all the same to them. But the true, transplanted Irish hardly ever patch except in the extremest necessity, when the garment would otherwise fall apart. Ordinarily ...
— The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844 - with a Preface written in 1892 • Frederick Engels
... Mr. Peggotty came home about nine o'clock, this unfortunate Mrs. Gummidge was knitting in her corner, in a very wretched and miserable condition. Peggotty had been working cheerfully. Ham had been patching up a great pair of waterboots; and I, with little Em'ly by my side, had been reading to them. Mrs. Gummidge had never made any other remark than a forlorn sigh, and had never raised her eyes ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... are good that way. I often envy you, for what with my health and every one's health to think about, doctoring one man for fever, putting all you fellows straight, and patching up squabbling savages, my appetite often feels as if it wants a fillip. A doctor's is an anxious life, my boy—more especially out here in a country like this, amongst a very uncertain people, when a man feels that he has a stake ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... country, O son of Hur," she said, presently, "workmen who make pictures by gathering vari-colored shells here and there on the sea-shore after storms, and cutting them up, and patching the pieces as inlaying on marble slabs. Can you not see the hint there is in the practice to such as go searching for secrets? Enough that from this person I gathered a handful of little circumstances, and from that other yet another handful, and that ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... we all have reason to rejoice at these disasters, apart from our sympathy with individual sufferings. More good will have been done by this one great shock to the heart of England than by fifty years' more patching, and pottering, and knocking impotent heads together. What makes me most angry is the ministerial apology. 'It's always so with us for three campaigns,'!!! 'it's our way,' 'it's want of experience,' &c. &c. That's precisely the thing complained of. As to want of experience, if the ...
— The Letters of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume II • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... he brought with him, who had been unfortunately reprieved from the gibbet in their own country, served to swell the mass of mutiny. The admiral exhausted art, negotiation, entreaty, force, and succeeded at length in patching up a specious reconciliation by such concessions as essentially impaired his own authority. Among these was the grant of large tracts of land to the rebels, with permission to the proprietor to employ an allotted number of the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... the primitive desire for adornment. Quilting—the method of fastening together layers of cloths in such a manner as to secure firmly the loose materials uniformly spread between them, has resulted from the need of adequate protection against rigorous climates. The piecing and patching provide the maker with a suitable field for the display of artistic ability, while the quilting calls for particular skill in handling the needle. The fusing of these two kinds of needlework into a harmonious combination is a task that requires ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... afternoon, while he was patching the lot fence, with Buck sunning himself near the woodpile, came Old Man Thornycroft. Davy recognized his buggy as it turned the bend in the road. He quickly dropped his tools, called Buck to him, and got behind the house where he could see without being seen. The buggy stopped in the road, and ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... and tear during the dark winter days. In direct reference to this matter, we may here remark, that sheets should be turned "sides to middle" before they are allowed to get very thin. Otherwise, patching, which is uneconomical from the time it consumes, and is unsightly in point of appearance, will have to be resorted to. In June and July, gooseberries, currants, raspberries, strawberries, and other summer fruits, should be preserved, and jams and jellies made. In July, too, the making of walnut ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... by his faithful Bulke, and Jacob Fleischmann strolled about on deck, or reclined in the steamer chairs, which even the trading vessel possessed. Stoss needed some massaging and patching up, and while the physicians were busy with him, he crowed and cawed in his most ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... daughter is there, palefac'd, quiet; her young man went back on her four years ago; his folks would not let him marry a convict's sister. She sits by the window, sewing on the children's clothes, the clothes not only patching up; her hunger for children of ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... be worn out. Donald is already too big for his, and though they may do for David for a few months longer, with patching and mending, I would na' like to ha' the poor boys pointed out by their school-mates as young gaberlunzies; and the siller I get for the yarn will only just pay the rent and find porridge for the bairns," she thought to herself. "The Bible says that it is the duty of Christians to support ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... been allowed to carry more than three hundred passengers, not less than nine hundred and fifty soldiers were packed. Most of the vessels were antiquated and inadequate; not a few were badly decayed. With a little superficial patching up they were imposed upon the Government. Despite his knowing that only vessels adapted for ocean service were needed, Vanderbilt chartered craft that had hitherto been almost entirely used in navigating inland waters. Not a single precaution was taken by him or his associates to safeguard ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... for surgery. The ten dollars paid my board for six weeks, giving me a chance to take some extra cases for the doctor. The war looks bad, doesn't it? They need surgeons and though I'm doing something in patching up these poor fellows and sending them back, I wonder often if I oughtn't to go into a war hospital. Do you remember the little cameo pin you used to wear till father thought it was too dressy for you? If you haven't lost it, I wish you'd send ...
— Benefits Forgot - A Story of Lincoln and Mother Love • Honore Willsie
... wouldn't! Who would I be patching torn trousers or darning ripped sweaters for if you were like Bob, I'd like to know? Who'd be pestering me to hunt up his cap and mittens? And who would ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... Hastings explained. "This island land is the most productive in the world. This section of California is like Holland. You wouldn't think it, but this water we're sailing on is higher than the surface of the islands. They're like leaky boats—calking, patching, pumping, night and day and all the time. But it ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... her great joy at the thought of living with "Miss Agnes," seemed to have forgotten the painful circumstance which compelled her to leave home. But on the day that her mother finished patching her few clothes, tying them up and telling her she might go at once to her new home, there came sad tidings from the hospital. They need never hope to have the husband and father home again, unless to take one last look before they ...
— 'Our guy' - or, The elder brother • Mrs. E. E. Boyd
... experience, it will not be long before she will begin to take an interest in her own clothes, and so will not need to be warned that a button is coming off or that the hem of her skirt is coming out. But, of course, she could not begin by sewing or patching her own clothes, nor by mending intricate tears. First see that she sews on buttons correctly and then let her ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... huge disorder scarfs, lace cravats, muffs, and other necessary equipment were littered about the room. I much missed the neat touch of my valet Simpkins, and the gillie Hamish Gorm, whom Major Macleod had put at my service, did not supply his place by a deal, since he knew no more of patching the face or powdering a periwig than he had arrived at by the light of nature. But despite this handicap I made shift to do myself justice before I set off for the lodgings of Lord Balmerino, by whom I was ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... be all fixed up by next month. I'll tell you, daughter, your dad will have to hustle to beat you and me, I'm thinking," and with pardonable pride the mother, who had often been termed "Chief of Franklin police," went on with the mending of socks and thrifty patching ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... what tools still remained from the time when all surplus weight had been jettisoned, and with some improvised apparatus, they set vigorously to work repairing the engines, fitting new rudder-plates, patching up the floats and providing the burned propellers ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... once," the Itinerant Tinker said, "but I ran out of paper and gave it up. Then, when the night fell," he resumed dolefully, after another long interval of silence, "I tried to prop it up. But I met with the same difficulty that confronted me in patching up the day, and was forced to abandon ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... for weeks, in fact, ever since the show in the cellar, patching, sewing, and putting together old rag carpet, canvas, heavy with paint, that had been ripped from the hurricane ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... the little bookcase at Dunglass was well thumbed. But reading of a lighter kind was also indulged in, and on winter nights, when the mother was plying her spinning-wheel and the father had taken down his cobbler's box and was busily engaged patching the children's shoes, it was a regular practice for John to sit near the dim oil-lamp and read to the rest. Sometimes the reading would be from an early number of Chambers's Journal, sometimes from Wilson's Tales of the Borders, which were then appearing—both of these being loans from ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... sometimes unjust, against the home government, which was constantly accused of parsimony, of shortsightedness, of vacillation, of sentimental weakness, in sending out too few troops, in refusing to annex fresh territory, in patching up a hollow peace, in granting too easy terms ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... the plays (Bacon, by the theory) had to work over old pieces. All this is the work of the hack of a playing company; it is not work to which a man in Bacon's position could stoop. Why should he? What had he to gain by patching and vamping? Certainly not money, if the wealth of Shakespeare is a dark mystery to the Baconian theorists. We are asked to believe that Bacon, for the sake of some five or six pounds, toiled at refashioning old plays, and handed the fair manuscripts to Shakespeare, who passed them off, among ...
— The Valet's Tragedy and Other Stories • Andrew Lang
... of your ship, lieutenant," said Captain Keogh. "To be sure, the carpenter has been pestering me this morning about the timbers; but I told him he'd probably only make things worse by patching. You can't put new wine into old bottles, you know,"—here he poured himself out a fresh glass—"and we shall hold well enough together ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... over the eastern cliffs while Andy was patching me up." He carried one arm in a sling, and ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... seated the gunner and sailmaker, both engaged patching old clothes,—while the old carpenter, like the captain, was reading the bible,—and the armorer was lying flat on his back, and singing. A very pretty boy of fourteen, an apprentice to the captain, was playing, or in sea language "skylarking," with ...
— An Old Sailor's Yarns • Nathaniel Ames
... endless obstacles (for he had to dance attendance on scores of intriguing factors and brokers ashore), the requisite stores for the fleet, Paul sat in his cabin in a half-despondent reverie, while Israel, cross-legged at his commander's feet, was patching ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... stretchers on rubber-tyred wheels about the paths, stretchers on which motionless forms lay shrouded in blankets. One, concerning whom I asked, had just had part of his skull trepanned: another had suffered amputation. And all this pruning and patching up of broken men to win them a few more years of crippled life caught one's throat like the penetrating smell of the iodoform. Nor was I sorry to hasten away by the night mail northwards to the camps. It was still dark as we passed Estcourt, but ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... where the stream darts along swiftly, after having escaped from a weir, and still streaked with foam. The shore rises like a sea beach, and on the pebbles men are patching and pitching old barges which have been hauled up on the bank. A skiff partly drawn up on the beach rocks as the current strives to work it loose, and up the varnish of the side glides a flickering light reflected from the wavelets. A fleet of such skiffs are waiting ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... the Sicilian war, but it was protracted by various delays during a long period [122]; at one time for the purpose of repairing his fleets, which he lost twice by storm, even in the summer; at another, while patching up a peace, to which he was forced by the clamours of the people, in consequence of a famine occasioned by Pompey's cutting off the supply of corn by sea. But at last, having built a new fleet, and obtained twenty thousand manumitted slaves [123], who were given him for the oar, he formed the Julian ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... hammering away in complete disregard of the night-watchman's uneasy slumbers. The big sewing-machine raced at top-speed round the flounce of a tent, and in odd corners among the bunks were groups mending mitts, strengthening sleeping-bags and patching burberrys. The cartographer at his table beneath a shaded acetylene light drew maps and sketched, the magnetician was busy on calculations close by. The cook and messman often made their presence felt and heard. In the outer Hut, the lathe spun round, its whirr and ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... Hector went on, "lies a pair of slippers that want patching. They belong to William Webster, the weaver, round the corner. They're very much down at heel too. But isn't it an honour to patch or set up slippers for a man who keeps his neighbours in fine linen all the days of ...
— Gutta-Percha Willie • George MacDonald
... Never in her life had these three who loved her seen her so beautiful, so enchantingly confident and gay. Rose and her mother had some little trouble, later on, in patching the sequence of events together for the delighted but bewildered Harry, Rose's husband. But there could be no doubt, even to the shrewd eyes of her Aunt Kate, that Norma was ecstatically happy. Her mad kisses for Rose, the ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... first morning at Silverado, when we were full of business, patching up doors and windows, making beds and seats, and getting our rough lodging into shape, Irvine and his sister made their appearance together, she for neighbourliness and general curiosity; he, because he was working for me, to my sorrow, cutting ...
— The Silverado Squatters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... patching up of the barricades in which we assisted must be taken if Borth is to remain permanently in the roll of Welsh villages. Our storm-wave was but part of a system of aggression which the sea is carrying out upon ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... Rossitur was seated in the breakfast-room at her usual employment, mending and patching no sinecure now. Fleda opened the kitchen door and came in, folding up a calico apron ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... times, the heart never can. When it stops, we stop! Naturally, with such a constant strain upon it, we should expect it to have a tendency to give way, or break down, at certain points. The real wonder is that it breaks down so seldom. It has great powers of endurance and a wonderful trick of patching up break-downs ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... reason, the worst was over. As I went off the campus the top of my hat was hanging over my left ear, my collar and cravat were turned awry, my trousers gaped over one knee. I was talking with a fellow sufferer and patching the skin on my knuckles, when suddenly I met ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... or standardized phrase has left too deep a wound or gross a blemish I have had to rewrite. And, as I have rarely succeeded in recovering the original idea, I have had to borrow from my later thought. Of such patching I have been as thrifty as possible: also, I have not attempted to square the opinions and sentiments of early days with my later pronouncements, so, I make no doubt, some very clever readers will have the pleasure of catching me in inconsistency. ...
— Pot-Boilers • Clive Bell
... the Bezesten, or cloth-market, he saw an old man in a stall, so narrow that he could scarce turn himself about in it, who was taken up in patching an old cloak. He was almost bent double with constant labour at his shopboard; and his eyes seemed not to have benefited by his application, for a pair of glasses were mounted on his nose. "This is precisely the man I want," said the slave to himself: "I am sure he can be of no repute." So intent ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... his savings on it. Some of his decorations, indeed, were so awkward that they would have excited many people's smiles. The replastering of the stonework soon tired him: so he contented himself with patching up the church walls all round to a height of some six feet from the ground. La Teuse mixed the plaster. When she talked of repairing the parsonage as well, for she was continually fearing that it would topple down on their heads, he told her that he ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... you will need him, her Grace insists on dressing for dinner. Likewise my Trafalgar coat begins to need skilled patching, here and there; it ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... I would have offered to do the patching, but feared Uncle Jake might suspect me of matrimonial designs upon him, such being the conceit of ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... themselves, however, for any plainness in dress, by additional extravagances in their head-dresses, and wore "heart-breakers," or artificial curls, which were set out on wires at the sides of the face. Patching and painting soon became common, and many a nonconformist divine lifted up his voice in vain against these vanities. Pepys has left ample details of the dress in this century; and, if we may judge from the entry under the 30th of October, 1663, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... ridge, fast to the block-house, to which level the water had not yet reached, Ross found the boat. Moreover, to his great delight, he saw that Anton had been patching it up, so that it was now ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... five thousand islands, he journeys and sails through Pliny, Marco Polo, Odoric de Pordenone,[675] Albert d'Aix, William of Boldensele, Pierre Comestor, Jacques de Vitry, bestiaries, tales of travels, collections of fables, books of dreams, patching together countless marvels, but yet, as he assures us, omitting many so as not to weary our faith: It would be too long to say all; "y seroit trop longe chose a tot deviser." With fanciful wonders are mingled many ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... seem to manage the job very well; and I have a trunk, by the bye, that wants patching up before my boy carries it off with him; I'll send it round to you; Hopkins. But stay—what's this?" and the doctor took up a soiled, yellow sheet of paper, from the heap rejected by the workman; it contained ...
— The Lumley Autograph • Susan Fenimore Cooper
... to one of the repair bays of the great, doom-bound starship. In one corner, beyond the now useless patching equipment, was a table. On the table stood a model of the Star of Fire. It was six feet long and perfect in every external detail. He hadn't got around to the inside yet. The inside was completely empty. It had rockets and everything. There was no reason why it wouldn't ...
— A World Called Crimson • Darius John Granger
... induced me to confess it then. He had served in the Crimea, and seemed to regard a dilapidated body very much as I should have regarded a damaged garment; and, turning up his cuffs, whipped out a very unpleasant looking housewife, cutting, sawing, patching and piecing, with the enthusiasm of an accomplished surgical seamstress; explaining the process, in scientific terms, to the patient, meantime; which, of course, was immensely cheering and comfortable. There was an uncanny sort ...
— Hospital Sketches • Louisa May Alcott
... and all of you: here's a lad that has been half-killed for standing by his colors to-day. Look here, Armstrong, would you mind going for Dr. Maverick? this poor chap needs some patching-up. And, Kit, give me some water and a napkin: we'll get his face a ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... than a century old. No historical fact is, however, better established than that till nearly the end of the nineteenth century it was the general belief that the ancient industrial system, with all its shocking social consequences, was destined to last, with possibly a little patching, to the end of time. How strange and wellnigh incredible does it seem that so prodigious a moral and material transformation as has taken place since then could have been accomplished in so brief an interval? The readiness with which men accustom themselves, ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... no other arts was she But dressing, patching, repartee; 40 And, just as humour rose or fell, By turns a slattern or a belle; 'Tis true she dress'd with modern grace, Half naked at a ball or race; But when at home, at board or bed, 45 Five greasy nightcaps wrapp'd her head. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... number of very small stars around it. But the moon is not a success because it can only be understood if the stars too are intelligible, and the stars are not worked out. And so what I produce is not literature, but something like the patching of Trishka's coat. What am I to do? I don't know, I don't know. I must trust to time ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... had balloon silk, big shears, a quick-drying gum solution and a pot of gasproof varnish, ready for the job of patching up the hole. But first they had to empty the big bag of gas. This was speedily done, for already enough had escaped to wrinkle the bag like a walnut, with ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... a pair of shoes had to be condemned as "not worth mending," he endeavoured to retain them for a purpose of his own, sometimes paying a few pence for them as "old leather." When summer came round he set to work patching the derelicts as best he could, and would sometimes have thirty or forty pairs in readiness by the end of June. This was the season when the neighbourhood was annually invaded by troops of pea-pickers—a ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... weather," and John's or Pat's chance of getting or losing a job in consequence. The snow man stood there till long after all doubts were settled on these mooted points, falling slowly into helpless decrepitude in spite of occasional patching. But long before that time the frost succeeding the snow had paved the way for coasting in the hilly streets, and discovered countless "slides" in those that were flat, to the huge delight of the small boy and the discomfiture of his unsuspecting ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... that," John went on. "Then understand it about the rest of the country as well. Understand that we are all the time patching our income with our capital; and it answers pretty well because there is a good deal of capital and not so very many of ourselves, as yet. There will be twice as many of us in a few years, and very much less than half as much capital. Understand ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... she's now beneath Who fed my life, I'll follow her in death. Ch. And is that all? I'm gone. Ph. By love I pray thee. Ch. Talk not of love; all pray, but few souls pay me. Ph. I'll give thee vows and tears. Ch. Can tears pay scores For mending sails, for patching boat and oars? Ph. I'll beg a penny, or I'll sing so long Till thou shalt say I've paid thee with a song. Ch. Why then begin; and all the while we make Our slothful passage o'er the Stygian Lake, Thou and I'll sing to make these dull shades merry, ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... flesh-pot chattered high, The knives were whetted and—then came I To Mahbub Ali the muleteer, Patching his bridles and counting his gear, Crammed with the gossip of ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... no trouble now in patching and piecing that rag the world calls—a character. I can sit at your feet every day unquestioned. To be sure, others do the same, but they are female eccentrics, and have ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... said, and was about to explain that I was from another world, thinking that by patching a truce with these fellows and fighting with them against the therns I might enlist their aid in regaining my liberty. But just at that moment a heavy object smote me a resounding whack between my shoulders that nearly felled ...
— The Gods of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... knob and entered a lighted room, where sat his sister and Bernard Higginbotham. She was patching a pair of his trousers, while his lean body was distributed over two chairs, his feet dangling in dilapidated carpet-slippers over the edge of the second chair. He glanced across the top of the paper he was reading, showing a pair of dark, insincere, ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... quite a way downstream. It takes a lot of patching to keep banks like these whole and strong, but they guard some valuable land. The dike looks as though it needed repairs up here at this end, but nobody does much to it. Mr. Peyton has us go over his section of the ...
— The Windy Hill • Cornelia Meigs
... convenient threads or bits of colored sewing silks, or needle and thimble. These were pinned at the belt of the active housewife, and hung swaying against her skirts if she rose from her sewing, or were conveniently at hand if she sat patching or embroidering. I remember that some of my grandmother's "huz-ifs" still held threads of different colored crewels wound on bits of cardboard, and any embroiderer might envy the convenience of ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... and beards matted and foul; clothed in rags, and with scarcely a sufficient supply of these to cover their disgusting bodies. Many among them possessed no clothing except the remnant of those garments which they wore when first brought on board; and were unable to procure even any material for patching these together, when they had been worn to tatters by constant use. * * * Some, and indeed many of them, had not the means of procuring a razor, ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... discussion. I understood, however, that they were revising the creed. You might as well try to patch up your grandfather's overcoat. It will be much better to get a new one. The recent sessions of the Presbytery had been divided into two parties. One was in favour of patching up the old overcoat, the other in favour of a new one. Dr. Briggs had pointed out the torn places—at least five of them. He had revealed it, shabby and somewhat threadbare. Presbyterians had practically discarded the garment. Why ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... we were able to make and dress our own dolls, hem our handkerchiefs and aprons, and in due time were promoted to the darning of father's stockings and the patching of his working-clothes. We thought the being able to do these things for him a very great affair, and mother praised us for our work. But when sister Jane once put a patch over a hole in the knee of father's pantaloons, without covering ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 87, January, 1865 • Various
... every one is like you, who would use one slander for the patching of another; but there is danger lest the patch impair what it patches and the foundation be so overladen that all be destroyed. However, if you think that the subtlety, of which all believe you to be fully possessed, is greater than that found in women, I yield place ...
— The Tales Of The Heptameron, Vol. I. (of V.) • Margaret, Queen Of Navarre
... below us, she gave me such a slap that my ears rang again. Well, to tell truth, we had so much playing in the convent garden, and such a long walk home in the evening, that we were generally rather tired and glad to get quickly to bed as mamma bade us. She, poverina! always sat up, patching and darning, long after we were in bed, so that we might ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... have overcome her self-control then, in all nature; but that, happily for Matilda's dignity as she wished to maintain it, Mrs. Candy was pleased to interrupt the darning of stockings to give Matilda a lesson in patching linen—an entirely new thing to the child, requiring her best attention and care; for Mrs. Candy insisted upon the patch being straight to a thread, and even as a double web would have been. Matilda had to baste ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... complete darkness with all belt lights out, but he groped his way to the Connie Dowst had been patching, felt for his helmet, and put his own against it. He yelled, ...
— Rip Foster Rides the Gray Planet • Blake Savage
... afternoon when Dick drove slowly along the trail. The three men were flat on their backs under the absorber, patching leaks, when they heard the squeak of the wagon and the soft tread of horses' hoofs in the sand. They made no attempt ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... his stock, she was up still earlier that she might lend a hand to a neighbor, harrowed by the fear that gathered fruit might perish. Late as he plowed, in the hot summer evenings, her sweaty fingers were busy still later with patching, brought home to boost along some young wife struggling with a teething baby. She seemed never too rushed to tuck in an extra baking for someone even more rushed than herself, or to make delicious broths and tasty dishes for sick folk. ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... you think on the essentials of a real lady—and then picture me patching, with a First Reader propped before me; facing Indians, Gypsies, wild animals—and they used to be bad enough—why, I mind one time in Ohio when our first baby was only able to stand beside a chair, ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... will be a famous surgeon some day, I feel sure," Roxanne said, as she began on another interminable job of stocking-patching. "And Douglass is going to be a Supreme Judge of the United States while I help him. Just as soon as the money comes we shall all go to college, Lovey, Douglass, Uncle Pomp and I, to get ready for our ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and the boy beside her, gnawing at his lump of bread. But many a long seam had passed through her fingers since then, for she worked at a clothes-shop all the week with the sewing-machine, whence arose the possibility of patching Charley's clothes, for the overseer granted her a cutting or two now ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... of preparation, if it has been thoroughly well learned. And the strangest things come of use, too, at the strangest times. A sailor teaches you to tie a knot when you are on a fishing party, and you tie that knot the next time when you are patching up the Emperor of Russia's carriage for him, in a valley in the Ural Mountains. But "getting ready" does not mean the piling in of a heap of accidental accomplishments. It means sedulously examining the coming duty or pleasure, imagining it even in its details, decreeing the utmost ...
— How To Do It • Edward Everett Hale
... thought I should have burst—to be forced not to allow people to suppose that I cared, when I should like to tear the old wretch out of his coffin to beat him. His wardrobe! If people knew his wardrobe as well as I do, who have been patching at it these last ten years—not a shirt or a stocking that would fetch sixpence! And as for his other garments, why a Jew would hardly put them into his bag! (Crying.) Oh dear! oh dear! After all, I'm just like Miss Clementina; for Sergeant O'Callaghan, when he knows all this, ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... patches on the front, patches on elbows, on knees; coloured binding around his jacket, scarlet edging at the bottom of his trousers; and the sunshine made him look extremely gay and wonderfully neat withal, because you could see how beautifully all this patching had been done. A beardless, boyish face, very fair, no features to speak of, nose peeling, little blue eyes, smiles and frowns chasing each other over that open countenance like sunshine and shadow on a wind-swept plain. 'Look out, captain!' he cried; 'there's a snag lodged ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... crash on the piazza, and one or two late summer boarders loitering about with knitting work or book. The landlord brought cool tinkling glasses of water and rich milk from the spring-house, and they dropped into the chairs to wait while the men of the party gave assistance to the chauffeur in patching up the car. ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill
... would I be patching torn trousers or darning ripped sweaters for if you were like Bob, I'd like to know? Who'd be pestering me to hunt up his cap and mittens? And who would I be ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... favouring gale, meeting the sun each day a long span earlier, making daily four degrees of longitude. It was the time, on these bright days, to forearm with dry clothing against future stormy weather. Boxes and bags were brought on deck, and drying and patching went on by wholesale in the watch below, while the watch on deck bestirred themselves putting the ship in order. "Chips," the carpenter, mended the galley; the cook's broken shins were plastered up; and in a few days all was ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... whereabouts. It was now daylight, and the weather tolerably clear, yet, although Hiraoka and I swept the whole surface of the sea with our glasses, we entirely failed to pick them up. The Asashio and Akatsuki were within hail, both of them engaged, like ourselves, in temporarily patching up the holes in their thin steel sides, through which the water was pouring in whenever we rolled extra heavily; and I hailed them both, inquiring whether either of them had seen anything of the missing craft. ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... wide, low, little house, whose motherly roof reached over and sheltered a snug little porch. There we sat, after the long hot drive, drinking cool water,—the talkative little storekeeper who is my daily companion; the silent old black woman patching pantaloons and saying never a word; the ragged picture of helpless misfortune who called in just to see the preacher; and finally the neat matronly preacher's wife, plump, yellow, and intelligent. "Own land?" said the wife; "well, only this house." Then she ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... unconscious of such a thing. As to our side of the street, I think we may have been the only people at all interested in the affair now so imminent. The others had something more sensible to do, I fancy, than patching ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... swimming and diving and slapping the surface with their tails with a noise like that of an osprey when he strikes the water in diving for a fish. But though they had time for play, they were busy folk, the beavers. Some of them were constantly patching and tinkering at the dam, and some always at work, except when the sun was up, one relieving another, gnawing their way with little tiny bites steadily through one of the great trees that stood by the water's edge, and always gnawing it so that ...
— Bear Brownie - The Life of a Bear • H. P. Robinson
... tripping daintily through the sand. Graham watched them from the porch of the post hospital. He could not long leave Mullins, tossing in fever and delirium. He had but recently left Lieutenant Blakely, sitting up and placidly busying himself in patching butterfly wings, and Blakely had even come to the front door to look at the distant gathering of decorous mourners. But the bandaged head was withdrawn as two tall, feminine forms came gravely up the row, one so prim and almost antique, the other so lithe and lissome. ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... man, a shoemaker like myself. No, he was but a cobbler. On the following day, going again to see her, I find this cobbler there. I remonstrate with her, but in vain. And what is worse, she had sent to him the shoes I made, to be repaired. He was patching my own work! I swallowed my ire and went back to my shop. A week later, to be brief, I went there again, and what I beheld made my body shiver. She, the wench. Forgive me, Allah! had her hands around his neck and her ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... wet concrete was well spaded in an effort to secure a smooth surface next to the forms. This was generally accomplished, but some rough places which showed after the removal of the forms required patching up. ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... many distresses in my time (continued Mr. Bung), and in course I wasn't long in finding, that some people are not as much to be pitied as others are, and that people with good incomes who get into difficulties, which they keep patching up day after day and week after week, get so used to these sort of things in time, that at last they come scarcely to feel them at all. I remember the very first place I was put in possession of, was a gentleman's house in this parish ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... For every hour has wings. Yet my heart watches . . . as I work I say, All simply, to Him: "Come! And if to-day, Then wilt Thou find me thus: just as I am— Tending my household; stirring goose- berry jam; Or swiftly rinsing tiny vests and hose, With puzzled forehead patching some one's clothes; Guiding small footsteps, swift to hear, and run, From early dawn ...
— The Verse-Book Of A Homely Woman • Elizabeth Rebecca Ward, AKA Fay Inchfawn
... street, and recognize her as you did in school. Girls and boys do not change so completely after leaving school. Eleanor, though in plain clothes washing up the kitchen-floor, is Eleanor still; and Frank, though only patching fences, is still Frank. Changes in circumstances and in ourselves sometimes prevent the keeping of a friend, and we no longer find friendship in the places where we used to seek for it; but inconstancy in ourselves ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... also.... The observations which he made on poetry, on life, and on everything about us, I applied to our art; with what success others must judge. Perhaps an artist in his studies should pursue the same conduct, and instead of patching up a particular work on the narrow plan of imitation, rather endeavour to acquire the art and power ...
— Six Centuries of Painting • Randall Davies
... spent his leisure writing a monograph. When inspiration ran low, he occupied himself doctoring books. Eternally, he hunted for the flat stones between which he pressed their swollen bulks back to shape. Eternally he puttered about, mending and patching them. He used to sit for hours at a desk which he had rescued from the ship's furniture. The others never became accustomed to the comic incongruity of this picture—especially when, later, he virtually boxed himself in with ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... novelty: Descartes himself did not do so, but ignored his subjective first principles in the development of his system; and it was not until adopted by Kant, or rather by Fichte, that the transcendental method showed its true colours. Even today philosophers fumble with it, patching soliloquy with physics and physics with soliloquy. Moreover, Locke's misunderstandings of Descartes were partly justified by the latter's verbal concessions to tradition and authority. A man who has a clear head, and like Descartes is rendered by his aristocratic pride both courteous and disdainful, ...
— Some Turns of Thought in Modern Philosophy - Five Essays • George Santayana
... believe. You've got the gift of sympathy, Jonathan. But I don't approve of you're spending your time in this sort of work—(he waves a hand toward the bench)—which may never come to anything, and in doctoring people for nothing and patching up their troubles. I daresay you enjoy it, but what worries me is how you are going ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... he came; and was appalled to find that a man unpacked his trunk, and would in all probability be carrying away his clothes each night to brush them. He, conscious of interiors, a lining hanging in rags, and even a patching somewhere, had not the heart to let his one and only day-jacket go down to the servants' hall to be sniffed over: and so every evening when he dressed for dinner he hid his jacket laboriously under the permanent layers of a linen wardrobe which ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous
... accident nor nature to subdue. You had better not press them too far. Do not drive them to the goal of last resort. Give them justice while you have it in your power to do so. Satisfy them that ultimately they shall have equality in this broken Government, or Union, if you will. But, sir, I leave the patching up of the Constitution to the distinguished Senator from Kentucky and other gentlemen, especially my friend from Pennsylvania [Mr. BIGLER], who has labored harder to patch up the Constitution than any man I ever knew, except my friend ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Dust and ashes. My unfortunate workman, having blundered on for certain millions of years tinkering and patching and improving his dismal colony, will give the thing up; and God will laugh and show him the mistakes and then blot the essay out, as a master runs his pen through the errors in a pupil's exercise. The ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... sadly lacking the help of women in the matter of the wear of their garments, inasmuch as they had no means of patching or of repairing rents, advised and urged the king to marry. At first he alleged his tender years as an excuse, but in the end yielded to the persistent requests of his people. And when he carefully ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... skilled in science and deep in technical wisdom. With what tools still remained from the time when all surplus weight had been jettisoned, and with some improvised apparatus, they set vigorously to work repairing the engines, fitting new rudder-plates, patching up the floats and providing the burned ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... of the old boys all right, Dan. Vose is in the pension-office; Ambrose and Sturdivant are in the adjutant-general's office patching up the Civil War rolls, with orders to take their time about it. And you'll be ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... yourself with the hope of patching up matters like Audley last winter, losing me five months of time and old ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... island land is the most productive in the world. This section of California is like Holland. You wouldn't think it, but this water we're sailing on is higher than the surface of the islands. They're like leaky boats—calking, patching, pumping, night and day and all the time. ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... do not understand what I call poetry, we talk in a foreign language to each other. Indeed, many of these gentlemen appear to me to be a sort of tinkers, who, unable to make pots and pans, set up for menders of them, and, God knows, often make two holes in patching one. The sixth canto is altogether redundant; for the poem should certainly have closed with the union of the lovers, when the interest, if any, was at an end. But what could I do? I had my book and my page still on my hands, and must ...
— Selected English Letters (XV - XIX Centuries) • Various
... what he'd say to mine. I was jest a boy, but I'd hung around hoss-swappers enough to know that it never was a good idea to be the first to propose a trade, and so I hitched at the post in front of Wilks's store and went in. I bought a pound of tenpenny nails, that I thought would come in handy in patching fences at home, and while the clerk was weighing 'em up I saw Tobe leave his chair behind a counter and go out and walk around the hoss. Finally he come to me and said, ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... time in the God-guarded city of Cairo a cobbler who lived by patching old shoes.[FN1] His name was Ma'aruf[FN2] and he had a wife called Fatimah, whom the folk had nicknamed "The Dung;"[FN3] for that she was a whorish, worthless wretch, scanty of shame and mickle of mischief. She ruled her spouse and abused him; ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... off his fur cap. "If Miss Rawlinson would like to see Mrs. Sandberg, I'll drive her round," he suggested. "We'll catch you up in a league or so. Gregory has a bit of patching to ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the two jagged edges of the eaves, like great tattered wings spread towards each other. When the green sky of evening deepened to blue, and blue grew violet, these shadowing wings were always in advance, more densely dark. There it was that Vanna worked incessantly, sewing seam after seam, patching, braiding, and fitting the pieces. By no chance at all did a hint of the sun fall about her; yet she always sang softly to herself, always wore her pretty fresh colours, and still showed the gold sheen in her yellow hair. Her hair was put up now, pulled smoothly ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... against 379 Liberals, 51 Labour members, and 83 Nationalists), some form of consolidation among the Unionists was immediately necessary, and negotiations took place between Mr Balfour and Mr Chamberlain which resulted in the patching up of an agreement (expressed in a correspondence dated February 14th), and its confirmation at a meeting of the party at Lansdowne House a few days later. The new compact was indicated in Mr Balfour's letter, in which he declared that "fiscal reform is, and must ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... that much. Dr. Edwards said yesterday that I had a genius for surgery. The ten dollars paid my board for six weeks, giving me a chance to take some extra cases for the doctor. The war looks bad, doesn't it? They need surgeons and though I'm doing something in patching up these poor fellows and sending them back, I wonder often if I oughtn't to go into a war hospital. Do you remember the little cameo pin you used to wear till father thought it was too dressy for you? If you haven't lost it, I wish you'd send it down here for me to pawn. I can get it back after ...
— Benefits Forgot - A Story of Lincoln and Mother Love • Honore Willsie
... ranges the tang of the pine And the breath of the Baltic as bracing as wine, In a fly-spotted window I there did behold, Among the stale odours of hot food and cold, A ship in a bottle some sailor had made In watches below, swinging South with the Trade, When the fellows were patching old dungaree suits, Or mending up oilskins and leaky seaboots, Or whittling a model or painting a chest, Or yarning and smoking ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 22, 1920 • Various
... always right, and it is wicked to grumble. Still, if you saw what a hole it was,—past patching, ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... doubt, irony, the absence of all sympathy, all example, all brotherly aid, all protection and countenance in high places? Try yourselves to speak to your brethren heart to heart, conscience to conscience! Try it! but you cannot, busied as you are with watching and patching up in all directions your dykes which the flood is invading: the material existence of this society of yours absorbs all your cares, and requires more than all your efforts. Meanwhile the powers of human thought are growing into strength and rise on all sides around you. Among these threatening ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... rubber-tyred wheels about the paths, stretchers on which motionless forms lay shrouded in blankets. One, concerning whom I asked, had just had part of his skull trepanned: another had suffered amputation. And all this pruning and patching up of broken men to win them a few more years of crippled life caught one's throat like the penetrating smell of the iodoform. Nor was I sorry to hasten away by the night mail northwards to the camps. It was still dark as we passed Estcourt, ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... big shears, a quick-drying gum solution and a pot of gasproof varnish, ready for the job of patching up the hole. But first they had to empty the big bag of gas. This was speedily done, for already enough had escaped to wrinkle the bag like a ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... the Vandyke beard, cutting into a cake, you may not need to be told, is Patching, the painter of those delicious interiors which have been seen every year by those who had eyes to find them, in obscure corners at the rooms of the National Academy of Design. In short, Patching is the subject of a conspiracy in which the Hanging ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... For all of its size, the hut was frail, and the winter wind blew coldly through its many cracks; but compared with the soldier's billets, it was a cozy palace. The Salvationists spent hours each week sitting on the roof in the driving rain patching ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... Stephenson, working in the coal pits for sixpence a day, patching the clothes and mending the boots of his fellow-workmen at night, to earn a little money to attend a night school, giving the first money he ever earned, $150, to his blind father to pay his debts. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... door of one of these establishments, and paused to take a slight survey of the premises before entering. The doorway was hung with coats of every fashion of the last twenty years, and all in various stages of decay. Some of them looked quite respectable, from much cleaning and patching; and others presented a reckless and forlorn aspect, as their worn and ragged sleeves swung about in the evening air. Old hats, some of which were, in all probability, worn at a period anterior to the Revolution, ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... disorder scarfs, lace cravats, muffs, and other necessary equipment were littered about the room. I much missed the neat touch of my valet Simpkins, and the gillie Hamish Gorm, whom Major Macleod had put at my service, did not supply his place by a deal, since he knew no more of patching the face or powdering a periwig than he had arrived at by the light of nature. But despite this handicap I made shift to do myself justice before I set off for the lodgings of Lord Balmerino, by whom I was to ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... the sled in. They built our igloo in short order, and during the time we were with them did everything in their power to contribute to our comfort. It seemed as if some one was on the roof of our igloo all the time patching up holes, and they changed the direction of the doorway every time the wind changed, and that kept them ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... place the crown of sovereignty upon the head of whatever person first enters the city gate in the morning, and commit the kingdom to his charge." It happened that the first man that presented himself at the city gate was a beggar, who had passed his whole life in scraping broken meat and in patching rags. The ministers of state and nobles of the court fulfilled the conditions of the king's will, and laid the keys of the treasury ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... elements, and when the storm cleared the two old hulls lay shattered but safe on the surface of the ice-pack. The whole larboard side of the Dorothea was smashed, but they brought her somehow to Spitzbergen, and there by wonderful patching ...
— Adventurers of the Far North - A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas • Stephen Leacock
... primitive desire for adornment. Quilting—the method of fastening together layers of cloths in such a manner as to secure firmly the loose materials uniformly spread between them, has resulted from the need of adequate protection against rigorous climates. The piecing and patching provide the maker with a suitable field for the display of artistic ability, while the quilting calls for particular skill in handling the needle. The fusing of these two kinds of needlework into a harmonious combination ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... Downwards and seawards, though the hill is not half the altitude of Cissbury. Northwards are the beautiful woods of Castle Goring, once the residence of the Shelleys, through which we may walk to Clapham and Patching, villages on southern spurs of the Downs; the latter has a restored Early English church with a very beautiful modern reredos. Clapham has a Transitional church containing memorials of the Shelley family. Notice the blocked-up ...
— Seaward Sussex - The South Downs from End to End • Edric Holmes
... was busily employed in painting over my Opie, which had suffered by heat, or something of that kind. I borrowed Laurence's palette and brushes and lay upon the floor two hours patching over and renovating. The picture is really greatly improved, and I am more reconciled to it. It has now to be varnished: and then I hope some fool will be surprised into giving 4 pounds for it, as I did. I have selected an advantageous position for it in a dealer's shop, just ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... Eucharist grows so directly and necessarily out of the great doctrine of Christ's Person, that for me to give up those doctrinal points alleged to be non-essential is to give up all, to give up the whole Gospel. And what good would come of patching up such a hollow peace? At the first favorable opportunity Schmucker would break it, and even if he seemed to keep quiet, he would be secretly and incessantly working and machinating against our side of the house. And, what is more, the editor ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 2: The United Lutheran Church (General Synod, General - Council, United Synod in the South) • Friedrich Bente
... occasional lulls. It was the end of June when Columbus had asked for shelter; not till the middle of July did the first clear weather come. Then the scattered, battered boats reunited as by a miracle, and found themselves near the "Queen's Garden" islands south of Cuba. Let us leave them there patching their boats and enjoying a bit of sunshine while we see what has been happening ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... antiquated dromons and a few others still on the stocks. To Theophanes the Patrician was given this nucleus of a squadron with which to beat back the Russians. Desperate and even hopeless as the situation appeared, he went to work with the greatest energy, patching up the old ships, and hurrying the completion of the new. Meanwhile the invaders sent raiding parties ashore that harried the unprotected country districts with every refinement of cruelty. In order to make each ship count as much as possible ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... unfortunately suggested no remedy. They thought they could drive women back to the water pitcher and the loom, but that was impossible. The clock of time will not turn back. Neither is it by a return to hand-sewing, or a resurrection of quilt-patching that women of the present day will save the race. The old avenues of labor are closed. It is no longer necessary for women to spin and weave, cure meats, and make household remedies, or even fashion the garments for their household. All these things ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... about fifteen, dressed in European clothes. I fainted from loss of blood, and don't remember anything else until I found myself in a tent, with two Cossacks patching up my wound. When I came to, she rushed forward, and thanked me profusely for saving her. To my surprise, she spoke in French, and on inquiry I found that she was the daughter of a certain Baron Conrad de Hetzendorf, an Austrian, who possessed a house in Budapest and a chateau at ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... commands, and like a flood poured with sudden violence upon the fortunes of a great number of people, making his path through manifold slaughter and destruction, loading the bodies of free-born men with chains, and crushing some with fetters, while patching up all kinds of accusations far removed from the truth. And to this man is owing one especial atrocity which has branded the time of ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... "Oh, indeed! Patching your shoes, eh? Then if you can't see to do that by the same light that does for me, you may take yourself off with your pare into the bath-house or behind ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... making a man of me. I was content to be master, but she said there was better behind; She took the chances I wouldn't, and I followed your mother blind. She egged me to borrow the money, an' she helped me clear the loan, When we bought half shares in a cheap 'un and hoisted a flag of our own. Patching and coaling on credit, and living the Lord knew how, We started the Red Ox freighters—we've eight-and-thirty now. And those were the days of clippers, and the freights were clipper-freights, And we knew we were making our fortune, but she died ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... wagon wheels was broken, and in the course of an hour or two, Willis and I succeeded in patching up the shattered body sufficiently to hold the hogs. But how to get the heavy brutes off the ground and up into the wagon was a task beyond our resources. When you try to take a live hog off its feet, he is likely to bite as well ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... all the castle is in such hurly-burly. Some of the men are loading the cannon, and some are examining the great gates, and the walls all round, and are hammering and patching up, just as if all those repairs had never been made, that were so long about. But what is to become of me and you, ma'amselle, and Ludovico? O! when I hear the sound of the cannon, I shall die with fright. If I could but catch ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... here, that all this has made me no worse? I was happy, at any rate; my brain was clear; my mind had no fear, and no weariness—it was like an athlete; my blood was cool. Look at me now! Am not I ruined by this patching and mending? I can do no work. When I think, it's no longer of how I might become great, and wise, and powerful—of nothing inspiring—nothing noble; but all about these petty, heated, miserable affairs, that have twisted ...
— Bressant • Julian Hawthorne
... Reypen, I've already exhausted myself this evening patching up one spoiled friendship, and it's just about worn me out! Now if ours needs any patching up, you'll have to do it yourself. I shan't ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... eccentric honesty in matters strictly pictorial, which ran through his complex and slightly confused character. "He would destroy any of his works rather than leave a careless or inexpressive touch within the limits of the frame. He would begin again a hundred times over rather than attempt by patching to make his work seem better than ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... a teapot lamp, shewed the port watch in their bunks, snoring, all but Harbutt and Raft seated on a chest, Harbutt patching a pair of trousers, ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... institutions freed from every vestige of human oppression, of inequality of rights, of the recognized degradation of the poor and the superior caste of the rich. But that bright dream had vanished. "I find," said he, "that we shall be obliged to be content with patching up the worst portions of the ancient edifice, and leaving it in many of its parts to be swept through by the tempests, the frosts, and the ...
— History of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States • Wiliam H. Barnes
... production. In all, he had mediated thirty-two strikes, sat on two arbitration boards, made three cost-of-living surveys for the Government. (Mediations did gall him—he grew intellectually impatient over this eternal patching up of what he was wont to call "a rotten system." Of course he saw the war-emergency need of it just then, but what he wanted to work on was, why were mediations ever necessary? what social and economic order would best ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... little, my guide bade me peer through a riven wall, and within I saw a group of coquetts busily primming up, doing and undoing the deeds of folly they were formerly wont to do on earth; some puckering their lips, some plucking their eyebrows with irons, some anointing themselves, some patching their faces with black spots to make the yellow look whiter, and some endeavouring to crack the mirror; and after all the pains to color and adorn, upon seeing their faces far uglier than the devils', they would tear away ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... not understand it, and cannot even conjecture where it was. His great antagonist Laing is equally at fault on the subject, and by way of exposing, as he believes, the dishonesty of Macpherson, endeavours to show that in patching up his account Macpherson had mistaken Thurso for Thura. Macpherson, in fact, knew nothing either about Thurso or Thura—even less than Laing did; and it is only in the work above cited that either the scene has been ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 3, January 1876 • Various
... of me responded to the call. Say it was romance if you like, say it was sentiment, say it was just foolishness. Something inside of me answered to the call. We worked all that night, patching that bad plate on the boiler. The other boilers were under steam, so you can believe it was hot down under there. My hands were all soft with office work, and in the first few hours I got cuts all over them, and the salt of the boiler-seams got into them and made ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... went on up Thunder Run Mountain. Sairy turned again the drying apples, then brought her patching out upon the porch and sat down in a low split-bottomed chair opposite Tom. The yellow cat at her feet yawned, stretched, and went back to sleep. The china asters bloomed; the sun drew out the odours of thyme and rue and tansy. ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... is just what I told you yon day we drove to Pitleathy. They're all patched—or I should say we're all patched. Either bodily, mentally or spiritually there are holes torn in us, and we've to be so busy patching them up from collapsing that we've no time to grow. As time goes on and we learn better there'll be less patching. There'll be more growing up tall and straight—everyone—there'll be giants in ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... was satisfied. 'Whigs, Tories, and Radicals,' wrote Greville, 'join in full cry against them, and the "Times," in a succession of bitter vituperative articles very well done, fires off its contempt and disgust at the paltry patching-up of the Cabinet.' ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... thus helping in dressmaking there were lessons to be given in patching and darning, and in lengthening out, or adding to, the dresses of ...
— On the Indian Trail - Stories of Missionary Work among Cree and Salteaux Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... not have been allowed to carry more than three hundred passengers, not less than nine hundred and fifty soldiers were packed. Most of the vessels were antiquated and inadequate; not a few were badly decayed. With a little superficial patching up they were imposed upon the Government. Despite his knowing that only vessels adapted for ocean service were needed, Vanderbilt chartered craft that had hitherto been almost entirely used in navigating inland waters. Not a single precaution was taken ...
— Great Fortunes from Railroads • Gustavus Myers
... sixty of the enemy on it. The Portuguese then left her, expecting that she would sink or burn down to the water's edge, and pursued the Palsgrave and Dolphin, which, however, effected their escape. The brave crew of the Lion, having put out the fire, succeeded in patching her up sufficiently to reach Ormuz, where they received every assistance they required from the Sultan. They were in hopes of being relieved by other English ships, when Rufero with his frigates came rowing towards them. The Lion ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... my life of nineteen years I can look back and see a time when she was all gentleness and refinement, but the polish has been worn off it by years and years of scrubbing and scratching, and washing and patching, and poverty and husbandly neglect, and the bearing of burdens too heavy for delicate shoulders. Would that we were more companionable, it would make many an oasis in the desert of our lives. Oh that I could take an all-absorbing interest in patterns and recipes, bargains and orthodoxy! Oh that ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... heart? Can I vow duty to one so wicked, and hazard my salvation by joining myself to so great a profligate, now I know him to be so? Do you think your Clarissa Harlowe so lost, so sunk, at least, as that she could, for the sake of patching up, in the world's eye, a broken reputation, meanly appear indebted to the generosity, or perhaps compassion, of a man, who has, by means so inhuman, robbed her of it? Indeed, my dear, I should not think my penitence for the rash step I took, any thing ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... A family living in an old house, on unhealthy ground, with water in the cellar, a crumbling foundation, the beams like sponge, the roof leaking, the chimney full of cracks, would not spend large sums of money year after year, generation after generation, in patching up the old house on the same old spot, but with ordinary wisdom and economy, they would build anew, on higher ground, with strong foundations, sound timber, substantial chimneys, and solid roofing. True, they would patch up the old at as little cost as possible, merely to afford ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 21, August, 1891 • Various
... there, palefac'd, quiet; her young man went back on her four years ago; his folks would not let him marry a convict's sister. She sits by the window, sewing on the children's clothes, the clothes not only patching up; her hunger for children of her ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... however, better established than that till nearly the end of the nineteenth century it was the general belief that the ancient industrial system, with all its shocking social consequences, was destined to last, with possibly a little patching, to the end of time. How strange and wellnigh incredible does it seem that so prodigious a moral and material transformation as has taken place since then could have been accomplished in so brief an interval? The readiness with which men accustom themselves, as matters of course, to improvements ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy
... Akakievitch's cloak served as an object of ridicule to the officials: they even refused it the noble name of cloak, and called it a cape. In fact, it was of singular make: its collar diminishing year by year, but serving to patch its other parts. The patching did not exhibit great skill on the part of the tailor, and was, in fact, baggy and ugly. Seeing how the matter stood, Akakiy Akakievitch decided that it would be necessary to take the cloak to Petrovitch, the tailor, who lived somewhere on the fourth floor ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... Seidlitz is now out of danger: that bleeding fit (EBULLITION DE SANG) will cure him of the cramp in his jaw, and of his colics; and as he is in bed, he won't take cold. I hope the viper-broth will do you infinite good; be assiduous in patching your constitution, while there is yet some fine weather left: I dread the winter for you; take a great deal of care against cold. I have still a couple of cruel months ahead of me before ending this Campaign. Within that time, there ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... consumed the whole coat, in a vain attempt to prevent an exposure of person greater than consistent with the usages of society. The pantaloons—or what, by courtesy, I called such, were a monument of careful and ingenious, but hopeless, patching, that should have called forth the admiration of a Florentine artist in mosaic. I have been shown—in later years—many table tops, ornamented in marquetry, inlaid with thousands of little bits of wood, ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... single shot .22 caliber pistols for partridges and small game; ammunition; tumplines; three fishing rods and tackle, including trolling outfits; one three and one-half inch gill net; repair kit, including necessary material for patching canoes, clothing, etc.; matches, and a ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... and very l-o-n-g stitches were used, but the work went slowly on. All the spare time of one day was given to patching. Sam, of course, kept up a patter of characteristic remarks to the piece he was sewing. Yan sewed in serious silence. At first Sam's were put on better, but Yan learned fast and at length did by ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... shows," I muttered to myself, in a voice about as amiable as the growlings of a panther, "it only shows that it is quite hopeless. We're an ill-tempered family—a hopelessly ill-tempered family; and to try to cure us is like patching the lungs of a consumptive family, I don't even wish that I could forgive Philip. He ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... the contractor, who had grown rich on your streets, delivered a eulogy; the chiropodist, who acquired practice through your beautiful street stones, had a medallion struck of you; then the wagonmaker, who made money patching up wagons, named a vehicle after you; and last, the shoemaker held a memorial fest in your honor. Then it was done! Your son-in-law, the burgomaster, sent out a subscription blank for a statue no one dared refuse, and now you ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... to work to mend Lucien's breeches, torn a day or two before. Two squirrels' skins were scarcely sufficient for the would-be tailor, who lined the knees also with this improvised cloth. Lucien was delighted at this patching, and wanted to try on his mended garment at once. He waddled about, ran, and stooped in every posture, quite fascinated with the rustling noise produced by the dry skins. Gringalet, who had been asleep, ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... must be admitted that to 'patch' or to 'exult in the basest blank' is a form of conduct quite unbefitting an artist, the very obscurity and incomprehensible character of such a crime adding something to its horror. However, while fully recognising the wickedness of 'patching' we cannot but think that Professor Harald Williams is happier in his criticism of life than he is in his art criticism. His poem Between the Banks, for instance, has a touch of sincerity and fine feeling that almost atones for ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... rock, and there I beheld a number of coquettes briskly at work, doing and repeating all their former follies upon earth. Some were twisting their mouths, some were pulling their front locks with irons, some were painting themselves, some patching their faces with sooty ointments, to make the yellow look more fair; some quite mad at seeing their visages, after all their pains in coloring and variegating, more hideous than those of the very devils, were endeavouring to break the ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... the gift of a kind friend: it was a roll of canvas, carefully soiled, and garnished with needles and thread, cobblers' wax, buttons, and other such articles. These things were most useful in lands where tailors abound not; besides which, the sight of a man darning his coat or patching his slippers teems with pleasing ideas of humility. A dagger, a brass inkstand and penholder stuck in the belt, and a mighty rosary, which on occasion might have been converted into a weapon of offense, completed my equipment. I must not omit to mention the proper method ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... instance and you know what Bergson calls the devenir reel by which the thing evolves and grows. Philosophy should seek this kind of living understanding of the movement of reality, not follow science in vainly patching together ...
— A Pluralistic Universe - Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the - Present Situation in Philosophy • William James
... without meaning, puns without point, cant without character, sentiments as dull as they were false, and a continual outrage on manners, morals and common sense, were its leading features. Yet, strange to tell, the audience endured it all; and, by copious retrenchments and plaistering and patching, this very piece had what ...
— The Adventures of Hugh Trevor • Thomas Holcroft
... Abraham Darby (1750-1791) in 1773-1779 at Coalbrookdale over the Severn (fig. 27). It had five cast iron arched ribs with a centre span of 100 ft. This curious bridge is still in use. Sir B. Baker stated that it had required patching for ninety years, because the arch and the high side arches would not work together. Expansion and contraction broke the high arch and the connexions between the arches. When it broke they fished it. Then the bolts sheared or the ironwork broke ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... sat on the raised circle of the Roman camp, patching Jacob's breeches; only looking up as she sucked the end of her cotton, or when some insect dashed at her, boomed in her ear, and ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... commenced the Sicilian war, but it was protracted by various delays during a long period [122]; at one time for the purpose of repairing his fleets, which he lost twice by storm, even in the summer; at another, while patching up a peace, to which he was forced by the clamours of the people, in consequence of a famine occasioned by Pompey's cutting off the supply of corn by sea. But at last, having built a new fleet, and obtained ...
— The Lives Of The Twelve Caesars, Complete - To Which Are Added, His Lives Of The Grammarians, Rhetoricians, And Poets • C. Suetonius Tranquillus
... who bought it, asked me to take it into my hospital. It wanted just a little, a very little patching. The copy in the museum is ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... missionary comes into contact. The tourists see only the coolie woman bearing burdens in the street, trotting along with a couple of heavy baskets swung from her shoulders, or they stop to stare at the neatly dressed mothers sitting on their low stools in the narrow alleyways, patching clothing or fondling their children. They see and hear the boat-women, the women who have the most freedom of any in all China, as they weave their sampans in and out of the crowded traffic on the canals. These same tourists visit the tea-houses and see the ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... the Itinerant Tinker said, "but I ran out of paper and gave it up. Then, when the night fell," he resumed dolefully, after another long interval of silence, "I tried to prop it up. But I met with the same difficulty that confronted me in patching up the day, and was forced ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... France as highly problematical. He had doubts as to his legitimacy. Financially, so low were his affairs that even the turnspits in the palace were clamouring for their unpaid wages. The unfortunate monarch had already sold his jewels and precious trinkets. Even his clothes showed signs of poverty and patching, and to such a state of penury was he reduced that his bootmaker, finding that the King was unable to pay him the price of a new pair of boots, and not trusting the royal credit, refused to leave the new boots, and Charles had to wear out ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... WAS a field hospital! My first! We were within earshot of the front—that is to say, we could hear the platoon firing. And when the wounded came in we thought only of patching them up temporarily—sewing, bandaging, and plastering them into travelling order, and sending them down to the headquarters at the coast. It was a weary journey across the desert, and I am afraid a few ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... are having holidays, With hikes and camps galore; We are patching sick and wounded, ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... better off than their masters. Nature has provided them with a coat which never wants changing but once a-year; and that is done so gradually, that they experience no inconvenience. No need of their consulting the fashions, or patching and stitching to keep up a decent appearance. It is a thousand pities that clothes were ever invented. People would have been much healthier, and ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... had checked the breaking of the defenders. But he knew it was like patching rotten material. His influence could not last without Bill and his reinforcements. He plied his guns with a discrimination which no heat or excitement could disturb, and the first invaders fell under his attack amidst a din of fierce-throated ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... him, Willie," said Mrs Willders, who was busy patching the knees of a pair of small unmentionables; "but I wish, dear, that you would not use slang in your speech, and remember that fellow is not spelt with an e-r at ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... captain thought he had better try to reach Simon's Bay or the Cape. For some days they were working through field-ice, getting a little to the north. Patching the vessel with canvas, and rigging jury-masts and sails, finally they got clear of ice, and with fine weather it was decided to stand to the eastward, with the hope of being overtaken by some other vessel (which never came). After many vicissitudes,—taking ...
— Notes by the Way in A Sailor's Life • Arthur E. Knights
... my style, and can do nothing well; indeed, I fear I have marred Roads finally by patching at it when I was out of the humour. Only, I am beginning to see something great about John Knox and Queen Mary; I like them both so much, that I feel as if I ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... demurely. She was patching a pair of leather trousers for Fergus and she did not raise her ...
— Man Size • William MacLeod Raine
... said abruptly. 'He knew every animal on the place. In his regiment they called him the "vet.," because he was always patching up the sick and broken mules. One of his last messages to me was about an old horse. He taught me a few things—and sometimes I am of ...
— Eleanor • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... were busily employed in patching up some of the boats, so that the prisoners might be removed from the prize, while the rest of the crew were engaged in clearing away the wreck of the masts, and in preparing to make sail on ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston
... gate of the Bezesten, or cloth-market, he saw an old man in a stall, so narrow that he could scarce turn himself about in it, who was taken up in patching an old cloak. He was almost bent double with constant labour at his shopboard; and his eyes seemed not to have benefited by his application, for a pair of glasses were mounted on his nose. "This is precisely the man I want," ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... sleeping-bag, fed and warmed and comforted. Only the old squaw was still up. She had been looking over the travellers' boots and "mitts," and now, without a word or even a look being exchanged upon the subject, she sat there in the corner, by the dim, seal-oil light, sewing on new thongs, patching up holes, and making the strange men tidy—men she had never seen before and would never see again. And this, no tribute to the Colonel's generosity or the youth and friendly manners of the Boy. They knew the old ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... fifty miles with his feet roughly sewn up in pieces of sacking from an old wool-bale. No sign of a patch, or an attempt at mending anywhere about his clothes, and that is a bad sign; when a swagman leaves off mending or patching his garments, his case is about hopeless. The Exception's swag consists of the aforesaid bit of blanket rolled up and tied with pieces of rag. He has no water-bag; carries his water in a billy; and how he manages without a bag is known only ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... sails through Pliny, Marco Polo, Odoric de Pordenone,[675] Albert d'Aix, William of Boldensele, Pierre Comestor, Jacques de Vitry, bestiaries, tales of travels, collections of fables, books of dreams, patching together countless marvels, but yet, as he assures us, omitting many so as not to weary our faith: It would be too long to say all; "y seroit trop longe chose a tot deviser." With fanciful wonders are mingled many real ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... to all having the care and responsibility of the concern, rendering the task of keeping things tidy and in comfortable order much easier than formerly. It is better and more economical for the State. That constant patching up and fixing over in numerous places, swallowing up money, no one hardly knowing how, is now nearly ended, permitting the real gains of the institution to accumulate and stand prominently in view, though everything there is ...
— The Prison Chaplaincy, And Its Experiences • Hosea Quinby
... there's an old Proverb says, It is not the Hood which makes the Monk; the being born a Gentleman does not make a Man of Sense; and the being bred a Tradesman, does not deprive us of it; for how many great Men have leap'd from the Shop-board, sprung up from the Stall, and have, by patching and heel-piecing Religion and the State, made their Names famous to After-Ages? I can name many, but I shall mention only John of Leyden. Now, I see no Reason, why Meanness of Birth should be an ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... The Shoemakers Brigade—Who will be employed in patching up the old shoes collected by our Household Salvage Brigade and in making new ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... Rape of the Lock' Pope has caught and fixed forever the atmosphere of this age. It is not the mere outward form and circumstance, the manners and customs, the patching, powdering, ogling, gambling, of the day that he has reproduced, though his account of these would alone suffice to secure the poem immortality as a contribution to the history of society. The essential ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope
... laughed to herself. "And here I've been hiring my own mending done! Theodosia Baxter, see what you are doing; you are patching a shirt for a man! No, I'm not, either! I'm doing it for Stefana—what ...
— Miss Theodosia's Heartstrings • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... come up these stairs, for it's a new thing. I reckon there hain't been a white woman up here more'n twenty year, an' he don't know how to tell his gladness.". They said he was good to bring them wood and water, and take care of himself in washing and patching his own clothes. I presented him a suit, and when he found they would fit him, the dancing and singing were resumed. I should judge from the history his sisters gave of him, and from his high forehead, that he had been a man of more than ordinary talent. These sisters, too, had been made widows ...
— A Woman's Life-Work - Labors and Experiences • Laura S. Haviland
... Scotch divinity, in the little bookcase at Dunglass was well thumbed. But reading of a lighter kind was also indulged in, and on winter nights, when the mother was plying her spinning-wheel and the father had taken down his cobbler's box and was busily engaged patching the children's shoes, it was a regular practice for John to sit near the dim oil-lamp and read to the rest. Sometimes the reading would be from an early number of Chambers's Journal, sometimes from Wilson's Tales of the Borders, which were then ...
— Principal Cairns • John Cairns
... While his crew was patching the Argo and pumping the water from her hold, the lookout yelled that another sail was making for them. Without hesitation Talbot somehow got this absurdly impudent one-masted craft of his under way and told those of his sixty men who survived ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... cessation of the flow— as agoas estao paradas, "the waters have stopped." The muddy streets, in a few days, dry up; groups of young fellows are now seen seated on the shady sides of the cottages making arrows and knitting fishing-nets with tucum twine; others are busy patching up and caulking their canoes, large and small; in fact, preparations are made on all sides for the much longed-for "verao," or summer, and the "migration," as it is called, of fish and turtle— that is, their descent from the inaccessible pools in the forest to the main river. Towards the middle ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... told me, had been found on the coast, a half wreck, some weeks since, and, by dint of great labour and patching, had been made ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... panic-stricken and on the verge of mutiny; but Mackenzie was undaunted and determined to go forward. He spread the provisions out to dry and set his crew to work patching up the stern of the broken canoe with resin and oilcloth and new cedar lining. That night the mountain Indian who had acted as guide across the portage gave Mackenzie the slip and escaped in the {81} woods. For several days after this ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... conversation as fell from them when they turned at my end of the gallery now reached me. Patching these together, however, I managed to understand somewhat. At one turn I heard the king say, 'But then Turenne offers—' At the next, 'Trust him? Well, I do not know why I should not. He promises—' Then 'A Republic, Rosny? That his plan? Pooh! he dare not. He could not. France ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... hoped, not without reason, the worst was over. As I went off the campus the top of my hat was hanging over my left ear, my collar and cravat were turned awry, my trousers gaped over one knee. I was talking with a fellow sufferer and patching the skin on my knuckles, when suddenly I met ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... of repairs and supplies, and one of immigration, the latter to provide for the naturalization of foreign words and their proper treatment before they could take care of themselves; the former for furnishing a supply to meet the growing demand mentioned at the beginning of this article, and for patching up several of the most obvious imperfections we now suffer from. We want a word for the opposite of a compliment. Not that this is as great a defect as the lack of the word compliment would be in these smooth-spoken ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... around it. But the moon is not a success because it can only be understood if the stars too are intelligible, and the stars are not worked out. And so what I produce is not literature, but something like the patching of Trishka's coat. What am I to do? I don't know, I don't know. I must trust to time which ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... huge, palpitating world of ours! It would be worth while to pass a week or a month among the plain, average people of Stratford. What is the relative importance in human well-being of the emendations of the text of Hamlet and the patching of the old trousers and the darning of the old stockings which task the needles of the hard-working households that fight the battle of life in these narrow streets and alleys? I ask the question; the reader may ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... he who cannot rise above his own compilations and compositions, which he has been long patching and piecing, adding some and taking away some, may be justly called poet or speech-maker ...
— Phaedrus • Plato
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