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More "Scratch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he, "or I may hurt you. I had to let him, my good fellow, or we'd have been dropping each other like bullocks. As it is, not a scratch between us, though I found young Bowen in a pretty bad way. Our friend had stuck up Jumping Creek barracks in the small hours, put a bullet through Bowen's leg, and come away in his uniform. Pretty tall, that, ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... a sigh I scratch it all out again, sunny and funny as it is. For it's all about a comical adventure I had with Palaiseau, the sniffer at the fete de St.-Cloud—all about a tame magpie, a gendarme, a blanchisseuse, and a volume of de Musset's poems, and doesn't concern Barty in the least; ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... and were pulling away lustily for the reef when it occurred to a few of those left behind that the sea running was not too formidable for a couple of seine-boats lying high on the beach: and within five minutes these were hauled down and manned with scratch ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... scratch," answered the boy. "I am not quite a match for Bertram yet; but I will be anon. I must learn to be quicker in my defence. Thanks, gentle mother; belike it will be better for it to be bound up. It bleeds rather too fast for comfort, but thy ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... case of a child who was thought to be sensitive to the fish protein in glue and who died almost immediately when the physician testing her had brought a small quantity of the dry protein into contact with a scratch on ...
— The Sword and the Atopen • Taylor H. Greenfield
... do. They got nothing in the worl' we can do, Yvonne and me, so easy like that! And same time we be no egspense, like those li'l' orpheline'; we can wash dish', make bed', men' apron'; and in that way we be independent!' Well, he scratch his head; yet same time he smile', while he say, 'Go, li'l' children, to yo' home. I'll see if Mere Veronique can figs that, and if yes, I'll san' for you.' And, cherie, juz' the way he said that, we are sure ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... said Schilsky. "A ... a what do you call it?—a ... Meg ... a Meg—" He gave it up and went on: "By God, but Lulu knows how! Keep clear of her nails, boys—I'd advise you!" At this point, he pulled back his collar, and exhibited a long, dark scratch on the side of his neck. "A little remembrance she gave me to take away with me!" While he displayed it, he seemed to be rather proud of it; but immediately afterwards, his mood veered round again to one of bitter resentment. To illustrate the injustice she had been guilty of, and ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... at all. The man was dead; it was apparently a natural death. "Not a scratch nor a mark on him," was the report. But: "... next time it will be you," the note with the staring eye had warned the Secretary of State. The writer of it was taking full credit ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... O-saw-wah-ne-me-kee, Kaw-be-naw received a little scratch on his nose which drew a few drops of his blood, and therefore when he saw a flag of truce he disarmed himself and went to the Wenebagoes, saying, "O, you have killed me." The Wenebagoes said, "How and where?" "Don't you see the blood on ...
— History of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians of Michigan • Andrew J. Blackbird
... close to the entrance, with smooth, whitish bark, and a family resemblance to a beech. This was the ill-famed upas tree of Java, the subject of so many ridiculous legends. The curator told me that the upas (Antiaris toxicaria) was unquestionably intensely poisonous, juice and bark alike. A scratch made on the finger by the bark might have very serious results, and the emanations from a newly lopped-off branch would be strong enough to bring out a rash; equally, any one foolish enough to drink the sap would most certainly die. The stories of the tree giving out deadly fumes ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... way through or leaped over the dense throng which obstructed his progress, and with the speed of a race horse rushed into the house, and almost before the officers of the law were aware of his escape, he had donned his garments, and without a scratch on his person, mingled unsuspected with the throng of spectators. The boatswain, notwithstanding the woeful plight he was in, for he was dreadfully punished, was marched off to the guard house, accompanied by his faithful second, and on the following ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper
... not been more than much from me already? Thou wilt certainly be killed, though thou hast not yet a scratch on thy blessed body. I would it were over ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... line, the first and last, generally the best of lines, is that which you have elementary faculty of at your fingers' ends, and which kittens can draw as well as you—the scratch. ...
— Ariadne Florentina - Six Lectures on Wood and Metal Engraving • John Ruskin
... cried in relief, "I don't know what we will ever do with all this rice! It's sticking faster than I can scratch it up, it's boiled over the stove three times, and I've filled up four pans already. Give ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... sexual impulse. Certain idiots practise masturbation as a physical act, because sensations proceeding from the genital organs impel them to do so, precisely as itching of an area of the skin impels us to scratch. They masturbate without thinking of another person, and they feel no impulsion whatever towards sexual contact with another person. Analogous phenomena may be witnessed in the animal world also, in connexion with the masturbatory acts of monkeys, bulls, and stallions. When a stallion ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... ascent, or the stones of the altar were from the valley of Bethcerem.(580) And they digged deeper than virgin soil, and brought from thence perfect stones over which iron(581) was not waved. For the iron defiles by touching. And a scratch defiles everything. In any of them a scratch defiled, but the others were lawful. And they whitewashed them twice in the year; once at the passover, and once at the feast of Tabernacles. And the Sanctuary (was whitewashed) once at the passover. ...
— Hebrew Literature
... no little barrator, but sovereign. With him frequents Don Michael Zanche of Logodoro,[2] and in talking of Sardinia their tongues feel not weary. O me! see ye that other who is grinning: I would say more, but I fear lest he is making ready to scratch my itch." And the grand provost, turning to Farfarello, who was rolling his eyes as if to strike, said, "Get thee ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... should come to spend the night? How would the bonny leddy like it? What a risk she would run! If he put her under the bed, the mice would get at her strings—nay, perhaps, knaw a hole right through her beautiful body. On the top of the clock, the brass eagle with outspread wings might scratch her, and there was not space to conceal her. At length he concluded—wrapped her in a piece of paper, and placed her on the top of the chintz tester of his bed, where there was just room between it and the ceiling: that would serve till he bore her to some better sanctuary. In the meantime ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... went on, serious and determined. "You know the sort of thing I've come from. I got four days unexpected. I had to run down to my uncle's. The old things would have died if I hadn't. To-morrow I go back. This is my last night. I haven't had a scratch up to now. But my turn's coming, you bet. Next week I may be in heaven or hell or anywhere, or blind for life or without my legs or any damn thing you please. But I'm going to have to-night, and you're going to ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... will?" said I, as they came alongside. "You've no need to scratch the paint of his ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... let the monkey go, and rushed at the heavily-laden bushes. The monkey slipped away secretly, and climbed up a tree, where he could enjoy the discomfiture of his voracious friend. The crocodile began to cough, sneeze, and scratch his tongue. When he rushed to the river to cool his mouth, the monkey only ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler
... come off and soil my fingers; on the blank side had been written with the same material the one word "Depposed." I have that curiosity beside me at this moment; but not a trace of writing now remains beyond a single scratch, such as a man might make ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the big oval is a body wound; that scores five. A shot outside that is a scratch; that scores two. A shot in the small oval or heart is a heart wound; it scores ten, and ends the hunt. Arrows which do not stick do not count, unless it can be proved that they passed right through, in which case they take the highest score ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... its origin is suggestive. It is from a root which signifies to scratch, to engrave, to cut into furrows. Then it comes to mean that which is engraved or cut on anything. In life, therefore, it is that which experiences cut or furrow in the soul. A baby has no character. Its life is like a piece of white paper, with nothing yet written upon it; or it is ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... his body still reclining withdrew from her reach, and as he did so, he answered with a smile: "It isn't a scratch; it must, I presume, be simply a drop, which bespattered my cheek when I was just now mixing and clarifying the cosmetic ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... them that I wanted to show, during my inquiries, both sides of the question, and should be glad if they would point out to me the name of a Gipsy whom they could look up to and consider as a good pattern for them to follow. Here they began to scratch their heads, and said I had put them "a nightcap on." "Upon my soul," said one, "I should not know where to begin to look for one," and then related to me the following story:—"The Devil sent word to some of his agents for them to send him the worst man they could find ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the day, he thought, for to accompany the stranger they had lighted a lamp; he had heard the scratch of the match, and through the brass fretwork had seen the lines ...
— Bimbi • Louise de la Ramee
... whole fighting force of the tribe, made many prisoners, plundered and set fire to the villages, and returned to his ships. A part of the spoil was bestowed on the seven friendly natives. Ojeda, who had not received so much as a scratch, anchored in a bay for three weeks to let his wounded recover. There were twenty-one wounded and one ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... once a week, and the invalid is sent home by the first opportunity. Similarly a silly East Indian statistician proved, from the rare occurrence of fatal cases, Aden to be one of the healthiest stations under 'the Company.' He ignored the fact that even a scratch justified the surgeons in shipping a ...
— To the Gold Coast for Gold - A Personal Narrative in Two Volumes.—Vol. I • Richard F. Burton
... took care of me, but they was poor, and they couldn't do much. When I was seven the woman died, and her husband went out West, and then I had to scratch for myself." ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... be for the handsome young leader of the union to marry the daughter of the capitalist; and Paret remarked, with his dry smile, "No doubt if the capitalists and their daughters are willing, the union-leaders will come to the scratch." Again, Darrell was telling about the ten years' struggle he had waged to waken the Church to the great issue of the time; and how at last he had given up in despair. Paret remarked, "For my part, I never try to talk economics with preachers. When you talk to a business-man, he understands ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... consuming, the good things which the common entertainment afforded. We have only to sum up this brief account of the learned Doctor, by informing the reader that he was a tall, lean, beetle-browed man, with an ill-made black scratch-wig, that stared out on either side from his lantern jaws. He resided nine months out of the twelve at St. Ronan's, and was supposed to make an indifferent good thing of it,—especially as ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... effect, is always in exact proportion to the sum of its causes, as much in the case of Spigelius, who dies of a scratch, as in that of the man who recovers after an iron bar has been shot through his brain. The one prevalent failing of the medical art is to neglect the causes and quarrel ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... finkers for persons of no etchucation, mem! As if tey couldn't know ta silfer from ta prass! If tey wass so stupid, her nose would pe telling tem so. Efen old Tuncan's knife 'll pe knowing petter than to scratch ta silfer—or ta prass either; old Tuncan's knife would pe scratching nothing petter tan ta skin ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... my duck. When I am put to death 'Twill be for more! Oh, I will have her yet By the hair! [For the first time noticing Fidelio.] Fidelio, if you breathe one word Of this, I will scratch the Princess into ribbons, Whom you love better than ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... suffering without one murmur. Hatty had a perfect horror of pain. Her skin was thin and delicate, and even the grasp of a rough hand on her arm was sure to leave a bruise. Her usually pleasant face was clouded over by a scratch or a pin-prick, and her tears often fell fast for a wound that many children would have met with a smile. Hatty was naturally very sensitive to pain, and that was not her fault; but she had never yet begun to try to bear ...
— Hatty and Marcus - or, First Steps in the Better Path • Aunt Friendly
... ever knew when Black Burke might be returning from his sporting expeditions—and that beast of a lurcher would be sure to be creeping in this morning, and would scratch it up, and his brute of a master would get it all! This fancy was the worst possible: and Roger rose again, quite sick at heart, pale, worn, and trembling with a miser's haggard joys. Where should he hide that crock—the epithet "cursed" crock escaped him this time in his vexed ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... sympathy be d-d-darned!' sputtered Mrs. Crane, working her long fingers convulsively. 'Walk out of this room in a hurry, before I scratch your eyes out, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... Nettie and all the others who emphasized Poppy's imperfections were people whom Poppy, in her turn, for some reason could not endure. This point she tried to make once when Poppy had been convicted of a felonious scratch, but of course the grown-ups couldn't follow her reasoning. Long since she'd given up trying to make clear the real merits of her pet; she only knew that Poppy was more loving and lovable, more sympathetic and comprehending, than the majority of humans. She could count on Poppy's never jarring ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... rose and went downstairs to the kitchen. There was hot water in the kettle. He fetched it back, bathed her feet, drew out from cut and scratch the flakes of granite-grit and brier-points that ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... to it, as I flipped over the pages, "you ain't ever lied to me yet, and you ain't ever throwed me down at a scratch yet. Tell me what, old boy, tell me ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... of one of Her Majesty's visits to the Crystal Palace. Among the American manufactures were some fine soaps, and among these a small head, done in white Castile, and so exactly like marble that the Queen doubted the soap story, and in her impulsive, investigating way was about to test it with a scratch of her shawl-pin, when the Yankee exhibitor stayed her hand, and drew forth a courteous apology by the loyal remonstrance—"Pardon, your Majesty,—it ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... goes,' mixed with shrill cries on May and on me from Lizzy, piercing through a low continuous harangue, of which the prominent parts are apologies, chilblains, sliding, broken bones, lollypops, rods, and gingerbread, from Lizzy's careful mother. 'Don't scratch the door, May! Don't roar so, my Lizzy! We'll call for you as we come back.' 'I'll go now! Let me out! I will go!' are the last words of Miss Lizzy. Mem. Not to spoil that child—if I can help it. But I do think her mother might have let the poor little soul walk with us to-day. ...
— Our Village • Mary Russell Mitford
... are readily recognizable. The most delicate of the sap vessels, and all the finer portions of the centre of the wood, are perfectly entire, and bear to be examined with the strongest magnifiers. The whole are so thoroughly silicified as to scratch glass and are capable of receiving the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... mustered. Captain Morton, Mr Scuppers, the lieutenant, and Jack Harper had escaped without a scratch on the part of the officers; but Mr Sprott, the second mate, had a cut across his face from a Malay crease, which caused him considerable pain, and undoubtedly spoiled his beauty; although the brave fellow refused ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... having all their household goods and other belongings fought for with tooth and claw by their 'dearest' relations. Dearest relations are, according to my experience, very much like wild cats: give them the faintest hope of a legacy, and they scratch and squawl as though it were raw meat for which they have been starving. In all my long career as a solicitor I never knew one 'dearest relation' ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... and give to the poor?" But this means that he lied as to the perfect observance of this commandment. Hence Origen says (Tract. viii super Matth.) that "it is written in the Gospel according to the Hebrews that when our Lord had said to him: 'Go, sell all thou hast,' the rich man began to scratch his head; and that our Lord said to him: How sayest thou: I have fulfilled the law and the prophets, seeing that it is written in the law: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself? Behold many of thy brethren, children of Abraham, are clothed in filth, and die of hunger, whilst ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... have been quite heart-breaking, but for Dora, who was the stay and anchor of my tempest-driven bark. Every scratch in the scheme was a gnarled oak in the forest of difficulty, and I went on cutting them down, one after another, with such vigour, that in three or four months I was in a condition to make an experiment on one of our crack speakers in the ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... summer gyarment was a plain, sleeveless apron dress, and de boys wore skimpy little shirts and nothin' else. Dey mixed cow-hair wid de cotton when dey wove de cloth to make our winter clothes out of, and I'm a-tellin' you Missy, dat cow-hair cloth sho' could scratch, but it was good and warm and Marster seed to it dat us had all de clothes us needed. De 'omans made all de cloth used on de place; dey cyarded, spun, and den wove it. Mammy was de weaver; dat was all she done, ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... of him. But it isn't in his nature to facilitate things. In the present crisis he will feel that he is personally responsible for the expenditure of five million dollars. He will examine and investigate, and probe and pry, and will want to worry through every pen-scratch which has been made up ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... were comfortably seated Blair went on: "Do you know, Dare, I don't miss my leg so much when I'm crutching around. But when I try to sit down or get up! By heck, sometimes I forget it's gone. And sometimes I want to scratch my ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... Ramoo seized a couple of muskets from the men, and rushed into the jungle after him, and coming up with the brute killed him at the first shot. George escaped with a broken arm and his back laid open by a scratch of the tiger's claws as it ...
— Colonel Thorndyke's Secret • G. A. Henty
... thought to stanch so simple a wound, and so lose all this blood—bad Tressilian blood though it be." He laughed in the immensity of his reaction from that momentary terror. "Stay thou there whilst I call Nick to help us dress this scratch." ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... the winged horse made another arrow-flight toward the Chimera, and Bellerophon aimed another downright stroke at one of the two remaining heads as he shot by. But this time neither he nor Pegasus escaped so well as at first. With one of its claws the Chimera had given the young man a deep scratch in his shoulder, and had slightly damaged the left wing of the flying steed with the other. On his part, Bellerophon had mortally wounded the lion's head of the monster, insomuch that it now hung downward, with its ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... had just had a horse shot in two under him, and asked for two men to go and remove his saddle and holsters. I was one of them; we examined the horse very carefully, and found him to be without hurt or scratch; and he had plain enough died from mere heat, which killed several horses and a number of men during the day. The story has got wind—some laugh, but others shake their heads about it. Jim Maris heard General ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various
... already he had met with several alarming accidents. Once the nail on which his cage was hung had given way, and his feathered Majesty had suffered much from the fall, while Madam Puss, who happened to be in the room at the time, had given him a scratch in the eye which came very near blinding him. Another time they had forgotten to give him any water to drink, so that he was nearly dead with thirst; and the worst thing of all was that he was in danger of losing his kingdom, for he had been absent so long that all his subjects believed ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... been stopped up with straw and rags. Her little hands were almost frozen with the cold. Ah! perhaps a burning match might be some good, if she could draw it from the bundle and strike it against the wall, just to warm her fingers. She drew one out-"scratch!" how it sputtered as it burnt! It gave a warm, bright light, like a little candle, as she held her hand over it. It was really a wonderful light. It seemed to the little girl that she was sitting by a large ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... or heaviness of the air. A short series of observations proved that it did so, and with those observations went naturally the observations as to changes in the weather. It was only necessary, therefore, to scratch a scale on the glass tube, indicating relative atmospheric pressures, and the ...
— A History of Science, Volume 2(of 5) • Henry Smith Williams
... (Sura XXIV) forbids showing the pudenda, as well as the face, yet a veiled Mohammedan woman, Stern remarks, even in the streets of Constantinople, will stand still and pull up her clothes to scratch her private parts, and in Beyrout, he saw Turkish prostitutes, still veiled, place themselves in the position for coitus. (B. Stern, Medizin, etc., in der Tuerkei, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 1 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... are civil fellows enough, if you will, as in duty bound, be civil to them. If you are not, ugly capacities will flash out fast enough, and too fast. If any one says of the Negro, as of the Russian, 'He is but a savage polished over: you have only to scratch him, and the barbarian shows underneath:' the only answer to be made is—Then do not scratch him. It will be better for ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... intelligence in any way, but he had some curious mental twists that marked him as something out of the normal. His chief peculiarity lay in his dread of pain to himself. An ache, a trifling bruise, a mere scratch upon himself, would hurl him into a paroxysm of terror which frequently terminated in a fit, or, at least, convulsions of a serious nature. This drove the girl, who was his only living relative, to great pains in her care of him, which, ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... and without appeal. One author, for whose opinion I have already exprest a very high respect, says that he was but a wild man of the woods to the last; polished over skin-deep with Roman civilization; 'Scratch him, and you found the barbarian underneath {101}.' It may be true. If it be true, it is a very high compliment. It was not from his Roman civilization, but from his 'barbarian' mother and father, that he drew the 'vive ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... before my Cherry had befallen me as a gift, and which I had without thought brought into that prison with me, I parried the blow of the knife at my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner, but not in such a manner as to prevent a glancing of that knife, which inflicted a scratch of considerable depth upon my forearm under its ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... be a neat and accurate record of the work in the laboratory. To this end the entries in the notebook should be made in the laboratory at the time when the experiment is actually being performed. The writing of data on loose scratch paper and then finally writing up the notebook later at home from such sheets is not to be recommended, for while thus the final appearance of the notebook may be improved, it is no longer a first-hand record such as every scientist makes, but rather a transcribed ...
— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper
... continent of Asia, were to be submitted to his sway if he had it, there was every reason why the sovereigns should be unwilling to maintain for him the broad rights which they had been willing to give when a scratch of the pen was all that was ...
— The Life of Christopher Columbus from his own Letters and Journals • Edward Everett Hale
... middle of the room. The toe of one rosy slipper touched the polished boards, and her other foot swung gently to and fro. One of her short sleeves she had pushed up to the shoulder and was looking critically at a scratch, which showed red, high up on her round, white arm. A simple evening frock of old-rose colour, dainty old gold slippers to keep her feet. Her skin was wonderfully white, her hair dark and brown. This was cut straight across her forehead in French fashion, and then brought ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... the Seraglio, united. Upon the question, solely, whether the Commander of the Faithful durst exercise a right of kissing in that sanctuary of the palace, were its peerless inmates divided. Zobeide asserted a counter-right in the Favourite to scratch, and the fair Circassian put her face, for refuge, into a green baize bag, originally designed for books. On the other hand, a young antelope of transcendent beauty from the fruitful plains of Camden Town (whence she ...
— The Signal-Man #33 • Charles Dickens
... him vigorously. "Shut up," he said, roughly, partly to hide his own feelings, "Charley's comin' back without a scratch. The good Lord, I reckon, don't make lads as true and white as he to be killed off by a pack of jail vermin. Come to the wall as he told us to. Maybe we'll get a shot at those murderers before the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... touch the old gentleman. He owes you nothing, nor have you a scratch of his pen. How are you to lug an old gentleman to prison when he's lying there cut up by the doctors almost to nothing? I don't know that anybody can touch him. The captain perhaps might, if the present story be false; and the younger son, if the other be true. And ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... a younger sister Agnes. Their father was old Harry Mallerton, kept The British Oak at North Quainy; he stuttered. Well, this Edith had a love affair with a young chap William, and having a very loving nature she behaved foolish. Then she couldn't bring the chap up to the scratch nohow by herself, and of course she was afraid to tell her mother or father: you know how girls are after being so pesky natural, they fear, O they do fear! But soon it couldn't be hidden any longer as she was ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... You were struck down with a mace, but the leech says that the wound on your head is of no great consequence, and that you fainted rather from loss of blood from other gashes than from the blow on the head. I have got off with a scratch on the shoulder. Hal Carter, who fought like a tiger over your body, has come off worst, having fully half a dozen wounds, but it was not before he had killed at least twice as many of his assailants with that terrible ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... particular—plenty of hard fighting. But he never writes much of that. He's much more interested in a run he had with a queer scratch pack near their billets. I can't quite gather how it was organized, but it comprised two beagles and a greyhound and a fox-terrier and a pug. He said they ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... with hands all bloody from a fall, You'd run to me! Then—aping mother-ways— I, in a voice would-be severe, would chide,— (She takes his hand): 'What is this scratch, again, that I see here?' (She starts, surprised): Oh! 'Tis too much! What's this? (Cyrano tries to draw away his hand): No, let me see! At your age, fie! Where ...
— Cyrano de Bergerac • Edmond Rostand
... hunt for their breakfasts almost as well as their mother, while little Red Hen had to scratch up every thing her children ate. And as for the water—well, the chicks were simply not in it there! They did not like to be in the water at all, but the goslings loved their morning bath in the brook better than anything else in the ...
— The Wise Mamma Goose • Charlotte B. Herr
... hearing from a squire of Lot With whom he used to play at tourney once, When both were children, and in lonely haunts Would scratch a ragged oval on the sand, And each at either dash from either end— Shame never made girl redder than Gareth joy. He laughed; he sprang. 'Out of the smoke, at once I leap from Satan's foot to Peter's knee— These news be mine, none other's—nay, the King's— ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... and scratch As I swallow it down; And I shall feel it as a serpent of fire, Coiling and twisting in my belly. His snortings will rise to my head, And I shall be hot, and laugh, Forgetting that I ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... dilator. The extent of expansion can be limited by the sense of touch or by an adjustable checking mechanism on the handle. The author frequently used smooth forceps for this purpose, and found them so efficient that this dilator was devised. The edges of forceps jaws are likely to scratch the epithelium. Occasionally the instrument is useful in the esophagus; but it is not very safe, unless ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... during the mating season of the birds the rivalries and jealousies are not all confined to the males. Indeed, the most spiteful and furious battles, as among the domestic fowls, are frequently between females. I have seen two hen robins scratch and pull feathers in a manner that contrasted strongly with the courtly and dignified sparring usual between the males. One March a pair of bluebirds decided to set up housekeeping in the trunk of an old apple-tree near my house. Not long after, an unwedded female appeared, and probably ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... fertilizer of some sort, be half so dangerous as a single touch with a finger which had been dressing a wound, picking a scab out of the nose, rubbing an ulcerated gum, or scratching an itching scalp. If it be a cut on the finger, or scratch on the hand, for instance, don't suck it, or lick it, unless you can give an absolutely clean bill of health to your gums and teeth. If not thoroughly brushed three or four times a day, they are sure to be swarming with germs of twenty or thirty different species, which not ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson
... seventeenth century by religious quarrels appears to-day; indeed, it is less rational, since the object with which it is concerned is less important. And it is a poison which inflames every wound and turns each trivial scratch into ...
— The Mind in the Making - The Relation of Intelligence to Social Reform • James Harvey Robinson
... ax handle and killed an occasional rabbit, but there were thousands all around, and Pa seemed to be wading up to his middle in rabbits, and they would jump all over him, and bunt him with their heads, and scratch him with their toe-nails, and the dogs would grab rabbits and shake them, and Pa would fall down and rabbits would run over him till you couldn't see Pa at all. Then he would raise up again and maul the animals with his club, and his clothes were so covered with rabbit hair ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... itself felt in her heart now. It is so, no doubt, with many maiden ladies when they look back upon the past. But if she had ever felt a little sore at her sudden abandonment by the mercurial young man who had once touched her fancy, the tiny scratch had healed and been forgotten long ago. At the same time, although the idea of marriage after five-and-twenty years was too absurd to be dwelt on for a moment, the worthy lady could not help feeling how delightful it would be to be asked. Of course, that would involve the extremely ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... saying that he should not feel safe in a ship manned and officered altogether by wild beasts; but, at last, he came to enjoy the thing as a good joke, never failing to hail the men, not by their names as formerly, but, as he expressed it himself, "by their natur's"; calling out "You cat, scratch this"; "You tiger, jump here"; "You hog, out of that dirt"'; "You dog, scamper there"; "You horse, haul away," and divers other similar conceits, that singularly tickled his fancy. The men themselves took up the ball, which they kept rolling, embellished with all sorts of nautical ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... himself received a dangerous hurt under the right arm, in consequence of which his friends insisted on his remaining in camp during the action of the next day, but his spirit was too great to comply with this remonstrance. He declared it should never be said that a scratch, received in a private rencounter, had prevented him from doing his duty, when his country required his service; and he took the field with a fusil in his hand, though he was hardly able to carry his arms. In leading up his men to the enemy's intrenchment, he was shot through the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... genuinely surprised; for, in his experience, this bird was remarkable, if at all, for an obese lethargy. It could talk, to be sure. Now and again it would ejaculate "Scratch Polly," or "Polly wants a kiss," in a perfunctory way; but on the whole he had never known a more comfortable or a less ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... bullet-headed man, with a voice like a fractious child, striving frantically to force his way through. "Don't let 'em fight!" he screamed: "it's robbery, I tell you. There's hundreds of pounds on him for Thursday next, I'm his trainer; and I daren't show him with a scratch on him." ...
— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence
... began to cry and sob, so it sounded like an engine blowing off steam, and she told pa that the cause of her losing flesh was that she was in love with the living skeleton, and that he had been paying attention to the bearded woman, and she would scratch her eyes out if she could catch her. Just then the living skeleton came in, and when he saw the fat woman sitting on the floor crying, and pa talking soothing to her and telling her he could appreciate her condition, 'cause he had been in love some hisself, the skeleton ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... gun with a heavy wooden stock and nondescript lock, and a sword of excellent metal. It was, in fact, a weapon of the old Greek empire, and the cross was still enamelled in gold at the root of the blade, in spite of all his efforts to scratch it out. He was something of a fakeer, having made a pilgrimage to Mecca and Jerusalem. He was very inquisitive, plying Francois with questions about the government. The latter answered that we were not connected with the government, but the old fellow shrewdly ...
— The Lands of the Saracen - Pictures of Palestine, Asia Minor, Sicily, and Spain • Bayard Taylor
... was in his heartiest element. Men would make a scratch team at the sound of his voice, just to be led by him as captain. No mean field or batsman, he excelled in bowling. His resource in taking wickets was only equalled by the good temper with which adversaries walked away from the field with ...
— Memoir of William Watts McNair • J. E. Howard
... a scratch pad to her and scribbled rapidly for a couple of minutes. Then she passed the page ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... tell, how he and Daniel Townsend fired, and each brought down a redcoat, and then ran into a house; how the British surrounded it, and killed Townsend; how he leaped through a window and ran, with a whole platoon firing at him, riddling his clothes with bullets, yet escaping without a scratch. ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... leaves. It must have been this that had wakened him. For just an instant Peter was startled, but only for an instant. His long ears told him at once that that noise was made by some one scratching among the leaves, and he knew that no one who did not wear feathers could scratch like that. ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... for those!" warned Tom. "They probably are poisoned, and a scratch may mean death. Give 'em a few shots now, Ned and Mr. Damon! Rad, give 'em ...
— Tom Swift in Captivity • Victor Appleton
... Phillips and Carolyn were clinging to Cope, who had rushed out in undershirt and trousers, Peter had a short tussle on the porch with the intruder. He came in showing a scratch or two on his face, and he reported the pantry window ...
— Bertram Cope's Year • Henry Blake Fuller
... his visiting the site of ancient Memphis and the Tombs of Sakkara on the morrow. This was in the interests of his archaeological researches, and he pleaded special leave. One officer only came up to scratch, which was but a minor difficulty. Other means could be resorted to for ensuring comparative safety. Military police and some of the sergeants, especially if friends, ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... not had a scratch, and the men had come to think he had a charmed life. More than he knew he was beloved of them all. More than they knew their respect for him was deepening into a kind of awe. They felt he had a power with him that they understood ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... knock announced Miss Snubbleston. But where was her carriage? Why, it had been newly varnished, and they might scratch her panels with the hampers; and then she was afraid of her springs. So here was Miss Snubbleston without her carriage, for the convenience of which alone she had been invited, considered by the rest in exactly the same light ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... so pleased with the wit of the reply that he gave her permission to scratch his Prime ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... kind of poison. Mixes instantly with blood. Paralysis—convulsions—death. The least scratch and you're gone. Wicked head on this thing, too: looks like a piece of serrated bone. See all those little barbs along the edges? War ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... of their natural and civil rights which they claim as men." We are also ready enough to allow that "the smallest negative discouragements for uniformity's sake are so many persecutions." Because, it cannot be denied, that the scratch of a pin is in some degree a real wound, as much as a stab through the heart. In like manner, an incapacity by law for any man to be made a judge, a colonel, or justice of the peace, "merely on a point of conscience, ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IV: - Swift's Writings on Religion and the Church, Volume II • Jonathan Swift
... times talk freely to you all will be well. Gratify her natural sex curiosity in a natural way. See that immediate medical attention is given inflammations, excoriations, itchings and swellings of her genital organs. Such conditions will lead her to rub and scratch these parts—never to be touched—for relief. If, as a result of the sensations experienced, masturbation results, yours ...
— Sex - Avoided subjects Discussed in Plain English • Henry Stanton
... being crushed between the wall and the wheels, and the coachman could not, when going at such a pace, hold in his horses: Sand flung himself on his face, and the carriage passed over him without his receiving so much as a single scratch either from the horses or the wheels. From that moment many people regarded him as predestined, and said that the hand ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... must keep them clean. I must not scratch the enamel. I must not eat or drink anything very hot or very cold. I must not use them for scissors or nut-crackers. I must not burn them ...
— Object Lessons on the Human Body - A Transcript of Lessons Given in the Primary Department of School No. 49, New York City • Sarah F. Buckelew and Margaret W. Lewis
... show how their abundance, shape and arrangement contribute to the strength or weakness of the specimen. The last of these constituents, cementite, is a definite chemical compound, an iron carbide, Fe{3}C, containing 6.6 per cent. of carbon, so hard as to scratch glass, very brittle, and imparting these properties to ...
— Creative Chemistry - Descriptive of Recent Achievements in the Chemical Industries • Edwin E. Slosson
... over the wilderness upon which the estate of Beaulieu had made only a scratch. Pale moonlight fell over the drooping green forest and across the deep waters of the bayou. The something that had stirred resolved itself into the shadowy figure of a man who came out of the heart of the forest toward its edge. He walked with a singularly agile ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... breasts of adopting parents. I could place out a thousand dimpled little girls with yellow hair, but a good live boy from nine to thirteen is a drug on the market. There seems to be a general feeling that they track in dirt and scratch up mahogany furniture. ...
— Dear Enemy • Jean Webster
... commercial gentlemen, a private letter from Rio Janeiro, which had been lent him. After these delays, with full materials, I sprang to work—read, read, read; wonder, wonder, wonder; guess, guess, guess; scratch, scratch, scratch; and scribble, scribble, scribble, make the only transcript I can give of the operations which followed. At first, several of the other gentlemen in the room sat around me; but soon Mr. C., having settled the deaths and marriages, and the police and municipal reporters ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... Master furnished, and I went with the Sesesh soldiers from Van Buren to Texarkana and back a dozen times or more. I was in the War two years, right up to the day of freedom. We had a battle close to Texarkana and another big one near Van Buren, but I never left Arkansas and never got a scratch. ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... gave evidence that Bates was not exaggerating. Miss—or is it Madam?—Dorothy Perkins can scratch as well as look sweet, and a thorn had opened a small vein in Grant's cheek which ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... me the liberty of making use of another hand; for whether it be owing to age, or writing formerly whole nights by candle-light, or to both those causes, my sight is so far impaired, that I am not able, without much pain, to scratch out a letter. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. X. • Jonathan Swift
... beginning, I want you to scratch out a good two-thirds of these names. The others will go all right. The men I have cross marked are not all Webb men to-day, but they will throw their influence on Webb's side ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... Nor scratch had he, nor harm, nor dread, But the same couch beneath Lay a great wolf, all torn and ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various
... of her gaze, he thought her wide-flung gesture a deserved tribute to the view. The Prickly Pear Valley lay before them, checkered in vivid green or sage-drab as water had been given or withheld. The Scratch Gravel Hills jutted impertinently into the middle distance; while on the far western side of the plain the Jefferson Range rose, tier on tier, the distances shading the climbing foothills, until the Bear's Tooth, a prominent, ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... honor, or the like. Therefore why should I be angry with a man for loving himself better than me? And if any man should do wrong merely out of ill-nature, why, yet it is but like the thorn or brier, which prick and scratch, because ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume III (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland I • Francis W. Halsey
... sneered the girl. "But I'm a trained nurse, too, and I can take care of myself. It's only my left arm that's hurt, and a scratch at that. I don't need any ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... dull and somewhat ragged, and with the warm days came our decision to let her go outside. She was delighted to scratch in the loose earth around the rosebushes, and eagerly fed on the insects she found there. Her plumage soon took on its natural trimness and freshness. She did not show any inclination to leave, and with Rex by her or near her, we felt that she ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... I was saying, on we went at it for four long hours. In spite of the shot, and bullets, and splinters flying about on every side, I had not had a scratch. Several poor fellows had been struck down close to me. I cannot say that I thought that I should not be hit, because the truth is I did not think about the matter. I went on working at my gun like the rest, only just trying ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... himself killed out of the way during the war, I heard. I knew a man in the same regiment, and he told me Eliot didn't seem to know what the word fear meant—'Mad Coventry,' they called him. He took the most amazing risks, and came through without a scratch." ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... had a slight scratch on the inside of the index finger, which issued in severe inflammation extending over the back of the hand. I made a free incision in the part first affected, evacuated a little pus, and directed a poultice ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... pattern is the thing. But let me tell you how it is with me. (it flows again) All that I do or say—it is to what it comes from, A drop lifted from the sea. I want to lie upon the earth and know. But—scratch a little dirt and make a flower; Scratch a bit of brain—something like a poem. (covering her face) Stop doing that. Help me stop ...
— Plays • Susan Glaspell
... his work, brought new material to him. Amid the noise of the press-room, Erasmus, to the surprise of his publisher, sat and wrote, usually from memory, so busily occupied that, as he picturesquely expressed it, he had no time to scratch his ears. He was lord and master of the printing-office. A special corrector had been assigned to him; he made his textual changes in the last impression. Aldus also read the proofs. 'Why?' asked Erasmus. 'Because I am studying at the same time,' was the reply. Meanwhile Erasmus suffered from the ...
— Erasmus and the Age of Reformation • Johan Huizinga
... but there was an esprit de corps amongst the coachmen, and those who stood by did not like to see their brother chastised in such tremendous fashion. "I never saw such a fight before," said one. "Fight! why, I don't call it a fight at all, this chap here ha'n't got a scratch, whereas Tom is cut to pieces; it is all along of that guard of his; if Tom could have got within his guard he would have soon served the old chap out." "So he would," said another, "it was all owing to that guard. However, I think I see into it, and if I had ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... room is a saloon but not a drinking one, and it runs right through the up-stairs to the skylight. You have to pay for that. Think of charging for daylight! We went to a bird show and I saw a cockatoo sitting on a pole asleep. 'Scratch its back with your parasol, Gladys,' said mother, so I did, and it opened one eye when I stopped, and said, 'Encore,' I was put out to think even the birds didn't talk American, but when I said so, mother laughed but I don't ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... attentions to the stranger would not compromise her, and might lead to another delicate morsel, fawned against his legs, and purred as affectionately as if she had known him all her life and would not scratch him instantly if he ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... signals? He is going on well. It was only a scratch—Ah! Madame that's only my way of talking. He will be laid up for a fortnight. The doctor was there—he has some fever, but he ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... collectors of this plant know that to preserve the white fruiting surface in a perfect condition it must be handled very carefully. A touch or bruise, or contact with other objects mars the surface, since a bruise or a scratch results in a rapid change in color of the injured surface. Beautiful etchings can thus be made with a fine pointed instrument, the lines of color appearing as the instrument is drawn ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... came to Montreal with news that peace had been signed in Europe; and, at the end of May, Major Peter Schuyler, accompanied by Dellius, the minister of Albany, arrived with copies of the treaty in French and Latin. The scratch of a pen at Byswick had ended the conflict in America, so far at least as concerned the civilized combatants. It was not till July that Frontenac received the official announcement from Versailles, coupled with an address from the king to ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... Ruritania, and Champion Howbury Ming, and Su Eh of Newnham, and King Beetle of Minden, and Champion Hu Hi, and Mo Sho, and that rich red dog, Buddha of Burford. And having chosen these I might just as well scratch out their names and write in others, for every male face in this book is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, January 7, 1914 • Various
... through in no time. The last would certainly have been fatal, had not the assailant's servant come on to announce that "a gentleman wished to speak to him at his own residence." The lover (who is of course the rescuer) deems this a sufficient excuse to let off his antagonist without a scratch; Barbara rewards him with an embrace and a rose, just as another rival intrudes himself in the person of Mr. John Ketch. The altercation which now ensues is but slight; for Jack, instead of fighting, goes off to Fairlop-fair with another young lady, who seems ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... teeth come without paine" was this: "Take the head of a Hare boyled a walm or two or roahed; and with the braine thereof mingle Honey and butter and therewith anoynt the Childes gums as often as you please." Still further advice was to scratch the child's gums with an osprey bone, or to hang fawn's teeth or wolf's fangs around his ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... little, I called to Mr. Everett, who had gotten out of his car and was on the porch, to help Mr. Stafford put his wife in and take her to the hospital, and the frightened husband for once did as he was told. I hopped in with her and held her up and told Mr. Everett to drive like old Scratch, and he drove. It was all over so quickly ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... walked behind him. The commissaire was polished, important, fluent; he consulted himself, ruminated, talked to himself, and smacked his tongue; the garde was deferential, attentive, pensive and observing, and would utter an exclamation from time to time and scratch his nose. On the way, he inquired about the news, asked the commissaire's advice, and solicited his orders, while his superior questioned, meditated, and ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... sent off to Siberia, and died on the road. No amount of torture could make her betray her friends. They spoke of Antonoff, who was subjected to the thumbscrew, had red-hot wires thrust under his nails, and when his torturers gave him a little respite he would scratch on his plate ...
— Looking Seaward Again • Walter Runciman
... ears. It was a wonder to behold how their snouts grew shorter and shorter, and their mouths (which they seemed to be sorry for, because they could not gobble so expeditiously) smaller and smaller, and how one and another began to stand upon his hind legs, and scratch his nose with his fore trotters. At first the spectators hardly knew whether to call them hogs or men, but by and by came to the conclusion that they rather resembled the latter. Finally, there stood the twenty-two comrades of Ulysses, looking ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... bit beastly to go back to work to-day after our good time. However, I've all the more reason for going back to work now, haven't I, Mrs. Kerr? You'll keep me up to the scratch, won't you? Look! I'm carving this bird like an old family man already. They were all asking me, down there, how I liked my honeymoon, and where we went and what we saw. A lot of them began talking of the time they'd had. They all said it ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... quite enough. You have to be so careful, too, in saying whether you are obedient, faithful, or affectionate to your correspondent. If you end too warmly, by mistake, the whole letter has to be written again. It is not a thing you can scratch out or correct. It would ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... remind one of the days when he played "snap-the-whip" and happened to be the snapper himself. This is especially the case if one is sitting on the rear platform of the last car. We shot a canon by daylight, and marvelled at the glazed surface of the red rock with never so much as a scratch over it. On the one hand we nearly scraped the abrupt perpendicular wall that towered hundreds of feet above us; on the other, a swift, muddy torrent sprang at our stone-bedded sleepers as if to snatch them away; while ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... the Government had therefore no further need of our services, the Somerset East Mounted Rifles had become reduced to less than half their original strength: yet fortune so far favoured me that when at length the corps was disbanded I was one of the very few who escaped without so much as a scratch to show for my ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... spoke of selling your soul. Lor' bless you, Old Scratch isn't such a fool as to buy nowadays, whatever he may have ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... offices besides he was no little barrator, but sovereign. With him frequents Don Michael Zanche of Logodoro,[2] and in talking of Sardinia their tongues feel not weary. O me! see ye that other who is grinning: I would say more, but I fear lest he is making ready to scratch my itch." And the grand provost, turning to Farfarello, who was rolling his eyes as if to strike, said, "Get thee ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... there is a difference betwixt a wound in the flesh and a wound in the spirit; yea, a man's sin may be wounded, and yet his heart not broken: so was Pharaoh's, so was Saul's, so was Ahab's; but they had none of them the mercy of a broken heart. Therefore, I say, take heed; every scratch with a pin, every prick with a thorn, nay, every blow that God giveth with his Word upon the heart of sinners, doth not therefore break them. God gave Ahab such a blow that he made him stoop, fast, humble himself, gird himself with and ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... through the grass to be mown, And call all her children to follow; And scratch up the seeds that were sown, Then, lie in their places ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... cat will have something to scratch her,' she gasped out. 'Oh, I did so want to stay ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... killing him by the gentler way of poisoning his liquor? What's the difference between poisoning the enemy's drinking water and poisoning the enemy's air with the new-fangled French explosive—Turpinite? It's all hot air talking of the enemy's barbarism—scratch the veneer off any of us and we're back into the stone age. If I had a free leg or free wing, I'd drop arsenic in every reservoir in Germany. Why, we're even prevented dropping 'coughs' on those long strings of trains we see every day, crawling far beyond the enemy's line carrying ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... I lead the way. This dagger is poisoned,-a scratch and you are dead. This dog is of the true British breed; if she seizes you, red-hot iron will not loose her, till she hears the bone crack. If any one will change clothes with me, all I have is at your service. If not, the first that ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... her well. I've watched her grow up. I remember her mother's trouble because she would scratch the paint on the pew in front of her with the nails in her little boots. John Murchison sang in the choir in those days. He had a fine bass voice; he has it still. And Mrs Murchison had to keep the family in order by herself. It was sometimes as ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... safe. But the proud knight sprang from his horse, and pursued him. The beast had no shelter. It could not escape from him, and was caught by his hand, and, or it could wound him, he had bound it, that it could neither scratch nor bite. Then he tied it to his saddle, and, when he had mounted up himself, he brought it to ...
— The Fall of the Niebelungs • Unknown
... you have n't found it much easier to lose a friend than to win one, you 're luckier than most. If you asked me how he was to get her in love with him, I should have to scratch my head, but the other thing is as easy as unraveling ...
— Potts's Painless Cure - 1898 • Edward Bellamy
... to feel like the old badger in his hole who longs to have a scratch at the black muzzle which is so eager ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... prehistoric times is forcibly brought before us by the fact that the Alfoeld, or great plain of Hungary, comprises an area of 37,400 square miles! Here is found the Tiefland, or deep land, so wonderfully fertile that the cultivator need only scratch the soil to prepare ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... in the air, and come down inside of me!" cried a voice, and Uncle Wiggily saw a nice blackberry bush waving its long arms at him. "Jump down inside of me, where there are no thorns to scratch you," said the berry bush, "but if the wushky-woshky tries to come after you I'll scratch his six eyes out. I'll save you. ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Travels • Howard R. Garis
... said enthusiastically. "We have defeated a force twice as strong as ourselves, have killed or badly wounded eighteen of them, and you may be sure that of those that got away several must have been hit. Not one of us has a scratch." ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... to scratch the left ear with the left little finger, and then bite the lower lip, before shaking hands with anybody. I thought that I would go into an inn and try these signs on somebody (on the landlord if possible) and then ask his advice. An inn would be a good place, I thought, because the landlord ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... for charities. I am not sure, anyway, that I want 'to do for' people. I think no fine theories about social service and all that settlement stuff. I want to be a man, and have a man's right to start with the crowd at the scratch, not given a handicap. There are too many handicaps in ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... had been buried in church; no one cares about his grave! I put flowers on it, but the chickens run through the orchard and scratch them off; and one day the horrid black pig was grunting with his nose, and making a great hole in it! I wish he could have a tombstone; no one cares a bit, and they almost laugh if I say anything ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... into literary shape. The occupations and amusements of his life can be traced in his Short Studies. But he had not been reared in a literary atmosphere. He had been brought up among horses and dogs, with grooms and keepers, on the moors and the sea. He describes it himself as "the old wild scratch way, when the keeper was the rabbit-catcher, and sporting was enjoyed more for the adventure than for the bag." He never lost his love of sport, and he gave his own son the same training he had himself. Even in his last illness he liked the young man to go out shooting, and always ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... with a sigh I scratch it all out again, sunny and funny as it is. For it's all about a comical adventure I had with Palaiseau, the sniffer at the fete de St.-Cloud—all about a tame magpie, a gendarme, a blanchisseuse, and a volume of de ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... from the edge of the largest of the little fires, that indeed which had represented myself. These ashes he patted flat. Then he drew on them with the point of the pencil, tracing what seemed to me to be the rough image of a man, such as children scratch upon whitewashed walls. When he had finished he sat up and contemplated his handiwork with all the satisfaction of an artist. A breeze had risen from the sea and was blowing in little gusts, so that the fine ashes were disturbed, some of ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... the handsome, clear-cut features, above all, that slow and alluring smile, appealed to the husband of the wilful Pat rather as evidences of Oriental, half-effeminate devilry than as passports to decent society. Oxford had veneered him, but scratch the veneer and one found the sandal-wood of the East, perfumed, seductive, appealing, but something to be shunned ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... their progress, until Jack found himself climbing the steep upgrade, which the Peruvians had declared impassable before they had done so much work in clearing it. The course was uneven now, and considerable of the way it was little more than a scratch on the mountain side, with a sheer descent on one ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... pay an old grudge against the other man. Another fellow rushed in here gesticulating complaint, who was literally soaked in blood. We had had our experience and so sending for an interpreter, we soused this fellow into a bathtub. Every dab came off and there was not a scratch under." ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... moved from my side. We sometimes got out of our carriage, and then his sure instinct led him to a plant. Frequently the stalk was fallen off, and then all his endeavours to pull it out were in vain. In such cases, he began to scratch in the earth with his paws; but as that would also have proved ineffectual, I came to his assistance with my dagger, or my knife, and we honestly divided the refreshing root ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... had got Bobby safely into the hotel lobby. He was exasperated beyond measure that this very evening, of all, should have ended in his participation in a vulgar street brawl. So far he had succeeded in keeping Bobby from knowing that he was wounded, but the beastly scratch was bleeding furiously, and he had to keep his hand behind, him to prevent her from ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... of the bat may drop lazily into some unguarded spot. But, in the course of a season, these chances should about equalize one another, and, though fate may seem to be against a man for a half dozen or more games, he will be found finally to have benefited as much by "scratch" hits as he has ...
— Base-Ball - How to Become a Player • John M. Ward
... for thankfulness," said Arthur, returning from a hurried circuit of the verandas, "not one on our side has received a scratch. But I have ordered the men to remain at their ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... would not expect salary for the time he spent in the chase. He ended by saying tersely, "My reputation and standing of company here at stake," and signed his name in a hasty scrawl that made the operator scratch his ear reflectively with his pencil when he had counted the words down to the signature. After that, Luck gave every ounce of his energy and every bit of his brain to the outfitting of ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... And having one day to go out on some business, she called her son, and said to him, "My pretty son of your own mother, listen to what I say: keep your eye upon the hen, and if she should get up to scratch and pick, look sharp and drive her back to the nest; for otherwise the eggs will grow cold, and then we shall have neither ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... matters little, or not at all, but it is quite different in a celebrated beauty. If you scrawl all over the face with which the coarse finger of the potter has decorated a water-jar, the injury to the wretched pot is but small, but if you scratch, only with a needle's point, that gem with the portraits of Ptolemy and Arsinoe, which clasps Cleopatra's robe round her fair throat, the richest queen will grieve as though she had suffered ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... "'Tis but a scratch," answered the boy. "I am not quite a match for Bertram yet; but I will be anon. I must learn to be quicker in my defence. Thanks, gentle mother; belike it will be better for it to be bound up. It bleeds rather too fast for comfort, but thy ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... ever there was his equal," said Quirk to himself, at length; and starting off his chair, with his hands crossed behind him, he walked softly to and fro. "I know what he's driving at—though he thought I didn't! He'd let me scratch my hands in getting the blackberries, and then he'd come smiling in to eat 'em! But—share and share alike—share profit, share danger, master Gammon;—you may find that Caleb Quirk is a match for ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... often and brightly and you will find that school has become a most desirable and fascinating place, and that every night there will be a great satisfaction in climbing on a chair to scratch off from the calendar another day done before the ...
— What the Mother of a Deaf Child Ought to Know • John Dutton Wright
... without a book wherein I may scratch my valuable ideas, and therefore when we meet I will show you my present receptacle. I take great delight in writing, and write less incorrectly than I used to do. I have not time now to go on with this letter, and as I am anxious you should know when to expect us, ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... is darker than ever. Is this the way to the little court? Surely those are not the steps that lead down toward the bath? Oh yes! we are right; I smell the lemon-blossoms. Beware of the old wilding that bears them; it may catch your veil; it may scratch your fingers! Pray, take care: it has many thorns about it. And now, Leonora! you shall hear my last verses! Lean your ear a little toward me; for I must repeat them softly under this low archway, else others may hear them too. Ah! you press my hand once more. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... drill," he said, "learned it like a sulphur-crested cockatoo learns to gabble 'Pretty Polly scratch a poll'; why in the name of Moses you can't make your hands do what your tongue says 'as me beat. You, Donovan, that's Number Three, let me hear you repeat the drill ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... wagon passed us, its wheels and frame creaking, its great whip cracking like a rifle, its men shrieking at the imperturbable team of eighteen oxen. It would travel until the oxen wanted to graze, or sleep, or scratch an ear, or meditate on why is a Kikuyu. Thereupon they would be outspanned and allowed to do it, whatever it was, until they were ready to go on again. Then they would go on. These sequences might take place at any time of the day or night, and for greater or lesser intervals ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... only in the last year or two that he could be induced voluntarily to enter a house; he seemed, like Mowgli, to have a suspicion of houses. And if he did come in he had no respect for the house at all. When first I had him he would dig and scratch out of a dog-house on the coldest night, if he could, and lay himself down comfortably on the snow. Cold meant little to him. Fifty, sixty, seventy below zero, all night long at such temperatures he would sleep quite contentedly. The only difference I ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... Chintz Imp. "Do you think I am as old as your great-aunt, without knowing much more than you do! Bring me the knife. I'm going to swarm up the chimney and scratch away the mortar. Leave it entirely to me, and Santa Klaus will be down here in an ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... fiend?" he cried, savagely, as he received a scratch on the neck, which he knew could have been his finish if the ...
— Young Wild West at "Forbidden Pass" - and, How Arietta Paid the Toll • An Old Scout
... it to make a fuss about a scratch like that?" returned he, wielding knife and fork as best he could, now one, now the other ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... on the floor, knocked down off the table by the cruel cat. He had not got at birdie—birdie lay in one corner, quite still as if dead, and yet when Lucy with trembling fingers unfastened the cage door and tenderly lifted out his little occupant, she could see no injury, not the slightest scratch. ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... he invested," Link said. "Wasn't a scratch of a pen to show that he invested anything while he was in the bank. Guess ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... call for explanation. The occasion was when, returning from a year's "exile in a tub," a converted collier that "sailed like a hay-stack," he fitted out the Pallas at Portsmouth and could obtain no volunteers. Setting his gangs to work, he got together a scratch crew of the wretchedest description; yet so marvellous were the personality and disciplinary ability of the man, that with only this unpromising material ready to his hand he intercepted the Spanish trade off Cape Finisterre and captured four successive prizes ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... ex-Cantonists still remember with horror the steam-bath they were compelled to take. "The chamber of hell," they called the bath. At first blush, it would really seem to have been an awful thing. They would pick out all the Cantonists that had so much as a scratch on their bodies or the smallest sign of an eruption, paint the wounds with tar, and put the boys, stripped, on the highest shelf in the steam-bath. And below was a row of attendants armed with birch-rods. The kettle was boiling fiercely, ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... spouse, Has neither ill nor scratch her fears to rouse. Jane, cried the first, is ev'ry way complete; No freckles on the skin: as balm she's sweet: Antoinetta is, her spouse replied, Ambrosia ev'ry way: no fault ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... thistles and docks. I'll go into your high chambers, where you've been figur- ing yourself stretching out your neck for the kisses of a queen of women; and I'll say it's here there'll be deer stirring and goats scratch- ing, and sheep waking and coughing when there is a great wind from the north. (Shak- ing herself loose. Conchubor makes a sign to Soldiers.) I'm going, surely. In a short space I'll be sitting up with many listening to the flames crackling, and the beams breaking, and I looking on ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... struck down with a mace, but the leech says that the wound on your head is of no great consequence, and that you fainted rather from loss of blood from other gashes than from the blow on the head. I have got off with a scratch on the shoulder. Hal Carter, who fought like a tiger over your body, has come off worst, having fully half a dozen wounds, but it was not before he had killed at least twice as many of his assailants with that ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... could see at a moment all that lying could do against her. "But he tried to kiss me," she would have had to say. Then she could see how, with a shrug of his shoulders, her enemy would have ruined her. From such a contest a man like Moss comes forth without even a scratch that can injure him. But Rachel felt that she would have been utterly annihilated. She must tell someone, but that someone must be he whom she intended ...
— The Landleaguers • Anthony Trollope
... to hide in a hole he began to scratch in the sand; but on second thoughts he thrust the flat box, with its rattling contents, under his jersey, and caught up the lanthorn, which now ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... right," he answered casually. "If I don't scratch myself, I am safe enough. I could swallow the stuff and it wouldn't hurt me—unless I had an abrasion of the lips ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... eyes in triumph. "Read our editorial this week on President Cleveland and the Money Power?" he asked. The Captain nodded. "Mr. Left got it without the scratch of a 't' or the dot of an 'i' from Samuel J. Tilden." He opened his eyes to catch the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... scratched off the list.' Feeling exceedingly hurt at such treatment, at a moment when I expected encouragement for having maintained the honour of my country while acting as a naval officer should have done, I wrote to him, 'You may scratch and be d——d.' This letter was, I think, very unfairly quoted against me some time afterwards in the House of Commons. However, my name was erased from the list of naval officers, and was not replaced there for several ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... gloom of the week, Sunday dawned gloriously fine. There was to be a polo match on Monday in the park, which contained an excellent ground—Patrick and his Oxford friends against a scratch team. The neighborhood would watch them with interest. But the Sunday was for rest and peace, so all the morning the company played croquet, or lay about in hammocks, and more than half of them again began bridge ...
— Beyond The Rocks - A Love Story • Elinor Glyn
... will sometimes, you know,—I've saw Wes Cotterl jest roll up his shirt-sleeves and bend down a' apple tree limb 'at wuz jest kivvered with the pesky things, and scrape 'em back into the hive with his naked hands, by the quart and gallon, and never git a scratch! You couldn't hire a bee to sting Wes Cotterl! But lazy?—I think that man had railly ort to 'a' been a' Injun! He wuz the fust and on'y man 'at ever I laid eyes on 'at wuz too lazy to drap a checker-man to p'int out the right road fer a feller 'at ast him onc't the way to Burke's ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... Johnny Russell! That latest despatch You have sent to Turin is exactly the thing; And again, my dear John, you come up to the scratch With a pluck that does credit to you ...
— Lord John Russell • Stuart J. Reid
... ketches him it's like as if the devil got a-hold of him, as I said in the first place. I lost my wife here two-three years along back, and that little girl you see him tormentin', she's a regular little mother to her brother; and whenever Jeff Durgin sees her with him, seems as if the Old Scratch got into him. Well, I'm glad I didn't come across him that day. How you gittin' along with Lion's Head? Sets quiet enough for you?" Whitwell rose from the stump and brushed the clinging chips from his thighs. "Folks trouble you ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... beak up and down her cheek. He tolerated black Billy, who fed him, and was respectful to Mr. Linton; but he worshipped Mrs. Brown, the cook, and her appearance at the kitchen door, which he could see from his stand, caused an instant outbreak of cheers and chatter, varied by touching appeals to "scratch Cocky." His chief foe was Mrs. Brown's big yellow cat, who not only dared to share the adored one's affections, but was openly aggressive at times, and loved to ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... my finger because of blood poisoning. I had a scratch on my finger. Pulled a hangnail out of it. I went around a lady who had a high fever and she asked me to sponge her off and I did it. I got the finger in the water that I sponged with and it got blood poisoned. I like ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... wrestled in a stifling stillness, while hell stood umpire at the game. No sound of trumpet, no warlike cry, no strains of martial music were there to thrill the nerves and taunt men on to glory. We fought to the scrape and scratch of shuffling feet, the labored gasp, the rattle in the throat, while echo hushed ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... on the other hand, poultry seems to swarm everywhere. I never saw such long-necked and long-legged cocks and hens in my life as I see here; but these feathered giraffes appear to thrive remarkably well, and scratch and cackle around every Malabar hut. I have not seen a sheep or a goat since I arrived, nor a cow or bullock grazing. The milch cows are all stall-fed. The bullocks go straight from shipboard to the butcher, and the horses are never turned out. This ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... point of his third spear, which he forced into his throat. Then, at one leap, springing across his body, he cut open his throat with his dagger. In this contest, the Moor's skill was such, that he received only a slight scratch on the thigh. ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth
... of lime in the food is often obvious when children show a tendency to eat chalk, and even to scratch walls in order to eat the lime ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... won't scratch our poor little fevery cheeks," and Mr. Fayre so deftly slipped his silk clad arm under Dolly's head, that she rested in his strong clasp with a feeling of security ...
— Two Little Women • Carolyn Wells
... my ministry I have published about 3,200 of these articles. Many of them have been gathered into books, many of them translated into Swedish, Spanish, Dutch, and other foreign tongues. They have made the scratch of a very humble pen audible to Christendom. The consecrated pen may be more powerful than the consecrated tongue. I devoutly thank God for having condescended to use my humble pen to the spread of his Gospel; and I purpose with His help to spend much of the ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... for do 'e hold back? Ban't anything worth tryin' for your awn son? I'd scratch the stone out wi' my raw, bleedin' finger-bones if I was a man. Do 'e want to send me mad? Do 'e want to make me hate the sight of 'e? Go—go for love of your mother, if ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... mind your own business and let me alone," sobbed the foolish child, hysterically. "I can fight my own battles, I'll tear their hair out! I'll scratch ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... the way she had gone and wondering at the adventure; and he pondered her words and held debate with himself whether he should take the road she bade him. And he said within himself: "Hitherto have I been safe and have got no scratch of a weapon upon me, and this is a place by seeming for all adventures; and little way moreover shall I make in the night if I must needs go to Hampton under Scaur, where dwell those peaceable people; and ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... my wound as soon as we got on board. It was not much more than a scratch, though it made my neck so stiff for a couple of days that I could hardly turn it. I had it bound up, and just as the boat was approaching the shoal place, Cornwood asked me what ailed my neck. It was clear enough that he did not know ...
— Down South - or, Yacht Adventure in Florida • Oliver Optic
... "No; only a scratch on the wrist," he answered shortly, and the next instant he had swung himself over the wall ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... that there is danger," I answered; "but I am not an easy person to kill. I have had narrow escapes before, and escaped without a scratch." ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... being very neer as hard as a Flint; and in some places of it also resembling the grain of a Flint: and, like it, it would very readily cut Glass, and would not without difficulty, especially in some parts of it, be scratch'd by a black hard Flint: It would also as readily strike fire against a Steel, or against a Flint, as ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... on the occupations and amusements of the ghosts came very opportunely to my aid, and immediately I put into execution what now appeared my only hope of its safety. Just as a corner of the paper was entering the flame I gave a pretty loud scratch, at the same time anxiously observing the effect it might produce. I was overjoyed to find the enemy intimidated at least by the first fire. Another volley, and another succeeded, until even the sceptical Gilbert was dismayed. My uncle seemed riveted to the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... the choir has very strangely remained, untouched, immaculate, in the midst of the disorder, with not even the slightest scratch on ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... Casalverde, pointing to a tiny scratch upon Del Ferice's neck, from which a single drop of blood ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... a dairymaid at a Farmer's near this place, was infected with the Cow Pox from her master's cows in May, 1796. She received the infection on a part of the hand which had been previously in a slight degree injured by a scratch from a thorn. A large pustulous sore and the usual symptoms accompanying the disease were produced in consequence. The pustule was so expressive of the true character of the Cow Pox, as it commonly appears upon the hand, that I have given a representation of it in the annexed plate. The ...
— An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae • Edward Jenner
... Simpson was a character. He was tall and slim, certainly not less than fifty years of age, but with an evident desire to appear much younger. His face was cleanly shaven, and when he removed his hat to scratch his head I saw that ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... it?" said Richard. "Away, it cannot be. There is not even a scratch on thy face. It is ill jesting with a King—yet I will forgive thee ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... and various kinds of grass. This involved getting off my mule many times a day. Whenever I put my feet on the ground or touched a blade of grass I well knew what was in store for me. At once I became literally covered with carrapatinhos, and set to scratch myself so violently that nothing short of digging my nails into my skin seemed to relieve the irritation—and that, mind you, only momentarily. One had to bear it, and wait until one got to camp in the ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... not know what time it was when he awoke. He was aware only of a suffocating sensation as if some ghostly aura were within the room, filling it, pressing down upon him. A wailing of agony and despair seemed to scratch at his senses although he was certain there was no audible sound. And a depression clutched at his soul as if death itself had suddenly walked unseen through the ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... banker resumed his perusal of the document, his eye running rapidly over the pages, pausing once in a while to scratch out a word or to make a note on the margin. In the concentration of the man on the task before him the rector read a design, an implication that the affairs of the Church were of a minor importance: sensed, indeed, the new ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... third. Dan would have been annoyed if the monkeys had not recognised Joseph, for it seemed to him quite natural that all things should love Joseph. You see, he continued, the parrots are screaming and dancing on their perches, waiting for you to scratch their polls. Joseph complied, and then Dan wearied of the monkeys, which were absorbing Joseph's attention, and drove them away. You haven't told me that you're glad to be back in Galilee in front of that beautiful lake. Jerusalem has its temple but God made the lake himself. But you don't seem ...
— The Brook Kerith - A Syrian story • George Moore
... growled an awful voice, and Demi cried, "that's the Kitty-mouse! she must have every one, quick, or she will scratch us." ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... chose by the paddock. That's the place. Plenty of mud for them to scratch about in, and they can go into the field when they feel like it, and pick up worms, or whatever they feed on. We must rig them up some sort of shanty, I suppose, this morning. We'll go and tell 'em to send up some wire-netting and ...
— Love Among the Chickens • P. G. Wodehouse
... turned sick within me. On the boy's cheek was a faint red scratch, just as might have been caused by a slight, very slight ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... course of the recent war and his intelligent appreciation of the finer points of Marshal FOCH'S strategy were most pleasing to observe. He would greet the news of our victorious onsweep with exultant crows, while at the announcement of any temporary set-back he would mutter gloomily and go and scratch under the shrubbery. On Armistice day he quite let himself go, cackling and mafficking round the yard in a manner almost absurd. But who did not unbend a little on ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various
... all helpmate, practical comrade; she had fed herself with this delusion during the years of loneliness. She had adopted the veneer, convinced herself that it was true, but she knew now that it was false. It had taken a Gorgeous Girl to scratch beneath the veneer in true feminine fashion. Mary did wish to be dependent, helpless—to have Gorgeous Girl propensities. The cheap phrases of the shopwomen kept interrupting her attempts to think of practical detail. "There ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... hurt you?" she asked with real concern. It ran into her mind that the conventional hero of romance makes his wound a scratch before his lady. If she expected that from ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... said Lizzie: 'But one waits At home alone for me: So without further parleying, If you will not sell me any Of your fruits though much and many, Give me back my silver penny I tossed you for a fee.'— They began to scratch their pates, 390 No longer wagging, purring, But visibly demurring, Grunting and snarling. One called her proud, Cross-grained, uncivil; Their tones waxed loud, Their looks were evil. Lashing their tails They trod and hustled her, Elbowed and jostled her, 400 Clawed with their ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... knife through my jacket, sir," I said, "but it's only a scratch on the skin;" and fortunately that's what it proved to be, for we had no room ...
— Begumbagh - A Tale of the Indian Mutiny • George Manville Fenn
... twenty-five feet below, with such velocity that it seemed to me I never would stop. When I came to the surface again, being a fair swimmer, and not having lost my presence of mind, I swam around until a bucket was let down for me, and I was drawn up without a scratch or injury. I do not believe there was a man on board who sympathized with me in the least when they found me uninjured. I rather enjoyed the joke myself. The captain of the Suviah died of his disease a few months later, and I believe before the mutineers were tried. I hope ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... and was strengthened with baggage and wagons. The Americans, with their fowling-pieces, defended this place for five hours against two hundred regular French troops, six hundred Canadians, and as many Indians. Johnson received a scratch early in the engagement, and made it an excuse to retire; and Lyman assumed direction. Dieskau bravely led the French regulars, nearly all of whom were killed; he was four times wounded; the Canadians were ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... of the land prepares it for the cleaning process which is performed by what are termed "ladders"; these ladders are made of a few bamboos fixed cross-wise and provided with projecting pins to scratch or open the soil, and to collect the roots of the previous crop; they are the equivalent of our harrows, and may be used repeatedly during the winter and spring seasons so that a fine tilth may ...
— The Jute Industry: From Seed to Finished Cloth • T. Woodhouse and P. Kilgour
... she passed her hand over his neck she was startled to perceive that her caress had left behind it a trace of blood. One could not touch the boy's skin without the red dew exuding from it; the tissues had become so lax through extreme degeneration that the slightest scratch brought on a hemorrhage. The doctor became at once uneasy, and asked him if he still bled at the nose as frequently as formerly. Charles hardly knew what to answer; first saying no, then, recollecting himself, he said that he had ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... flashing, And the yard-gate kick to pieces, Pull a shutter from the window, Then the house thou soon canst enter, Rush into the room like whirlwind, Plant thy foot within it firmly, And thy heel where space is narrow, 330 Push the men into the corner, And the women to the doorposts, Scratch the eyes from out the masters, Smash the heads of all the women, Curve thou then to hooks thy fingers, Twist thou then their ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... to work to dress Dowling's ear, and a wound which Don Luis had received in his hand. The latter was merely a scratch, and the only danger likely to arise from it was in the event of the arrow by which it was inflicted having been poisoned. But Don Luis felt so confident that this was not the practice among the tribes about here, that he would ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks
... better prepared for his work than they suspected. They plainly heard him scratch a match on the wall of the room, and the next moment the faintest possible glow showed through the gloom, above the open door at the head of the ladder. The redskin was taking the only effectual means at his command to learn ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... up for me. Oh, what does it matter! We're all filthy in some things. I think of myself as so superior, but I do eat and digest, I do wash my dirty paws and scratch. I'm not a cool slim goddess on a column. There aren't any! He gave it up for me. He stands by me, believing that every one loves me. He's the Rock of Ages—in a storm of meanness that's driving me mad . . . it will ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... every subject. When the whole surface of the table was covered with my lucubrations, I perused and re-perused them, meditated on what I had already meditated, and, at length, resolved (however unwillingly) to scratch out all I had done with the glass, in order to have a clean superficies upon ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... was that a week or so after her husband's death, Mrs. Manning found one of Jim's scratch pads on the table in his room, with a carefully printed title ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... had cut myself, while I was skinning a dog which had been poisoned. I was a student then, and knew the dangers of wounds from a poisoned knife; and, by the way, we must take care of the wounds from poisoned arrows. Well, when I washed my hand there wasn't a scratch. You couldn't help it, Jack. Any man might be seized like that after seeing Death make two darts at him and ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... to light the gas and fight it out. You have no doubt seen a man scratch a match on the leg of his pantaloons. Perhaps you have also seen an absent-minded man undertake to do so, forgetting that his pantaloons were hanging on a chair at the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... schemes, he is told, "In Gedanken foert de Bur ok in't Kutsch." "In thought the peasant, too, drives in a coach." A man who boasts is asked, "Pracher! haest ok Lues, oder schuppst di man so?" "Braggart! have you really lice, or do you only scratch yourself ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller
... warm sea-scented beach; Three fields to cross till a farm appears; A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch And blue spurt of a lighted match, 10 And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears, Than the two hearts beating each ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... and for several diseases of the nervous system. In the peculiarly male disease known as haemophilia the blood refuses to clot when shed, and there is nothing to prevent great loss from even a superficial scratch. In its general trend the inheritance of haemophilia is not unlike that of horns among sheep, and it is possible that we are here again dealing with a character which is dominant in one sex and recessive in the ...
— Mendelism - Third Edition • Reginald Crundall Punnett
... opened with a little click, and there lay before him two half-sovereigns and some silver. He was a wary fellow, for he scrutinised these all over most carefully to see if they were marked, and finding no mark of any kind on them—for it almost required a microscope to see the tiny scratch between the w.w. on the smooth edge of the neck—he took out his purse, and was proceeding to drop them into it, when a heavy hand was laid upon his shoulder, and Kenrick and Wilton—the detected thief—stood face to face. The purse ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... for what I had done for him in the war. I did not recognize him and asked him what I had done for him, and he told me he was the man who had been at that service in Camblain l'Abbe and had been through all the fighting ever since and had come out without a scratch. I met similar instances in which the human will, by the help of God, was able to master itself and come out victorious. Once at Bracquemont a man came to my billet and asked me to get him taken out of his battalion, and sent to some work behind the lines. He ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... is observ'd to have the faculty of blowing hot and cold thus, I believe he may keep his breath either to cool his Porridge, or to warm his fingers, and be much better employ'd, than by using it to make any Proselytes to his Doctrine; and so much for this Head. Now let us try if we can scratch another, and find it ...
— Essays on the Stage • Thomas D'Urfey and Bossuet
... it fell harmless to the ground, and there was not even a scratch on the wicked lord's skin, and for a moment Buccleuch ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... pacified. She thrust out her ugly claws and tried to scratch her former partner. The dog kept out of her way as much as possible, but she quarrelled with him at every opportunity, and at last he determined to tolerate ...
— Jewish Fairy Tales and Legends • Gertrude Landa
... said the Colonel, "youth is youth—There is not any use in laying down the law for young people or making plans for their marriages. Leave it in the hands of Providence. The most carefully arranged marriages often turn out the worst, and a scratch match has often as not turned out happily. Anyhow, you will stay here till news comes ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... must know, we marched up the g'yully that runs from the river; and bang went the savages' g'-yuns, and smash went their hatchets; and it came to close quarters, a regular rough-and-tumble, hard scratch! And so I war a-head of the Major, and the Major war behind, and the fight had made him as vicious as a wild cat, and he war hungry for a shot; and so says he to me, for I war right afore him, 'Git out of my way, you damned big rascal, till I git a crack at 'em!' And so I ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... like the old wife, when her ale would not come, Thrust a firebrand in the grout, and scratch'd her bum. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... with their queer lives, monotonous scratching-up of mussels and cockles, a never-failing trade, their terms of praise—"the biggest scrat," for instance, "in all the island," being the form of commendation for the woman who can with her rake at the end of a long pole scratch up most shellfish in a given time; the low, fertile green pastures, the creamy cheese and the eight yearly cheese-fairs. The city itself is the most foreign-looking in all England, and the inhabitants have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... Josh," said Raffles, affecting to scratch his head and wrinkle his brows upward as if he were nonplussed. "I'm very fond of you; by Jove, I am! There's nothing I like better than plaguing you—you're so like your mother, and I must do without it. But the brandy ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... BOSWELL. 'There is another writer, at present of gigantic fame in these days of little men, who has pretended to scratch out a life of Swift, but so miserably executed as only to reflect back on himself that disgrace which he meant to throw upon the character of the Dean.' The Life of Doctor Swift, Swift's Works, ed. 1803, ii. 200. There is a passage in the Lives of the ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... first anniversary of our wedding day," he said to Mme. Vauquer, as he put away a little silver posset dish, with two turtle-doves billing on the cover. "Poor dear! she spent on it all the money she had saved before we were married. Do you know, I would sooner scratch the earth with my nails for a living, madame, than part with that. But I shall be able to take my coffee out of it every morning for the rest of my days, thank the Lord! I am not to be pitied. There's not much fear of my starving for some ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... is merely a scratch of my pencil. Your la'ship's sensible—just to give you an idea of the shape, the form of the thing. You fill up your angles here with encoinieres—round your walls with the Turkish tent drapery—a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... minutes passed, then, with a final scratch and splutter Joseph flung down his pen. With the sandbox tilted in the air, like a dicer about to make his throw, he looked at ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... kin drink," rejoined his friend, with a remaining trace of judgment. "Go take stand whar we marked the scratch. Chardon, damn ye, carry the cup down an' set hit on his head, an' ef ye spill a drop I'll drill ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... ter her? I'll tell you what hit'd do: Hit would smash an' grind an' tear an' hammer that there fine, straight body of hers 'til hit was all broken an' twisted an' crooked a heap worse'n what I be,—that's what hit would do; an' hit would scratch an' cut an' beat up that pretty face an' mess up her pretty hair an' choke her an' smother her 'til she was all blue-black an' muddy, an' her eyes was red an' starin', an' she was nothin' but just an ugly lump of dirt; ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... Walter with a little laugh. "A mere scratch. I scratched it on a bit of wood, a lid that didn't ...
— The Bittermeads Mystery • E. R. Punshon
... bad-luck signs, you say? Well, lemme see," The old man paused to reflect and scratch his head. "Well, de bes' luck sign is to git in wid de Lawd. Keep wid Him; He'll keep you sweet in yo' soul. God's goin' to come down de mid-air. I seen dat one time. Jesus come to me—you never ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... question. I can't make this out unless I know you're going to come up to the scratch." He made a show of writing, and talked at the same time. "I, G. B. Stiles, detective, in the employ of Peter Craigmile, of the town of Leauvite, for the capture of the murderer of his son, Peter Craigmile, Jr., do hereby promise one Nels Nelson, Swede,—in the employ of Mr Decker, hotel ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... answered by the hard-wrung exclamation of agony. Barton looked at the palings of the hoarding: they were a couple of feet higher than his head. Then he sprung up, caught the top at a place where the rusty-pointed nails were few and broken, and next moment, with torn coat and a scratch on his arm, he ...
— The Mark Of Cain • Andrew Lang
... in twenty-four hours unless your wife drives you to work, but how much rest do you give me? Once in ten years, and then your cattle trample upon me. So I am to be content with being harrowed? Just try giving no hay or litter to your cows, only scratch them and see whether they will give you milk. They will get ill, the slaughterer will have to be sent for, and even the Jew will give you nothing ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... opinion that there was a change. "She was always uncertain, you know, and would scratch like a cat if you ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... retired into the Council Chamber, and left us to preside at the election, attended by the Common Sergeant and other officers. The method of voting is, by each alderman going up to the recorder and town clerk, who sit at a separate part of the room, and telling the person he would choose, a scratch is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 20. No. 568 - 29 Sept 1832 • Various
... to cross roads it is the custom of the leader to "mark" all side paths and wrong turnings by making a scratch across them with his spear, or by breaking a branch and laying it across: in this way those who follow are able to avoid ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... father, having an hour's leisure, offered to walk with her. The breeze was fresh and quite steady, filtering itself through the denuded mass of twigs without swaying them, but making the point of each ivy-leaf on the trunks scratch its underlying neighbor restlessly. Grace's lips sucked in this native air of hers like milk. They soon reached a place where the wood ran down into a corner, and went outside it towards comparatively open ground. Having looked round about, they were intending to re-enter ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... since you see me without bruise or scratch. Only Yorick and I got tangled up with a herd of buffaloes on the Kajiar Road. In his fright, the little fool slipped half over the khud, and if a knight-errant had not fallen from heaven, in the nick of time, we should both be lying somewhere in the valley by now, 'spoiling ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... first, there is a slight feeling of wounded self-love, but as I have for some time concluded that the world contains an infinity of beings endowed with charms superior to mine, it only lasts a moment, and if the scratch bleed a little, I consider myself indemnified by a tirade against woman's bad taste. Since you do not possess this philosophy, Mlle. de Chateaudun must be found, at any cost; you know my principles: I ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... isn't true. Anyhow: I want every one of those cars checked for any oddity, no matter how small. If there's an inch-long scratch on one fender, I want to know about it. If you've got to take the cars ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... curiosity, to cross the stream in order to visit the royal tombs, he awaited them on his own ground, certain of fleecing them to some extent. He looked upon the whole of this funereal realm as his own property, and treated with scant courtesy the little subaltern jackals who ventured to scratch ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... had expected to see England and the English as their rulers; but like the well-known saying, "Scratch a Russian and you discover the Tartar," they might have "scratched an Englishman and have found the Turk," in the actual regime that we were bound to maintain according to the conditions ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the strangely beautiful creature; it neither attempted to bite nor scratch, but crouched in my arms, trembling and ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... to make me a book like that little one up on the shelf, And you'll call her "Naomi," because it's a name that she just gave herself; For she'd scratch at my door in the morning, and whenever I'd call out, "Who's there?" She would answer, "Naomi! Naomi!" like a Christian, I ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... fitting into a small handle. The point of the blade had been dipped in poison, and was carefully wrapped in paper. The instrument was used by sticking it into somebody in a crowd, and allowing it to remain. Death was pretty certain from a very slight scratch of this weapon. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... little Mackerel Kit Is not like other cats a bit; She cannot mew or scratch or purr, She has no whiskers and no fur. Yet, like all cats, her dearest wish Is just to be filled up with fish; But (and this isn't so feline) She always takes them steeped ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... run—fortunately for him a very fast and long one—with imperturbable pluck and with no further misadventure. "Nasty cut that," I said to him as we trained back together, "you'd better get it properly looked to in town." "Pooh," said JOHNNIE, "it's a mere scratch. Did you see the brute take me into the tree? By Jove, it must have been a comic sight!" and with that he set off again on another ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, VOL. 103, November 26, 1892 • Various
... his men from mine, cursed them individually and collectively as everything he could think of, and only stopped to scratch his big bushy head to figure out some new condemnations. While doing this he saw me coming from the port side, and forthwith he told me to take charge of the ship, as he was dead beat out and would have to soak his head again before coming ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... them all round, the only difference that I found between old and young women is that the older ones are less selfish, and more complaisant, and less inclined to resent one's being unable to attain to the height of their desire, for from time to time I have been unable to "come up to the scratch" after a heavy night's labor, or when I was afraid of being caught in the act of coition, a fear which, in my experience, acts as a stimulus to desire in women, unlike its action in men. Of all the women with whom I have ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... been growing for thousands of years in the Amazon jungle with their wealth securely sealed up in their bark, the peck of a bird, the boring of a beetle, or the scratch of a climbing animal being the only draft upon their treasure. The trees around the mouth of the river supplied whatever was needed for the little manufacturing that was at first done. But the discovery that made a universal ...
— The Romance of Rubber • United States Rubber Company
... A loud scratch sounded sharply in the room. A match spurted into flame, and above the match there sprang into view, framed in the blackness of the room, a wild and menacing dark face. The eyes glittered at her, and suddenly a hand was raised as if to strike. And at the gesture Violet Oliver ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... Chantry thought nothing of it, and there was no wound but a scratch. He looked on me as his pupil. He ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Tristram, he's a fox; To catch him they must have a good deep pit Or else he'll scratch them so that all ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... Prince Redmond volunteered to go back to a woodman's hut which they had passed on their way, and borrow one. He soon returned with a large sharp axe, and set to work to cut down the tree. He struck with all his might, but the axe made no impression on it, beyond a mere scratch on ...
— The Enchanted Island • Fannie Louise Apjohn
... made in an evening without many of us being much the wiser. The reason for this is the reason why the playing of Lamoureux on his trained orchestra, for all its accuracy, was not better than, nor in many respects so good as, the playing of Richter and Mottl on the scratch orchestras which their agents engaged for them. Probably few uninformed laymen have any notion of the extent to which mere noise is responsible for the total effect of a Wagner piece or a Beethoven symphony—not the noise of big drum, cymbals and so on; but ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... separately, and simply because he cannot help it; being so framed that when that particular running thing called a mouse appears in his field of vision he must pursue; that when that particular barking and obstreperous thing called a dog appears there he must retire, if at a distance, and scratch if close by; that he must withdraw his feet from water, and ...
— Human Traits and their Social Significance • Irwin Edman
... hours at a time, on the same spot, after the manner of the Scolia-wasp he spies the coming of the females out of the ground. If our watch be patient and persevering, we shall see the mother, after trotting about for a bit, stop somewhere and begin to scratch and dig, finally laying bare a subterranean gallery, of which there was nothing to betray the entrance; but she can discern what is invisible to us. She penetrates into the abode, remains there for a while and at ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... that marvellous animal had succeeded in snatching five minutes' repose, which seemed to be amply sufficient to recruit its energies, for it began instantly to play—in other words to worry and scratch the boy's hand—with ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... Sympathy's a nice, soft little paw that pats him to sleep. What he needs is a good sharp scratch that will make him get ...
— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter
... half-holiday, Ethel and Millicent decided that they would try to collect a scratch team for some hockey ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... they stood on the porch Artie opened on them and another fellow was slightly wounded. Then came half a dozen gun and pistol reports, and Deck felt himself hit across the left side of the neck. The bullet left nothing more than an ugly scratch, from which the ...
— An Undivided Union • Oliver Optic
... found her excited, nervous, speaking hoarsely, working her delicate fingers as if she wanted to scratch the air. They were terrible days that stirred up the whole house. Marie ran from room to room with her silent step, pursued by the ringing of the bells; the count slipped out of doors, like a frightened ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... to the mucous membrane of the rectum frequently cause inflammation, and hard pieces of bone, wood, seeds, imbedded in the feces, scratch, cut and bruise the tissues before and during the act of defecation. Cold boards, stones, earth and other substances used as seats may produce inflammation of the rectum. There are many and various causes which may be ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison
... need of a publisher to create romance? Is it not in yourself? Do not imagine that genius requires for its enjoyment the scratch of the pen and the types of the printer. Do not suppose that the poet, the romancier, is most poetic, most romantic, when he is striving, struggling, labouring, to check the rush of his ideas, and materialize the images which visit him as ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... shook him vigorously. "Shut up," he said, roughly, partly to hide his own feelings, "Charley's comin' back without a scratch. The good Lord, I reckon, don't make lads as true and white as he to be killed off by a pack of jail vermin. Come to the wall as he told us to. Maybe we'll get a shot at those murderers before the day is done. Come along an' stop that blubberin'," and he grabbed the soft-hearted ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... terrible to die here—alone!" he murmured, recovering from one of his silent fits. "Oh that mother were here now! dear, dishonoured, but still beloved mother! Would that I had a pen to scratch a few words before—stay, I have ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... no doubt about its tameness. It suffered Ruby, who showed no fear of it whatever, to stroke it on its plated beak, and even to scratch it behind its bristly ears, ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... would have succeeded had it not been for the record Captain Dan coveted. That was the strangest feature in all my wonderful Clemente experience—to see that superb swordfish looped in a noose of my long leader. He was without a scratch. It may serve to give some faint idea of the bewildering possibilities in the pursuit of this royal purple game ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... occasional privilege of criticising, and a principal share in consuming, the good things which the common entertainment afforded. We have only to sum up this brief account of the learned Doctor, by informing the reader that he was a tall, lean, beetle-browed man, with an ill-made black scratch-wig, that stared out on either side from his lantern jaws. He resided nine months out of the twelve at St. Ronan's, and was supposed to make an indifferent good thing of it,—especially as he played ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... was taken aback for an instant, but not seriously. He started, as might a man who, stroking a cat, receives a sudden, but trifling scratch. ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... much against you," answered the Fairy; "and it is quite plain to me that those spurs are meant to scratch with. No, I ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... and it was now Malicorne's turn, who appeared on the threshold, to scratch his ear. The landlord saluted the new arrival as a man who recognizes ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... there, room for my Lord Melantius, pray bear back, this is no place for such youths and their Truls, let the doors shut agen; I, do your heads itch? I'le scratch them for you: so now thrust and hang: again, who is't now? I cannot blame my Lord Calianax for going away; would he were here, he would run raging among them, and break a dozen wiser heads than his own in the twinkling of an eye: ...
— The Maids Tragedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... ye dockers, pardie, Cease your wrangling for a bit, Dump the seat whereon BERNHARDI Bowed his dreadful form to sit; Make no scratch however tiny When the circling crane-arm sags On the chair that rendered ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, May 12, 1920 • Various
... cowboy shooting a gun is merely what lighting a match would be to us. We take reasonable care not to scratch that match on the wall nor to throw it where it will do harm. Likewise the cowboy takes reasonable care that his bullets do not land in some one's anatomy nor in too expensive bric-a-brac. Otherwise any time or place ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... peered up into his mother's sightless face. Mercy was all tears in an instant. She had borne yesterday's operation without a groan, but now the scratch on her child's hand went to her ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... one of the heavy metals of which iron may he taken as the representative. It is of a grayish white color, presents a metallic brilliancy, and is capable of a high degree of polish, is so hard as to scratch glass and steel, is non-magnetic, and is only fused at a white heat. As it oxidizes rapidly on exposure to the atmosphere, it ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... unholy presence; but to-day they are unsurrounded by protecting fence or the moral restrictions of dominant Mussulmans, and the sheep, cows, and goats of the "infidel giaour" graze among them; and oh, shade of Mohammed! hogs also scratch their backs against the tombstones and root around, at their own sweet will, sometimes unearthing skulls and bones, which it is the Turkish custom not to bury at any great depth. The great number and extent of these cemeteries seem to appeal to the unaccustomed observer ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... where Disko kept the old greencrusted quadrant that they called the "hog-yoke"—under the bed-bag in his bunk. When he took the sun, and with the help of "The Old Farmer's" almanac found the latitude, Harvey would jump down into the cabin and scratch the reckoning and date with a nail on the rust of the stove-pipe. Now, the chief engineer of the liner could have done no more, and no engineer of thirty years' service could have assumed one half of the ancient-mariner air with ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... chicks and one old biddy! "Cluck!" says Biddy, "cluck, cluck, cluck!" "Scratch as I do!—try ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... experience the mortal regret which the banished man feels when he places his foot upon the vessel which is to bear him into exile. It appears that the heart already wounded so many times suffers from the least scratch; it appears that it considers as a good the momentary absence of evil, which is nothing but the absence of pain; and that God, into the most terrible misfortunes, has thrown hope as the drop of water which the rich bad man in ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... held out, it looked like, till she got through her education. All through the fights he had and the scrapes he run into the last ten years he never got a scratch. Bullets used to hum around that man like bees, and he'd ride through 'em like they was bees, but none of 'em ever notched him. Curious, ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... then clapped his hands together, while his face beamed with smiles. "Well," said he, "do you want me to praach ony after that? what can onybody say after Paul spakes? He says everything with once opening his maath; with one scratch of his wonderful pen, he writes more than I could spake in a lifetoime, if I were left to mysen, 'My God shall supply all your need.' Friends, there's nowt left, yo've gotton all in that, ivery thing yo' need, and ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... duty to encourage a man when he strikes the rite gait, I seize the goose-quil to set down and scratch off a letter to you. I've heard you preach, and, to do the square thing, I am constrained to say you've got talents into you, on which to bild a first-class Dominy. My advice is, to let your talents sintilate; don't ...
— Punchinello, Vol. II., No. 35, November 26, 1870 • Various
... "That rock is just covered with vines that cling fast to it. Hurry, now! Pull down some long, strong pieces! Here, you scratch like ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... inaccessible to the touring motorist. The Italians have been fortunate in having an inexhaustible supply of road-building material close at hand, for the mountains are solid road metal and in the plains one has only to scratch the soil to find gravel. The work of the road-builders on the Upper Isonzo resembles a vast suburban development, for the smooth white highways which zigzag in long, easy gradients up the mountain slopes are bordered on the inside by stone-paved gutters and on the ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... desirable match. 'But they're afraid of you, my dear; they were afraid of me, but I amused them, while you simply look as if they were not there. Of course, that's attractive in its way, and one must follow one's own line, but it takes a brave man to come up to the scratch.' ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... autumn airy spheres of thistledown floated into the same street, lodged upon the shop fronts, blew into drains, and innumerable tawny and yellow leaves skimmed along the pavement, and stole through people's doorways into their passages with a hesitating scratch on the floor, like the ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... who thinks very well of himself and is very complacent. He is half unreal, and three-quarters on stilts. Olga is unreal and is dragged in by the tail. And the chief trouble is that the whole novel is cold, cold, cold. I scratch out Gontcharov from ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... almost by a miracle. Over and over again, he had carried the general's orders across ground swept by the enemy's shot and shell. A horse had been killed under him, but he had not received even a scratch; and now, mounted upon the horse of one of the officers, who was killed, he was returning from carrying an order across a very open piece of ground, at full gallop. Suddenly he came upon a sight which—hurried as ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... colour, and so minute that you must bring your eye close to it before you can perceive it. It is most numerous in the rainy season. Its bite causes an intolerable itching. The best way to get rid of it is to rub the part affected with oil or rum. You must be careful not to scratch it. If you do so, and break the skin, you expose yourself to a sore. The first year I was in Guiana the bete- rouge and my own want of knowledge, and, I may add, the little attention I paid to it, created an ulcer above the ankle which ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... dairymaid at a Farmer's near this place, was infected with the Cow Pox from her master's cows in May, 1796. She received the infection on a part of the hand which had been previously in a slight degree injured by a scratch from a thorn. A large pustulous sore and the usual symptoms accompanying the disease were produced in consequence. The pustule was so expressive of the true character of the Cow Pox, as it commonly appears upon the hand, that ...
— An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae • Edward Jenner
... content to work it out with patience, and bear with the badness of the performance. When the corn was sown, I had no harrow, but was forced to go over it myself, and drag a great heavy bough of a tree over it, to scratch it, as it may be called, rather than rake or harrow it. When it was growing, and grown, I have observed already how many things I wanted to fence it, secure it, mow or reap it, cure and carry it home, thrash, part it from the chaff, and save it. Then ...
— Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... piquant than otherwise? The second proved to contain a fully developed chicken. Now the chick emerges from the shell feathered, and this, but for the unfortunate accident of discovery, would have begun to scratch for its living in a day or so. Mickie flicked away the fragments of shell from the steaming dainty and laid it snugly on a leaf. "That's for Paddy"—an Irish terrier, always of the party. It was an affecting act of renunciation. Presently "Paddy" came along; but "Paddy," who, too, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... is Betty Fye—old Betty Fye; I live in the log shanty over the creek, at the back of your'n. The farm belongs to my eldest son. I'm a widow with twelve sons; and 'tis —- hard to scratch along." ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... ghastly grim and desolately gray, we wrestled in a stifling stillness, while hell stood umpire at the game. No sound of trumpet, no warlike cry, no strains of martial music were there to thrill the nerves and taunt men on to glory. We fought to the scrape and scratch of shuffling feet, the labored gasp, the rattle in the throat, while echo hushed ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... retorted, "I earned it. You fellows should organise in the same way. It took me a good many years' hard work, I can tell you, to bring my lot up to the scratch. Anyway, here we are, and Manchester it's got to be this time. In an hour, Mr. Maraton, the secretary of the Manchester Labour Party will be here. He's got two demand scales made out for you to look through. Your job is to work the people up so that ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a time in Staffordshire, and introduced an improved manufacture, but they shortly after removed to Chelsea, where they confined themselves to the manufacture of ornamental pieces. No porcelain capable of resisting a scratch with a hard point had yet been made in England; and for a long time the "white ware" made in Staffordshire was not white, but of a dirty cream colour. Such, in a few words, was the condition of the pottery manufacture when Josiah Wedgwood was born at Burslem in 1730. By the time that ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... by me before in many a tight place. It cost them a lot sometimes. But they stuck just the same. Now I've got a chance to stick by them. And I'm going to do it because I know they'll come up to the scratch." ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... get married any time; the chief thing was that he should love her, and then a year would be soon enough, or if he went at it right (that depended on him, she would see about it), six months; but with that Freneli he must have nothing more to do or she would scratch both their eyes out and the hussy would ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... for Sparrowes, and for Doues I am fitted twixt my Loues, But Lalus I take no delight In Sparowes, for they'll scratch and bite And though ioynd, they are euer wooing Alwayes billing, if not doeing, 190 Twixt Venus breasts if they haue lyen I much feare they'll infect myne; Cleon your Doues are very dainty, Tame Pidgeons else ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... "For, if you opened the door, it would come in. Now it can't get in, or else it would. It can only scratch." ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on Grandpa's Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... beat him hollow, it was all Lombard-street to a china orange. The Masked Festival on the 18th is a subject of considerable attraction, and wigs of every nature, style, and fashion, are in high request for the occasion—The Bob, the Tye, the Natural Scratch, the Full Bottom, the Queue, the Curl, the Clerical, the Narcissus, the Auricula, the Capital, the Corinthian, the Roman, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch—oh! we are full of business just now. Speaking of the art, by the by, ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... much as you like, only do not ask questions at present," said her companion, "for I cannot answer now; only, as you speak, disguise your voice, hold your head up, and scratch ...
— The Queen's Necklace • Alexandre Dumas pere
... underside of the chamber floor should be planed smooth; then scratched with a sharp scratch, so as to enable the bees to hold fast; otherwise they may fall suddenly upon the bottom board, which may induce them to leave the hive and flee to the woods. That the inside of the hive should be made smooth, is evident ...
— A Manual or an Easy Method of Managing Bees • John M. Weeks
... stay laughing and chatting, and then Monsieur the Viscount bids his friend good-night, and holds him towards Madame that she may do the same. But Madame (who did not enjoy Monsieur Crapaud's society in prison) cannot be induced to do more than scratch his head delicately with the tip of her white finger. But she respects him greatly, at a distance, she says. Then they go back along the terrace, and are met by a man-servant in Monsieur the Viscount's livery. Is it possible that this ...
— Melchior's Dream and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a right good hand at garden-work," answered the old man, with some embarrassment, scratching his gray head with a troubled scratch. ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... theatrical charwoman or two, behind them a sprinkling of the general public, whose time apparently hangs heavily on their hands. In a Stage-box is the Author herself, with a sycophantic Companion. A murky gloom pervades the Auditorium; a scratch orchestra is playing a lame and tuneless Schottische for the second time, to compensate for a little delay of fifteen minutes between the first and second Tableaux in the Second Act. The orchestra ceases, and a Checktaker ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... the fox see that the dog was fairly in, than he rolled a great stone to the mouth of the hole and fitted it so tight, that the dog, not being able to turn round and scratch against it with his forepaws, was made a ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the Worry Club, To chase the fleeting rhino through the gloom, To bag the boodle, trap the wild mazume And scratch for corn when Pansy hollers "Grub!" They say I'll turn as sickly as a chub When on the First, with dull and deadly boom, The Rent comes round and walks into the room, Remarking, "Peel or ...
— The Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor • Wallace Irwin
... reminder concerning the position of the two sisters as I stood on tiptoe and scratched with my fingers at the crumbling ledge upon which Holman and the Fijian crouched. The predicament of Edith Herndon, and not fears for my own safety, made me scratch madly for a foothold as I swung above the shelf I left. Kaipi and Holman tugged till every muscle in my arms shrieked out against the way they were being handled. But I was going up. I "chinned" the crumbling layer of rock upon ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... was the only response she ventured. "And you are not just. I did not want to 'scratch.' I would not injure you for the world, even if I could. Yet it does hurt to think our friendship in the past has meant nothing to you, when it has meant so much to me. It hurts. But I must bear it. I shall not trouble you ...
— The Second Latchkey • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... greased his cowhide boots some years ago, and came to the city to make his fortune. But he forgot to remember to show up again at Greenburg, and Hiram got in as second-best choice. But when it comes to the scratch Ada—her name's Ada Lowery—saddles a nag and rides eight miles to the railroad station and catches the 6.45 A.M. train for the city. Looking for George, you know—you understand about women— George wasn't there, so ...
— Options • O. Henry
... that I had just then been greeted with an epistle of * *'s, full of his petty grievances, and this at the moment when (from circumstances it is not necessary to enter upon) I was bearing up against recollections to which his imaginary sufferings are as a scratch to a cancer. These things combined, put me out of humour with him and all mankind. The latter part of my life has been a perpetual struggle against affections which embittered the earliest portion; ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. II - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... the rose bush doesn't scratch the lilac leaves off the pie plant and make the clothes line catch cold, I'll tell you next about ...
— Curly and Floppy Twistytail - The Funny Piggie Boys • Howard R. Garis
... characteristic and expressive of modern picture-making and novel-writing,—called "Hauling" or more definitely "Paysan rentrant du Fumier," which represents a man's back, or at least the back of his waistcoat and trousers, and hat, in full light, and a small blot where his face should be, with a small scratch where its nose should be, elongated into one representing a chink of timber ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... Invoking still a "song o' sixpence" from The Scottish fiddle of each lusty palm, Thy Judges, California, skilled to play This silent music, through the livelong-day Perform obsequious before the rich, And still the more they scratch the more they itch! ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... across him until little by little his brain cleared and he looked about him. Far and wide, the same wonder of the desert night; the stars, so low, so tender, so inscrutable, the sky so deep, so utterly compassionate; the far black scratch of the river on the silver desert, the distant black lift of the mountains—Pen's ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... thy wide wounds bleed? What of shrinking didst thou heed In the one-foot sling of gold? What scratch here dost thou behold? And in e'en such wise as this Many an axe-breaker there is Strong of tongue and weak of hand: Tried thou wert, and ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris
... sixteen together) the old woman comes with a nutshell full of the matter of the best sort of small-pox, and asks what vein you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer to her, with a large needle, (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch) and puts into the vein as much matter as can ly upon the head of her needle, and after that, binds up the little wound with a hollow bit of shell; and in this manner opens four or five veins. The Grecians have commonly the superstition of opening ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... received, you must also pay some attention to your behaviour at table, where it is exceedingly rude to scratch any part of your body; to spit, or blow your nose, if you can possibly avoid it, to eat greedily, to lean your elbows on the table, to pick your teeth before the dishes are removed, or to leave the table before grace ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... hardened by pressure into a consistence resembling that of ice. A curious thing it is to topple a huge stone down from a neighbouring precipice on one of these snow-fields, and see how it hits the snow without sinking in it, and bounds along, leaving no scratch on the hardened surface. A stream issues from the field we are now alluding to, formed like the glacier streams from the ceaseless melting of the snow. It passes forth beneath a diminutive arch, such as the source of the Rhine might appear through a diminishing glass; and looking through ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... Tom. Poor Tom did not like her big teeth, and called out loudly, "Mother, mother!" "But where are you, Tommy, my dear Tommy?" cried out his mother, wringing her hands. "Here, mother," he shouted, "inside the red cow's mouth!" And, saying that, he began to kick and scratch till the poor cow was nearly mad, and at length tumbled him out of her mouth. On seeing this, his mother rushed to him, caught him in her arms, and carried him ...
— The Golden Goose Book • L. Leslie Brooke
... would look right on the stage. As Katherine she wanted me to wear steely silver and bronzy gold, but all the brocades had such insignificant designs. If they had a silver design on them it looked under the lights like a scratch in white cotton! At last Mrs. Carr found a black satin which on the right side was timorously and feebly patterned with a meandering rose and thistle. On the wrong side of it was a sheet of silver—just the right steely silver because it was the wrong side! Mrs. Carr ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... a broken blade in his hand was slowly overwhelmed by seeming swarms of men. Like a tiger caught in a net, his ferocity gradually waned until, bleeding from scratch-wounds in a half-dozen places, he felt himself sinking into a haze. His useless sword-hilt fell with a clatter to the tiles. As his arms were pinioned by several of his captors, he was dreamily aware that music still floated up from the Botanical Gardens and the German man-of-war. ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... and in the two days' fighting had lost thirty-eight killed and 109 wounded. Among the former were two officers, while several others were wounded. The Scudamores had, fortunately, both escaped without a scratch. The inhumanity of the Spaniards was now more markedly shown than ever. Although both in Cuesta's army, and in the town of Talavera provisions were abundant, yet the inhabitants carefully concealed them, while both the wounded and fighting ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... continued the knight, after a pause, "I am hurt, for although I have come off victor without a scratch, I have not come out of the tussle without a bruise or two. I shall tell them I have had ...
— Heiress of Haddon • William E. Doubleday
... a pole and a line without any hook on it so he could not scratch himself, and then Jan and Ted sat down under a shady tree, not far from camp, to try to ...
— The Curlytops on Star Island - or Camping out with Grandpa • Howard R. Garis
... into active and visible operation on wives of the Mrs. Bellamy stamp. Indeed, had it not been for a little incident about to be detailed, it is doubtful if Mr. Bellamy would have ever come to the scratch ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... the thumb on the gathering threads. To place the gathers, put the point of the needle under the lower gathering thread and press the plait or gather under the thumb, drawing the needle down, or simply pressing on the needle. Care must be taken not to scratch or tear the material. Continue entirely across the gathers, putting the needle under each stitch and holding the plait firmly between the thumb and finger: turn the material and stroke the upper ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... country, was Egypt the parent of Superstition: while she was beyond all dispute, for all people and to all time, the parent of Geometry, Astronomy, Architecture, and Chivalry. She was, in its material and technic elements, the mistress of Literature, showing authors who before could only scratch on wax and wood, how to weave paper and engrave porphyry. She was the first exponent of the law of Judgment after Death for Sin. She was the Tutress of Moses; and the Hostess ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... recognizable. The most delicate of the sap vessels, and all the finer portions of the centre of the wood, are perfectly entire, and bear to be examined with the strongest magnifiers. The whole are so thoroughly silicified as to scratch glass and are capable of receiving the ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and are about as big as a fair-sized dog. But they never come near a camp; they are so shy that you never can get sight of one, though the lumbermen tell stories of having fights with them. They've got long claws and could scratch like sin, if ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... everybody. And the Honourable George, talking in whispers to Frank about his widow—"Not such a catch as yours, you know; but something extremely snug;—and have it all my own way, too, old fellow, or I shan't come to the scratch." And the Honourable John prepared to toady Frank about his string of hunters; and the Lady Amelia, by herself, not quite contented with these democratic nuptials—"After all, she is so absolutely nobody; absolutely, absolutely," she said confidentially ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... and I conclude that one half of the trouble in the world, the squabbles between man and man, woman and woman, boy and boy—nay, between rival nations—is simply because your false and foolish notions of brutality and philanthropy keep them from coming to the scratch as soon as they should. They hang off, growling and grumbling, and blackguarding, and blaspheming, when, if they would only take hold, and come to an earnest grapple, the odds would soon show themselves—broken ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... reigns everywhere. When she has eaten her fill, she makes way for another, who in her turn becomes intolerant. One after the other, all the inmates of the menagerie come and refresh themselves. After cramming their crops, they scratch the soles of their feet a little with their mandibles, polish up their forehead and eyes with a leg moistened with spittle and then, hanging to the trellis-work or lying on the sand in a posture of contemplation, ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... forfeit all that might have been paid to that date. "In fact, Mr. Olmsted." Barnum continued, earnestly, "you may bind me in any way, and as tightly as you please—only give me a chance to dig out, or scratch out, and I will do so or forfeit all the labor and ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton
... his lip hard, to repress a useless outburst of rage, and George, still smiling sweetly, spun the broom dexterously between his hands, as a man spins the water out of a stable mop. Just before Master Lake had got beyond earshot, George lowered the broom, and began to scratch his head once more. "I be a proper vool, sartinly," said he; and when the miller heard this, he turned back. "Mother allus said I'd no more sense in my yead than a dumbledore," George candidly confessed. And by a dumbledore he ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a fable, but history records This defeat of the "Fowl of Great Boasting Words." How the "Prussian Black Eagle" that thought he could scratch, Found in "Old Baldy" ...
— Rhymes of the Rookies • W. E. Christian
... it? Sure, now, some class to that! We're doin' fine. What's the number of the house? Can ye tell me that? Just scratch ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... and rye ran out on every side, and all the wild birds that were in the forest came in such numbers that they darkened the sun. But when they caught sight of the corn they could not refrain from it, but flew down and began to scratch and pick at the corn and rye, and at last they began to fight among themselves, and forgot all about the youth and Dapplegrim, and did them ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... Of no country is this axiom more true than of Russia. A man who would see Russia clearly must strip himself of all preconceived prejudices of religion, race, and language, and study the people from their own point of view. If he goes about repeating Napoleon I.'s famous saying, "Scratch a Russian and you will find a Tatar," he will simply betray his own ignorance of history ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... that I could very well explain, sir,' was the answer. 'It 'ud come better from Mr. Pyecroft. He's on leaf at Portsmouth—staying with his uncle. His uncle 'ad the body all night. I'd defy you to find a scratch on her even with ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... with another, entered the vault alone, and took up their position alongside of the coffin of poor Fanny. The ghost was then summoned to appear, but it appeared not; it was summoned to knock, but it knocked not; it was summoned to scratch, but it scratched not; and the two retired from the vault, with a firm belief that the whole business was a deception practised by Parsons and his daughter. There were others, however, who did not wish to jump so hastily to a conclusion, and who suggested that they ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... a mile of warm sea-scented beach; Three fields to cross till a farm appears; A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch And blue spurt of a lighted match, 10 And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears, Than the two hearts beating ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... steep bank and opened fire up the slope on to the camp on the skyline above. A stampede of the horses ensued, but a resolute front was quickly formed and the attack was checked. An alarm that the enemy was threatening the rear of the camp was proved to be unfounded by a scratch gathering of details which was hastily mustered; it then wheeled round, and picking up reinforcements on the way charged the Boer left at the river. The charge was irresistible, and the sun had hardly risen when Delarey's whole line ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... pondered the idea carefully. "It is not that. The devil will be glad for my coming, for I have some very fine songs for him, and scandals and old gossips of the high aliis that will make him scratch his sides. So, let me explain to you the secret of my birth. The Sea is my mother. I was born in a double-canoe, during a Kona gale, in the channel of Kahoolawe. From her, the Sea, my mother, I received my strength. Whenever I return to her arms, as for a breast-clasp, ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... strongest instinct of our nature. Nature is still 'red in tooth and claw,' though she has begun to make fine flourishes with tooth-brush and nail-scissors. Even the mild dog on my hearth-rug has been known to behave like a wolf to his own species. Scratch his master and you will find the caveman. But the scratch must be a sharp one: I am thickly veneered. Outwardly, I am as gentle as you, gentle reader. And one reason for our delight in fire is that there is no humbug about flames: they are frankly, primaevally savage. But this is not, I am glad ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... stooped to look closely at a huge stone that lay by the highway. Then she picked up a smaller stone and seemed to rub it on the larger one, as if she wished to remove a scratch ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... wild to see that play! It has a deep, ethical purpose. Can you give me six minutes to scratch off this gown ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... cuffs was a task which absorbed her whole mind. So was the settling of a minute bit of court-plaster just to the left of the dimple in her chin, an unusual piece of coquetry in which Polly would not have indulged, if an almost invisible scratch had not given her an excuse for doing it. The white, down-trimmed cloak, with certain imposing ornaments on the hood, was assumed with becoming gravity and draped with much advancing and retreating before the glass, as its wearer practised the true Boston gait, ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... Lady St. G. who I am truly rejoiced to hear is so much better. Say everything that is kind from me to her, and my apology for not writing is that my right hand is very weak, as you may see from my writing, from an inflammation I have had in it occasioned entirely by a slight scratch on the knuckle of the fore finger; but it is now quite well, but ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... window the whole day rocking the cradle with her foot. She was even jealous of the wet-nurse, and when the hungry baby held out its arms and mouth towards the big blue-veined breast, she felt as if she would like to tear her son from this strong, quiet peasant woman's arms, and strike and scratch the bosom to which he clung ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... betwixt rows, where the intervals are very narrow, as 16 or 18 inches. This is but an imitation of the hand-hoe, or a succenadeum to it, and can neither supply the use of dung nor fallow, and may be properly called scratch-hoeing.'' But in his mode of forming ridges his practice seems to have been original; his implements, especially his drill, display much ingenuity; and his claim to the title of founder of the present horse-hoeing husbandry of Great ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... fall of a house, was to much purpose circumspect to avoid that danger, seeing that he was knocked on the head by a tortoise falling out of an eagle's talons in the air. Another was choked with a grape-stone;—[Val. Max., ix. 12, ext. 2.]—an emperor killed with the scratch of a comb in combing his head. AEmilius Lepidus with a stumble at his own threshold,—[Pliny, Nat. Hist., vii. 33.]— and Aufidius with a jostle against the door as he entered the council-chamber. And betwixt the very thighs of ...
— The Essays of Montaigne, Complete • Michel de Montaigne
... of the rain they heard a noise which was half scratch, half thud. Under Rupert's hand the latch of the ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... three months' blockade.) And then I had handed to me by Mr. J., one of the commercial gentlemen, a private letter from Rio Janeiro, which had been lent him. After these delays, with full materials, I sprang to work—read, read, read; wonder, wonder, wonder; guess, guess, guess; scratch, scratch, scratch; and scribble, scribble, scribble, make the only transcript I can give of the operations which followed. At first, several of the other gentlemen in the room sat around me; but soon Mr. C., having settled the deaths and marriages, and the police and municipal reporters immediately ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... with, close with, buckle with, bandy with, try conclusions with, have a brush &c. n. with, tilt with; encounter, fall foul of, pitch into, clapperclaw[obs3], run a tilt at; oppose &c. 708; reluct. join issue, come to blows, go to loggerheads, set to, come to the scratch, exchange shots, measure swords, meet hand to hand; take up the cudgels, take up the glove, take up the gauntlet; enter the lists; couch one's lance; give satisfaction; appeal to arms &c. (warfare) 722. lay about one; break the peace. compete with, cope with, vie with, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... had almost forgotten it in what we had to go through, but one of the scoundrels shot me. It is only a scratch, but my arm ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... and I, The gunner, and his mate, 45 Loved Mall, Meg, and Marian, and Margery, But none of us cared for Kate; For she had a tongue with a tang, Would cry to a sailor, Go hang! She loved not the savour of tar nor of pitch; 50 Yet a tailor might scratch her where'er she did itch. Then, to sea, boys, and ...
— The Tempest - The Works of William Shakespeare [Cambridge Edition] [9 vols.] • William Shakespeare
... latest voyage, which met with no success, and other sailors were reluctant to join her. Privateering had attracted many of them, and the navy was finding it difficult to recruit the kind of men it desired. Lawrence was compelled to sign on a scratch lot, some Portuguese, a few British, and many landlubbers. Given time to shake them together in hard service at sea, he would have made a smart crew of them no doubt, as Isaac Hull had done in five weeks with the men of the ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... thing like a shoulder of mutton; and on his head he displayed a hollow helmet filled with hot water. In the middle of a field into which his windows looked, was a skeleton sort of a machine, his Universal Scratcher; with which every animal from a lamb to a bullock could scratch itself. Then on the Sunday the Immortal was called into use, to travel in state to a church like a barn; about fifty people in it; but the most original idea was farming through the medium of a tremendous speaking-trumpet ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 2 • Grace & Philip Wharton
... Scratch-tch-ch! The check was made out with a flourish. "Here you are. I'll come round when I'm ready and tell you where to send the stuff. By the way, where do you bank? Want to send in checks ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... long Russian cloak, bordered with fur, and in the broad sleeves was carefully concealed a poisoned dagger, which must by a single scratch inevitably send down to death ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... cleaned as thoroughly as possible to remove all extraneous impurities. In the cleaning operations care should be taken to scratch or abrade the bran as little as possible, for this reason: The outer coating of the bran is hard and more or less friable. Wherever it is scratched a portion is liable to become finely comminuted in the subsequent ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... the meantime I had resumed my Chinese dress. "Look," the people said, "at the foreigner; he had on foreign dress, and now he is dressed in Chinese even to his queue. Look at his queue, it is false." I took off my hat to scratch my head. "Look," they shouted again, "at his queue; it is stuck to the inside of his hat." But they ceased ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... his country well for such a youngster, he fought in eight battles, and came home without a scratch, though he had many hair-breadth escapes. In one battle he had two horses shot under him, and he saved the colors on foot, though he was leading a ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... where only eight had been before. The mounted men hurried on the daubed and wearied droves of Commissariat beasts. Smoots Beste drove the scratch team of bullocks, but his heart was as water within his belly, and there was no resonance in the smack of his whip. When the convoy came to a town, he vanished, and the story thenceforth knows him no more. The discreet sergeant ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... grow more alike every day. Many men also must he have met, but they seemed to have rubbed against him and left him unmarked—as sandstone may rub against a diamond. It is upon the sandstone that the scratch remains. He was not part of all that he had seen, which may have meant that he looked not at men or cities, but right through them, to something beyond, upon which his gaze ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... breed, but all large and heavy, strong-jawed and supple-limbed animals, wolfish-looking fierce creatures, but all more or less trained to the work before them. Good pig-dogs are not easily met with, and in the bush they are esteemed a prize. Our lot are a scratch pack, made up of any that can be induced to seize a pig, and have weight sufficient to hold on to him; a few are thought to be more experienced ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... that very morning that he considered him the best actor he had ever seen). He'll be out with a fly-by-night troupe afore the next month. Alfred's a gone goslin'. He's got no trade an' he'll hev to scratch to make a livin'. I sort of pity Uncle John an' Aunt Mary, kase they think so much of the boy, an' it's a great pity for them. Uncle John ought to beat the foolishness out of him long ago. He never touches him, no matter what he does. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... had the knife outstretched. Rome took it, and the scratch of the point on the hard steel went twice through the stillness—"one more fer the young un;" the voice was the ...
— A Cumberland Vendetta • John Fox, Jr.
... times is forcibly brought before us by the fact that the Alfoeld, or great plain of Hungary, comprises an area of 37,400 square miles! Here is found the Tiefland, or deep land, so wonderfully fertile that the cultivator need only scratch the soil to prepare it ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... of silk, a half-eaten cucumber, a box of sweets, and so on. There, too, was the large table at which SHE used to sit in the pink cotton dress which I admired so much and the blue handkerchief which always caught my attention so. She would be sewing-though interrupting her work at intervals to scratch her head a little, to bite the end of her thread, or to snuff the candle—and I would think to myself: "Why was she not born a lady—she with her blue eyes, beautiful fair hair, and magnificent bust? ...
— Boyhood • Leo Tolstoy
... believe That just because I do not really see, The whole looms up more beautiful in thought; That, father, is the way with you at least! The ancient sagas and heroic lays,— These you remember, speak of with delight, And scratch in runic script upon your parchment; But if I ask about your youthful life In Norway's distant realm, your eyes grow dark, Your lips are silent, and it seems at times Your ...
— Early Plays - Catiline, The Warrior's Barrow, Olaf Liljekrans • Henrik Ibsen
... dislike his bow, and he hung it up in the wood-shed. Then he made a lasso of a string, and caught the cat by throwing the noose over her head. But Puss did not like the sport as well as he did, and gave him such a scratch that he was glad to let her run off with the lasso. Then he thought he would plague the old sow by getting one of her little pink-white pigs; but the instant he had caught it up in his arms, it began ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... enthusiastically, "it would keep the observations up to scratch if the chaps knew they were going to be used. Who else do you think would ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... were afraid cares nothing for us. He would not have harmed you. He has bare legs so he can wade about in the grass and not get his clothing wet. He uses those long toes and sharp claws to scratch in the earth for food. He does not catch mice with them. He uses that strong bill for picking up grain. People call him ...
— Fifty Fabulous Fables • Lida Brown McMurry
... Cock afterward, "a Dorking certainly is a Dorking, although I never could see the sense of making such a fuss about it. They are fat and they have an extra toe on each foot. Why should a fowl want extra toes? I have four on each foot, and I can scratch up all the food I want ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... followed the youth's impetuous answer, and then came the recommendation to sell all that he had and give to the poor—"and, Come! Follow me!" At this, we read in a fragment of the "Gospel according to the Hebrews" (preserved by Origen), "the rich man began to scratch his head, and it did not please him. And the Lord said to him, 'How sayest thou, "The law I have kept and the prophets?" For it is written in the law, "thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"; and behold! many who are thy brethren, ...
— The Jesus of History • T. R. Glover
... have discontinued their daily visits to the Consulta after the 7th of May. Whatever they might have hoped to accomplish with their diplomacy to keep Italy neutral had been irretrievably ruined by the diplomacy of Grand Admiral von Tirpitz. The smallest match, the scratch of a boot-heel on stone, can set off a powder magazine. The Lusitania was a goodly sized match. If the King and his ministers were waiting for the country to declare itself, if they wanted the excuse of national emotion before taking the final irrevocable steps into war, they ...
— The World Decision • Robert Herrick
... not scratch, unless the pin be poisoned. This would be an extenuating circumstance, and was, we may remember, the case ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... size, shape of cat that was ever seen. And they were plunging and leaping and racing about so, that it looked like twice as many cats as there really were, and as if every cat had a dozen tails. "Sfz! Sfz! Sputter! Scratch, spp, spt! Growl, growl, miaow, miaow," they went, till, between the noise and the flying ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson
... sagacity of Mr. Bonflon relieved us from our dilemma. He hoisted out the small car or tender, and, letting it down with great care and precision, safely accomplished the object. In the space of half an hour, De Ary, without a scratch, and, like a gallant Gaul, rather proud of his adventure than frightened at it, was again restored ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... opened fire up the slope on to the camp on the skyline above. A stampede of the horses ensued, but a resolute front was quickly formed and the attack was checked. An alarm that the enemy was threatening the rear of the camp was proved to be unfounded by a scratch gathering of details which was hastily mustered; it then wheeled round, and picking up reinforcements on the way charged the Boer left at the river. The charge was irresistible, and the sun had hardly risen when Delarey's whole line ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... instead of finding his dearest Rapunzel, he found the enchantress, who gazed at him with wicked and venomous looks. 'Aha!' she cried mockingly, 'you would fetch your dearest, but the beautiful bird sits no longer singing in the nest; the cat has got it, and will scratch out your eyes as well. Rapunzel is lost to you; you will never see her again.' The king's son was beside himself with pain, and in his despair he leapt down from the tower. He escaped with his life, but the thorns into which he fell pierced his eyes. Then he wandered quite ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... can't tell what—How the devil should I, when I was as drunk as David's sow, you know? But I was punished, my lad—made to kiss the wench that never speaks but when she scolds, and that's the gunner's daughter, comrade. Yes, the minister's son of no matter where—has the cat's scratch on his back! This roused me, and when we were ashore with the boat, I gave three inches of the dirk, after a stout tussle, to the fellow I blamed most, and took the bush for it. There were plenty of wild lads then along shore—and, I don't care who knows—I went on the account, look ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... the clans was the small but fairly efficient body of men who formed the Town Guard; the Train Bands, some thousand strong, who knew no more than so many spinsters of the division of a battle; the small and undisciplined Edinburgh regiment; and a scratch collection of volunteers hurriedly raked together from among the humbler citizens of the town, and about as useful as so many puppets to oppose to the daring and the ferocity of the clans. Edinburgh opinion had changed very rapidly with regard to that same daring ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume II (of 4) • Justin McCarthy
... tried to scratch by the wood-pile, but the ground was covered with little chips, so she could not ...
— Bobby of Cloverfield Farm • Helen Fuller Orton
... another twenty-five down, and Moss will have to turn Jew. Well, I can get plenty of jobs as good as his, and there aren't many Dolly St. Johns in the world, all said and done. I'll risk it, and take my gruelling afterwards. What's more, if Mr. John's papa don't come up to the scratch, I'll put a word in for myself. It would make a line in the newspapers anyway, and who knows but what we mightn't both get ...
— The Man Who Drove the Car • Max Pemberton
... kicks away any one trying to bite at the delicious morsel. Selfishness reigns everywhere. When she has eaten her fill, she makes way for another, who in her turn becomes intolerant. One after the other, all the inmates of the menagerie come and refresh themselves. After cramming their crops, they scratch the soles of their feet a little with their mandibles, polish up their forehead and eyes with a leg moistened with spittle and then, hanging to the trellis-work or lying on the sand in a posture of contemplation, blissfully they digest ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... who, seeing him in this pickle, scared, appalled, shivering, raving, staring, berayed, and torn with the claws of the famous cat Rodilardus, could not choose but laugh, and said to him, Prithee what wouldst thou do with this cat? With this cat? quoth Panurge; the devil scratch me if I did not think it had been a young soft-chinned devil, which, with this same stocking instead of mitten, I had snatched up in the great hutch of hell as thievishly as any sizar of Montague college could have done. The devil take Tybert! ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... between Mrs. Ess Kay and Potter, and though she seemed so angry with Mrs. Van der Windt and several other members of the Ball committee, for trying to make a stand against her, she was perfectly ruthless about the names she would scratch off the lists her secretary was continually making out and revising ...
— Lady Betty Across the Water • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... fall out with it, quarrel, or be over hastily angry; offer to turn it away from study in a humour, but come to it again upon better cogitation; try another time with labour. If then it succeed not, cast not away the quills yet, nor scratch the wainscot, beat not the poor desk, but bring all to the forge and file again; torn it anew. There is no statute law of the kingdom bids you be a poet against your will or the first quarter; if it comes in ...
— Discoveries and Some Poems • Ben Jonson
... dear, To test Lothario's passion, simply said, "Forego the weed before we go to wed. For smoke, take flame; I'll be that flame's bright fanner. To have your Anna, give up your Havana." But he, when thus she brought him to the scratch, Lit his cigar, and threw away ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... Constitution. I have only been able to suggest very impressionistically what they are and the lessons to be drawn from them. If I were able to deliver a dozen addresses on the subject in this historic Hall and with this indulgent audience I would not scratch even the surface. To understand the Constitution of the United States you must not only read the text but the thousands of opinions rendered in the last 130 years by the Supreme Court in its great task of interpreting this wonderful document. Few documents have been the subject of more extended ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... twenty-five-dollar made-to-orders. And if the years had brought, among other things, a certain hardness about the jaw and a line or two at the corners of the eyes, it was not surprising. You can't rub up against the sharp edges of this world and expect to come out without a scratch or so. ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... alike conceived and dared? What act proved all its thought had been? What will but felt the fleshly screen? 60 We ride and I see her bosom heave. There's many a crown for who can reach. Ten lines, a statesman's life in each! The flag stuck on a heap of bones, A soldier's doing! what atones? They scratch his name on the Abbey-stones. My riding is ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... common enough, but they are not generally strung on square-plaited copper wire, and still fewer amulets bear black enamel on silver. There were none except the Kamboh and the lama in the compartment, which, luckily, was of an old type with solid ends. Kim made as to scratch in his bosom, and thereby lifted his own amulet. The Mahratta's face changed altogether at the sight, and he disposed the ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... large estates. Without the slightest military training, by study and zeal, he soon made himself an accomplished staff officer. Of singular coolness in battle, he never blundered, and, though much exposed, pulled through without a scratch. My aide, Lieutenant Hamilton, grandson of General Hamilton of South Carolina, was a cadet in his second year at West Point when war was declared, upon which he returned to his State—a gay, cheery lad, with all the pluck of ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... (N.B.—Which play of yours? Not surely the 'English Tragedy' unless shown to him in MS.? {72b} Come: I have sent you my Translations: you should give me your Original Plays. When I get home, I will send you an old Scratch by Thackeray of yourself in Louisa ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald to Fanny Kemble (1871-1883) • Edward FitzGerald
... a good show. (Cousin Charley had assured Alfred that very morning that he considered him the best actor he had ever seen). He'll be out with a fly-by-night troupe afore the next month. Alfred's a gone goslin'. He's got no trade an' he'll hev to scratch to make a livin'. I sort of pity Uncle John an' Aunt Mary, kase they think so much of the boy, an' it's a great pity for them. Uncle John ought to beat the foolishness out of him long ago. He never touches him, no matter what he does. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... sensibility gave them a formidable advantage over him. They were, indeed, contemptible assailants. Of all that they wrote against him, nothing has survived except what he has himself preserved. But the constitution of his mind resembled the constitution of those bodies in which the slightest scratch of a bramble, or the bite of a gnat, never fails to fester. Though his reputation was rather raised than lowered by the abuse of such writers as Freron and Desfontaines, though the vengeance which he took on Freron and Desfontaines was such, that scourging, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... "good Mr. Mustard-seed, but to help Mr. Peas-blossom to scratch; I must go to a barber's, Mr. Mustard-seed, for methinks I am marvelous ...
— Tales from Shakespeare • Charles and Mary Lamb
... Pierre Radisson should put the blanket about Kazan, and carry him in to the camp, without scratch or bite. It was this miracle that he achieved, with Joan's arm resting on Kazan's shaggy neck as she held one end of the blanket. They laid him down close to the fire, and after a little it was the man again who brought warm water and washed away the blood from the torn ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... but admire the beauty of her fellow countrywomen, especially since herself and her own few acquaintances had always been slightly sunburnt or marked on the back of the hands by a bramble-scratch at ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... dust bowled along by the evening breeze. She was sixteen; how strange she looked, with her rather elongated face! she savoured of the open air, of the grass, of mother earth. And so accurate was his recollection of her that he could once more see a scratch upon one of her supple wrists, a rosy scar on her white skin. Why did she laugh like that when she looked at him with her blue eyes? He was engulfed in her laugh as in a sonorous wave which resounded and pressed close to him on every side; he inhaled it, he felt it vibrate within ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... he was pressing you against the accursed altar with his spear poised. I didn't waste any time finding my aim, but even as it was the iron point had touched you when the bullet crashed through his brain. The shock swerved the weapon a little and you were only wounded in the shoulder. You got a scratch which might have been serious but for your Arctic coat. The fellow fell dead beside you, and under the circumstances I felt compelled to shoot the other one also, for he was insane with the delirium of their bloody rite, and I knew that our lives would never ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... and of seed-land; there, alone amid great bare fields, a countryman was ploughing. The wooden plough, as regards its form, might have been thousands of years old; it was drawn by a little donkey, and traced in the soil—the generous southern soil—the merest scratch of a furrow. I could not but approach the man and exchange words with him; his rude but gentle face, his gnarled hands, his rough and scanty vesture, moved me to a deep respect, and when his speech fell upon my ear, it was as though ...
— By the Ionian Sea - Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy • George Gissing
... belongings fought for with tooth and claw by their 'dearest' relations. Dearest relations are, according to my experience, very much like wild cats: give them the faintest hope of a legacy, and they scratch and squawl as though it were raw meat for which they have been starving. In all my long career as a solicitor I never knew one 'dearest relation' ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... blotting-paper in the circle where the light was brightest. As he took it a stain on his right hand caught his eye, and he dropped the pipe to look at it. The blood was dark and was quite dry, and he could not find any scratch to account for it. It was on the inner side of his right hand, between the thumb and forefinger, and was no ...
— The Primadonna • F. Marion Crawford
... to conquer thirty or forty men, without receiving a scratch or two in the encounter; and knowing this, they took Congo's ...
— The Giraffe Hunters • Mayne Reid
... their pearly teeth glittering with eagerness to mangle his flesh, and their monstrous fore-arms, hung with sharp, bony claws, ready and anxious to hug his body in a close and most loving embrace. There was not much time for Kit to scratch his head and cogitate. In fact, one instant spent in thought then would have proved his death warrant without hope of a reprieve. Messrs. Bruin evidently considered their domain most unjustly intruded upon. The gentle elk and deer mayhap were their dancing boys and girls; ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... Bishop of Oxford was quietly installed by proxy: but only two members of Magdalene College attended the ceremony. Many signs showed that the spirit of resistance had spread to the common people. The porter of the college threw down his keys. The butler refused to scratch Hough's name out of the buttery book, and was instantly dismissed. No blacksmith could be found in the whole city who would force the lock of the President's lodgings. It was necessary for the Commissioners to employ ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 2 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... bitten, that moment the wound should be searched for, and when found, should be freely opened with a knife, and lunar caustic, caustic potash, or the permanganate of potash at once applied to all parts of the wound, care being taken not to suffer a single scratch to escape. This, if attended to in time, will ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... was not a sound to be heard except the distant tinkle of chisel and stone, and the occasional rustle of a falling leaf, until Schwartz, the subject of this history, walked pensively round a corner eighty yards down the avenue, and paused to scratch one ear with a hind foot. He stood for a time with a thoughtful air, looked up the avenue and down the avenue, and then with slow deliberation, and an occasional pause for thought, he walked towards me. When within half a dozen yards he stopped and took good stock of me, with brown ...
— Schwartz: A History - From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray • David Christie Murray
... whispered Kieran to Paula. "Scratch their ears? I used to tame squirrels this way when I was ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... old woman comes with a nutshell full of the matter of the best sort of smallpox, and asks what vein you please to have opened. She immediately rips open that you offer with a large needle (which gives you no more pain than a common scratch), and puts into the vein as much matter as can lie upon the head of her needle, and after that binds up the little wound with a hollow bit of shell; and in this manner opens four or ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... thing was that he should love her, and then a year would be soon enough, or if he went at it right (that depended on him, she would see about it), six months; but with that Freneli he must have nothing more to do or she would scratch both their eyes out and the hussy would have to ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... her thoughtlessness was exasperating, her docility was exemplary. But she seemed disheartened; then she seemed to consider; then she brightened a little; then she got some letters, sat down, and began to write—scratch, scratch, scratch, squeak, squeak, squeak, on rough paper with a quill pen, writing in furious haste at a table just behind her husband. Why did she choose the library, his own private sanctum, for the purpose, when there were half a dozen other rooms at least where she might have been quite ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... spot where they work over the cattle. Hardy danced his sorrel up to the line where the gray was waiting, there was a scamper of feet, a streak of dust, and Bill Lightfoot was out one yearling heifer. A howling mob of cowboys pursued them from the scratch, racing each other to the finish, and then in a yell of laughter at Bill Lightfoot they capered up the canyon and spread out over The Rolls—the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... Before attempting to investigate the origin of this mistake, I hasten to write to you, knowing, dearest, what a shock this must have been to you. It is true that I was in the Makar Akool affair, and was slightly wounded—a mere scratch in the arm—but nothing more. I have not written to you for some months past because I have been turning something over in my mind. Anna, dearest, there is no chance of my being in a position to marry for some years yet, and I feel it incumbent upon ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... Sir Burne Jones' little daughter was once in such a specially angry mood as to scratch and bite and spit, her father somewhat roughly shook the child and said, "I do not see what has got into you, Millicent; the devil must teach you these things." Whereupon, the little one indignantly flashed back this reply:—"Well ...
— With the Guards' Brigade from Bloemfontein to Koomati Poort and Back • Edward P. Lowry
... gunners. I was going to sleep there too, and as I have a new officer, Ingle, with me he was going to sleep there. But by the greatest stroke of good fortune I spotted this one just near. It is the best dug-out I have ever had. The other dug-out is swarming with mice and rats, who scratch earth into you all the time, and come and expire on you at night. One fell down and died on the table while we were having tea. But in this I have only seen one mouse so far, and it has got about ten feet of solid earth over it. I sleep on a comfortable folding ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... witches scratch you, and pinch you, and bite you, don't they? A. Yes. Then he put his hand upon her breast and belly, viz. on the clothes over her, and felt a living thing, as he said; which moved the father also to ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... this. It made him feel hot and uncomfortable all over. He knew well how careful he ought to be, and yet, do what he could, from time to time his forgetfulness of the part betrayed him into unreserve. His mother saw that he winced, and enjoyed the scratch she had given him. Had she felt less confident of victory she had better have foregone the pleasure of touching as it were the eyes at the end of the snail's horns in order to enjoy seeing the snail draw them in again—but she knew ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... tale of my youth,' he dreams. And indeed, it is a dream! The mountain opens, the captive princess comes forth and leads him in, and he rests his head in her lap all strewn with blossoms. The lovely trolls come and scratch his head and music sounds from the rocks. It is characteristic of Shakespeare that the lovers do not dream fairy tales of their childhood. Higher culture has given them deeper passions, more intense personal relations; in dreams they but continue ...
— An Essay Toward a History of Shakespeare in Norway • Martin Brown Ruud
... consolidating the white South was measurably achieved. As some one flippantly put the case, there came to be in many sections "two kinds of people—Democrats and negroes." It was the general feeling on the part of the whites that to fail to vote was shameful, to scratch a ticket was a crime, and to attempt to organize the negroes was treason to one's race. The "Confederate brigadier" sounded the rallying cry at every election, and a military record came to be almost a requisite for political preferment. Men's eyes were turned to the past, and on every stump were ...
— The New South - A Chronicle Of Social And Industrial Evolution • Holland Thompson
... and rolled up his sleeves. He knew quite well who had thrown the missile. A ring was at once formed, and the fight began. It only lasted, however, for three rounds. The bridegroom was victorious; he escaped without a scratch. The other man was, as he richly deserved to be, severely punished. It was, however, just as well for him that this was the case, otherwise we would have ducked him in the muddiest tail race within ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... refresh my memory of names and circumstances, and what was specially wanted, &c. In these, I brief'd cases, persons, sights, occurrences in camp, by the bed-side, and not seldom by the corpses of the dead. Some were scratch'd down from narratives I heard and itemized while watching, or waiting, or tending somebody amid those scenes. I have dozens of such little note-books left, forming a special history of those years, for myself alone, full of associations never to be possibly said or sung. I wish I could convey to ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... Henry Worley, striker of the Amaranth! My mother lives in St. Louis. Tell her a lie for a poor devil's sake, please. Say I was killed in an instant and never knew what hurt me—though God knows I've neither scratch nor bruise this moment! It's hard to burn up in a coop like this with the whole wide world so near. Good-bye boys—we've all got to come to ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... altogether unexpected good fortune attended them, and they reached Taos, without receiving a scratch or losing a fur. They found on arriving at that quaint town, that there was great demand for peltries and prices were correspondingly high. They sold out their stock for a very liberal price, and Kit's friend, despite his advice, went on a carousal which ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis
... I; I did not get so much as a scratch. A quarter-staff is a rare weapon in a fight like that, for you can keep well out of the reach of their swords. In faith I have not had so pleasant an exercise since that fight Dickon and I had in the market-place at Winchester ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... him en my Missus say, 'John O., you let my nigger alone.' You see, my Missus had her niggers en den old Boss had his niggers cause when old Missus been marry Massa John O. Bethea, she had brought here share of niggers from whe' she was raise in de country. It been like dis, old Missus father had scratch de pen for everyone of his chillun to have so many niggers apiece for dey portion of his property so long as dey would look after dem en treat dem good. Den if dere been talk dat dem chillun never do what ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... And the Honourable George, talking in whispers to Frank about his widow—"Not such a catch as yours, you know; but something extremely snug;—and have it all my own way, too, old fellow, or I shan't come to the scratch." And the Honourable John prepared to toady Frank about his string of hunters; and the Lady Amelia, by herself, not quite contented with these democratic nuptials—"After all, she is so absolutely nobody; absolutely, absolutely," ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... which, together with my razors, I had saved from the wreck of our fortunes, shaved him in the face of the whole camp.[9] I very soon found that this exhibition of my abilities and profession might be productive of the greatest advantage to my future prospects. Every fellow who had a head to scratch immediately found out that he wanted shaving, and my reputation soon reached the ears of the chief, who called me to him, and ordered me to operate upon him without loss of time. I soon went to work upon a large head that exhibited the marks of many a sword cut, and which ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... see my family last night. Please to admire them now; we are all met together for tea. This is our second, our feast-day tea. You may embrace us all. Only Shurochka wouldn't let you, and the cat would scratch you. ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... thought she had seen the worst, and was sighing at being able to say nothing for it, when Miss Winter confounded her by turning a leaf, and showing it was possible to make a still wilder combination of scramble, niggle, scratch, and crookedness—and this was supposed to be an amended edition! Miss Winter explained that Ethel had, in an extremely short time, performed an exercise in which no fault could be detected except the writing, which was ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... was a mere scratch." And, raising her skirt, she displayed a foot that might have turned a steadier head than Norbert's. "See," said she, "it is there ...
— The Champdoce Mystery • Emile Gaboriau
... first to run away, shaking his plumes like a great yellow prancing cock,[378] while I am left to watch the nets.[379] Once back again in Athens, these brave fellows behave abominably; they write down these, they scratch through others, and this backwards and forwards two or three times at random. The departure is set for to-morrow, and some citizen has brought no provisions, because he didn't know he had to go; he stops in front of the statue of Pandion,[380] reads his name, is dumbfounded and starts ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... met at the foot of the avenue, at the far end of which, on her palace steps, stood the Grand Duchess to make her choice. Now, when Prince Melchior came to the golden road, he thought it would be a sin and a shame were his horse to set hoof on it and scratch it and perchance break off a plate of it; so he turned aside and rode up along the right of it under the chestnuts. Likewise and for the same reason Prince Otto turned aside and rode on the left. But Prince Caspar thought of the lady so devoutly and wished so much to be with her ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... could be better! Why the devil should I scratch around for pennies. I'll make one swoop, and that's an end to it! Only God give us the nerve! Thanks, Lazar. You've treated me like a friend. [He rises] Now, get busy! [He goes up to him and taps him on the shoulder] If you get the thing done properly, ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... Holmes says and what Robert stoutly maintains, though you can't see a scratch or a mark or anything to indicate that such means had been used. No, major," and the doctor shook his head ominiously. "I—I have another theory, but it's one too shadowy, too unsubstantial to speak of. It is ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... your papers and oath of allegiance. Scratch out one side and sign the other in the presence of God and the recording angel. Mark God's ...
— The Chocolate Soldier - Heroism—The Lost Chord of Christianity • C. T. Studd
... the tiger became wild with fright, and, quite forgetting the jackal, and that reef-knot in their tails, he bolted away full tilt, dragging the jackal behind him. Bumpety, bump, bump, over the stones!—crash, scratch, patch, through ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... who came to our house twice a week, and I remember finding her in tears, and asking what was the matter. "Ah! c'est Monsieur qui m'a grondee," she sobbed desperately. "But what has he said to put you in such a state?" "Oh! he did not say much; only, 'Lazarette, why will you scratch off the paint with the matches?' ... 'Mais quand Monsieur gronde,'" ... and there was ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... the following iron ores: Hematite, brown hematite, magnetite, carbonate, and pyrites. Note the color and physical appearance of each; scratch the first four with a very hard steel point and note the color of ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... Benjy, giving him instructions for cutting it down on certain days, and cautioning Tom not to meddle with the wart for a fortnight. And then they strolled out and sat on a bench in the sun with their pipes, and the pigs came up and grunted sociably and let Tom scratch them; and the farmer, seeing how he liked animals, stood up and held his arms in the air, and gave a call, which brought a flock of pigeons wheeling and dashing through the birch-trees. They settled down in clusters on the farmer's arms and shoulders, ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... poison yourself, Hazelton," replied Rutter quickly, as one of the chainmen came near with the recaptured pony. "Snake venom isn't deadly in the stomach—-only when it gets into the blood direct. There's no danger unless you've a cut or a deep scratch in your mouth. Spit the stuff ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... director. My heart and mind were, however, so full of other matters and so far away from these, that I performed all my duties with the greatest good-nature and serviceableness, very much as, while at work, you stroke and scratch your ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... should require to be so in two. She thoroughly knew, however, how many ways Mrs. Jordan counted in. It all meant simply that her fate was pressing her close. If that fate was to be sealed at the matrimonial altar it was perhaps not remarkable that she shouldn't come all at once to the scratch of overwhelming a mere telegraphist. It would necessarily present to such a person a prospect of regretful sacrifice. Lord Rye—if it was Lord Rye—wouldn't be "kind" to a nonentity of that sort, even though people quite as ...
— In the Cage • Henry James
... was," Alec answered, deep in thought. "But it was a serious business, just the same. When Blue Bonnet fell I scarcely knew whether I'd pick her up whole. Not having a scratch is marvelous." ...
— Blue Bonnet in Boston - or, Boarding-School Days at Miss North's • Caroline E. Jacobs
... of the younger Grand Central Station set there was scarce a one who could start with me at scratch and beat me to a train just pulling out of the shed; and even though he might have bested me at sprinting, I had him whipped to a souffle at panting. In a hundred-yard dash I could spot anyone ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb
... to every one on the farm, so that they won't have anything to scratch my eyes out for afterward," said Lasse after a little. "And I should like you to thank Karna nicely for having put everything in such good order. It isn't every ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... lion-like valour, in obedience, and endurance. They take no rest, and flight or retreat is unknown to them. On their expeditions they are accompanied by oxen, sheep, camels, and horses, and sweet or sour milk suffices them for food. Their horses scratch the earth with their hoofs and feed on the roots and grasses they dig up, so that they need neither straw nor oats. They themselves reck nothing of the clean or the unclean in food, and eat the flesh of all animals, even of dogs, swine, and bears. They will open a horse's ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... A miracle! the hermit's daughters thus Will be remembered in the years to come. My pencil will suffice to scratch the lines Upon the wood: my memory will hold The lights, the tints, the golden atmosphere, The genius of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... search out objects in the darkness she saw the stranger reappear around the corner of the cabin and approach the door. He fumbled at it for a moment and threw it open. He disappeared within and an instant later Sheila heard the scratch of a match and saw a feeble glimmer of light shoot out through the doorway. Then ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... duck. When I am put to death 'Twill be for more! Oh, I will have her yet By the hair! [For the first time noticing Fidelio.] Fidelio, if you breathe one word Of this, I will scratch the Princess into ribbons, Whom you ...
— The Lamp and the Bell • Edna St. Vincent Millay
... confines of the town, there reached the flat monotony of the dark prairie soil. The leaves of the soft maples were beginning to show over there, near the village church. A dog crossed the street, pausing midway of the crossing to scratch his ear. The cart of the leading grocer was hitched in front of his store, and an idle citizen or two paused near by to exchange a morning greeting. All the little, uneventful day was beginning, as it had begun so many times before here in this little, uneventful town, where the world was finished, ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... of voices, raced back along the passage and flung himself at the door. He then proceeded to scratch at the panels in the persevering way of one who feels that he is engaged upon a business at which he ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... said; and holding out his little brown hands he displayed the scratches and said, "Me big brothers beat me, and scratch ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... moated grange. I have yawned aloud a dozen times, but Eleanor does not mind it. She has been extremely busy with accounts, papers, and letters. For the last four hours I do not think she has spoken a word. I hear nothing but the scratch of her pen as it moves over the paper, and the wind in the ash-trees. I have taken Madge's journal in despair. Ah, Madge! I wish the bonnie girl were here;—how we would talk nonsense by the hour together, just to keep our ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... that you mustn't pull the kitty's tail?' says she. 'Don't you know you hurt the poor kitty, and she'll scratch you if you don't take care. Poor ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... succeeds in rescuing her brother, having taken the precaution of propitiating with butter the cat Jeremiah, "who was telling the boy stories and singing him songs." When the Baba Yaga awakes, she tells Jeremiah to scratch her eyes open, but he refuses, reminding her that, long as he has lived under her roof, she has never in any way regaled him, whereas the "fair maiden" had no sooner arrived than she treated him to butter. In another ...
— Russian Fairy Tales - A Choice Collection of Muscovite Folk-lore • W. R. S. Ralston
... It next will be right To describe each particular batch: Distinguishing those that have feathers, and bite, From those that have whiskers, and scratch. ...
— The Hunting of the Snark - an Agony, in Eight Fits • Lewis Carroll
... becomes free. It is, therefore, better to tie the bridle to a tuft of grass, or a slender twig, rather than to a tree or to the saddle-bags. Mounting an ox is usually a troublesome business, on account of his horns. To make ride-oxen quiet and tame, scratch their backs and tails—they dearly love it—and hold salt in your hands for them to lick. They soon learn their names, and come to be ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... hotly, "fit only for clergymen and beggars for charities. I am not sure, anyway, that I want 'to do for' people. I think no fine theories about social service and all that settlement stuff. I want to be a man, and have a man's right to start with the crowd at the scratch, not given a handicap. There are too many handicaps in the crowd ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... came up and hailed the Gentleman. "Here you old swine! Are you sober enough to scratch ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... he thus waited, he could not but be aware, through the tense silence otherwise reigning in the room, of the tap and scratch of the rose-spray upon the window-panes; of the swish of the moist gusty wind sweeping from across the salt-marsh and mud-flats of the Haven—from the black cottages, too, beyond the warren, gathered, as somewhat sinister boon ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... record of a pianoforte solo shows this very clearly to the eye, because the impression made by a long note is a deeply-marked indentation succeeded by the merest shallow scratch—not unlike the impression made by a tadpole on mud—with a big head and an attenuated body. Every note marked long in pianoforte music is therefore essentially a sforzando followed by a rapid diminuendo. Anything in such music marked as a long note ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland
... mammals which are habituated, as their race, both to climb as well as to scratch or dig in the ground, or to tear open and kill other animals for food, have been obliged to use the digits of their feet; moreover, this habit has favored the separation of their digits, and has formed the claws with which they ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... have been a tough one to have jumped the train without receiving a scratch," said a voice in the ear of the detective, as he flashed the rays of a lantern down on ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... You're sickening for them now. One of the worst symptoms in the man is his curt refusal to permit anybody else to admire one bright particular star of womanhood. If the girl hears another girl gushing over the young man, she's ready to scratch her eyes out. By Jove! It'll be many a day before you forget your visit to Roxton Park this morning, or yesterday morning, or ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... Minister reflected profoundly, standing the while, in order that he might assist his faculties by scratching himself, even as we, when thinking, scratch our heads. ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... quivering in the dust on the road. He was nearly cut in two; all his intestines were hanging through his stomach, which had been ripped open, and fell in spurts of blood to the ground. He tried to get up, to walk, but he could only move his two front paws, and scratch the ground with them, as if to make a hole. The two others were already dead. And he ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... cause for thankfulness," said Arthur, returning from a hurried circuit of the verandas, "not one on our side has received a scratch. But I have ordered the men to remain at ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... her intense, absorbing parental love, she has very serious deficiencies,—deficiencies occasioned by the same lack of modification which I have before mentioned. Devoted to her little ones, she will scratch vigorously and untiringly to provide them food, yet fails to remember that they do not stand before her in a straight line out of harm's way, but are hovering around her on all sides in a dangerous proximity. Like ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... especial change in her; in fact, it had loosened to the sloughing point the whole skin of her conventional training—that surface skin which seems part of the very essence of our being until something happens to force us to shed it. Crises, catastrophes, may scratch that skin, or cut clear through it; but only the gentle, steady, everywhere-acting prying-loose of day and night association can change it from a skin to a loose envelope ready to be shed ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... outside, lying quite comfortably on a roll of blankets. She was propped on her elbow drinking something hot, and there was a good smell of hot food in the air. I stared at Regis and demanded, "I didn't conk out, did I, from a little scratch like this?" I looked carelessly at ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... best advice I can give you. Make your husband see you're the better woman of the two. Cut her out, I'm saying, and don't come whining here like a cry-baby, who runs to her grandmother's apron-strings at the first scratch ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... him; 'n' it was true, for they 'd spent every cent he hed); 'n' third place, fer alienatin' the 'fections of a travelin' baker-man she hed her eye on fer herself. He was a kind of a flour-food peddler, that used to drive a cart round by Hard Scrabble, Moderation, 'n' Scratch Corner way. Mis' Maddox used to buy all her baked victuals of him, 'specially after she found out he was a widower beginnin' to take notice. His cart used to stand at her door so long everybody on the rout would complain o' stale bread. But bime bye Fiddy begun to set at her winder ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... locked horns, a tall flame already rippled and spread, sending up a pillar of black smoke that rose straight, poisoning the clear blue of the sky. Nobody paid any attention to Mr. Trimm as he stood swaying upon his feet. There wasn't a scratch on him. His clothes were hardly rumpled, his hat was still on his head. He stood a minute and then, moved by a sudden impulse, he turned round and went running straight away from the railroad at the best speed his pudgy legs could accomplish, with his arms pumping up and down in front of ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... of wood, thatching the roofs with leaves and straw, domesticating the wild grasses and meadow-roots, fathering them to become the progenitors of rice and millet and wheat and barley and all manner of succulent edibles, learning to scratch the soil, to sow, to reap, to store, beating out the fibres of plants to spin into thread and to weave into cloth, devising systems of irrigation, working in metals, making markets and trade-routes, ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... pictures on the walls, the bright, clean kitchen. He shook his head. "By chops, it's fine!" he said. "It's very nice. Yes, it's very nice. We want to be careful now not to break anything. It's so easy to scratch things up, and then it's all over." Yes, ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... that any mineral in this series, that is of higher number than any other, will scratch the other. Thus diamond (10) will scratch all the others, sapphire (9) will scratch any but diamond, topaz (8) will scratch any but diamond ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... he stopped, as on the previous night, being overcome by a sudden sense of silence. There was not the faintest sound of gnaw, or scratch, or squeak. The silence was as of the grave. He remembered the odd occurrence of the previous night, and instinctively he looked at the chair standing close by the fireside. And then a very ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... danger," I answered; "but I am not an easy person to kill. I have had narrow escapes before, and escaped without a scratch." ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... love and praise my verses, still Thy long black thumb-nail marks them out for ill: A fellon take it, or some whitflaw come For to unslate or to untile that thumb! But cry thee mercy: exercise thy nails To scratch or claw, so that thy tongue not rails: Some numbers prurient are, and some of these Are wanton with their itch; scratch, and ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... a small-tooth comb, sir,' said one of the staff officers. 'And we've raised a scratch pack. Best part of two thousand. Good men, but most of them know nothing about infantry fighting. We've put them into platoons, and done our best to give them some kind of training. There's one thing may cheer you. We've plenty of machine-guns. ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... into neat piles as Angus had instructed him. He came whimpering up with a bruised finger which he held up to the old man. Angus comforted him tenderly, telling him Eddie must be a man and not mind a little scratch. He looked down at this most helpless of his children and gently stroked the boy's ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... the higher values, and it was characteristic of the plane of his mental processes that this one should remind him now of a dark, lithe panther, tensely strung, capable of fierceness. The pain of having her scratch him ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... out laughing. The remark instantly ran over all Versailles. Madame de Maintenon and M. du Maine at once heard it, and nevertheless no sign was anywhere made. To have been angry would only have been to spread it wider: I took the matter as the scratch of an ill- natured cat, and did not allow Lauzun to perceive ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Franklin Davis and my madam was Mrs. Bettie Davis. I and my brother used to scratch her feet and rub them for her; you know how old folks like to have their feet rubbed. My brother and I used to scrap over who should scratch and rub her feet. She would laugh and tell us not to do that way that she loved us both. Sometimes she let me sleep at her feet at night. She ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States • Various
... were on his shoulders—her deep eyes piercing his with a look that meant more to him than all the earth beside. It was the fierce, mother-look of changeless affection, the companion to that savage cry. She held him in a pinching grip, and made sure that he was unhurt, save for that scratch on ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... it was all Lombard-street to a china orange. The Masked Festival on the 18th is a subject of considerable attraction, and wigs of every nature, style, and fashion, are in high request for the occasion—The Bob, the Tye, the Natural Scratch, the Full Bottom, the Queue, the Curl, the Clerical, the Narcissus, the Auricula, the Capital, the Corinthian, the Roman, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch—oh! we are full of business just now. Speaking of the art, by the by, reminds me of a circumstance which ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... certainly told it in a very modest tone; but that a lad could thrash two men armed with knives seemed to me to border on romancing. Young Jocelyn said that the fight did not last more than five minutes, and that Blagrove did not receive a scratch. His delight was excessive, and I fancy Condor is rather a bully. You see there is nobody else in the mess anywhere near his weight and age, and he took advantage of it accordingly. The boy said that after it was over and they ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... in consequence of which his friends insisted on his remaining in camp during the action of the next day, but his spirit was too great to comply with this remonstrance. He declared it should never be said that a scratch, received in a private rencounter, had prevented him from doing his duty, when his country required his service; and he took the field with a fusil in his hand, though he was hardly able to carry his arms. In leading up ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... eagerly. "Why, sir, 'tis easily done. A scratch of the pen is all that is necessary. Oh, 'tis a great thing to have such power! See, here are ink-horn, powder and paper! What doth hinder you from writing an ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... to my work, thinking how many fine people there are in this world—if you scratch 'em ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... girl in London, and she it was who carried the letter to Charles Rennett—a letter that made him scratch his head many times before he took a sheet of paper, and addressing the manager of ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... precipitate retreat; leaving the ground covered with the mingled carcasses of 400 Americans and 800 Frenchmen. Marion's corps fighting with their usual confidence, suffered great loss; himself did not receive a scratch. Colonel Laurens raged like a wounded lion. Soon as the retreat was ordered he paused, and looking round on his fallen men, cried out, "Poor fellows, I envy you!" then hurling his sword in wrath against ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... hot beans in the loop and he's an old-timer. He's always laughing and whenever I see him I think, 'There's a story in that old man. There's sure something odd about him.'" This tip is on scratch paper. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... But already the Plough skirting the amazed opening of his mouth was lost in the trammels of his beard. Thence, as it escaped the rummaging of his fingers, it flew scouring his breast, and inflicted a flying scratch over the regions of his abdomen. Then, still believing it to be the triumphal procession of a flea, he pursued it to his thigh, and mistaking the shadow for the substance allowed it yet again to escape. At his knee-cap there was but a hair's-breadth between ...
— The Field of Clover • Laurence Housman
... No horse could scratch a foothold in the place where our mules are as safe as in a meadow. Come, dear heart, let us be going." But Hedwig hung her head, and did not stir. "What is it, Hedwig?" he asked, bending down to her and softly stroking her hair. "Are ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... worthless. Has the benighted world ever caused us as much pain as some trivial pecuniary loss has done? Have we ever felt the smart of the gaping wounds through which our brothers' blood is pouring forth as much as we do the tiniest scratch on our own fingers? Does it sound to us like exaggerated rhetoric when a prophet breaks out, 'Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep night and day!' or when an Apostle ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... "Not a scratch. I was busy with a lady, who was worrying me about a train to Montclair. She was five minutes making up her mind whether to take the Jersey tunnel or the ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... to the bureau. "Try a nail-file. See if you can't scratch off the lettering. How's this?" He read what he had written for the wire. "'Culver Covington, and so forth. Come quick. First train. Native Son making love to Jean.—Wally.' Ten words, and it tells the whole story. I can hardly explain why ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... there is no intermission. The fight is always hot, keen, bitter. Quietly as the lawyer may handle himself, underneath his calm exterior he is ready to fight, bite, scratch, shoot, kill, slash, but always he must do so under the rules of the game, never hitting below the belt. What the battle is about is the issue, the result is called the verdict, or the decision, and the formal statement of the court as to the ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... river; the poet tells of circles winding downward to the abyss, and upward to the Rose of Paradise; upon the bishop's tomb in St. Praxed's one Pan is carved, and Moses with the tables; upon the gravestone of an Albanian chief they scratch his rifle and his horse; and over the slave's low mound in Angola plantations his basket and mattock are laid, lest he should miss them. So various are the devices contrived for the solace of mankind, or for his instruction. But one by one, like the dead ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... 'Twould make a man scratch where it does not itch, To see forty fools' heads in one politique breech, And that, hugging the nation, as the devil did the witch; Which ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... sick within me. On the boy's cheek was a faint red scratch, just as might have been caused by a slight, very slight contact with ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... to the finest focus, trying hard to understand. He was aware only of the strained silence at first. Then here and there, about the dimmining circle of firelight, he heard the soft rustle of little feet, the subdued crack of a twig or the scratch of a dead leaf. The forest smells—of which there is no category in heaven or earth—reached him with incredible clarity. These were faint, vaguely exciting smells, some of them the exquisite fragrances of summer flowers, others beyond his ken. And presently two small, bright ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... : skandalo. scar : cikatro. scarf : skarpo. scarlet : skarlato. scene : vidajxo, sceno. scenery : pejzajxo. scent : odoro, parfumo; flari. scissors : tondilo. scold : riprocxi, mallauxdi. scorpion : skorpio. scoundrel : kanajlo. scour : frotlavi; scourge : skurgxi. scrape : skrapi, raspi. scratch : grati. screen : sxirm'i, -ilo. screw : sxrauxbo. scrupulous : konscienca, skrupula. sculpture : skulpti. scum : sxauxmo. scurvy : skorbuto. seal : sigel'i, -o, (animal) foko. seaside : marbordo. season : sezono; spici. seasonable : gxustatempa. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... on where only eight had been before. The mounted men hurried on the daubed and wearied droves of Commissariat beasts. Smoots Beste drove the scratch team of bullocks, but his heart was as water within his belly, and there was no resonance in the smack of his whip. When the convoy came to a town, he vanished, and the story thenceforth knows him no more. The discreet sergeant of police did not even notice that he was missing until several ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... I lov'd this woman, how I worshipt this prettie calf with the white face here: as I live, you were the prettiest fool to play withall, the wittiest little varlet, it would talk: Lord how it talk't! and when I angred it, it would cry out, and scratch, and eat no meat, and it would say, ...
— The Scornful Lady • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... rule Napoleon followed out with a vengeance. He himself said in later years: "I was self-willed and obstinate, nothing awed me, nothing disconcerted me. I was quarrelsome, exasperating; I feared no one. I gave a blow here and a scratch there. Every one was afraid of me. My brother Joseph was the one with whom I had the most to do. He was beaten, bitten, scolded. I complained that he did not get ...
— Boys' Book of Famous Soldiers • J. Walker McSpadden
... den, as if de ole scratch was at my heels, fur he flung his cane at me so hard, dat when it struck, it stood straight up in de ground. I peeked roun' de ara winder when I got out ob reach, and he was shakin' all ober, he wus so mad, and swarin' fit ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... roundhouse at Conemaugh, two miles away, are conspicuous. Amid the general wreck, beneath one of these heavy iron tanks, a looking glass, two feet by one foot in dimensions, was discovered intact, without even a scratch on the quicksilver. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... would keep the observations up to scratch if the chaps knew they were going to be used. Who else do you think ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... fair sex. With his sneering ways and affectation of reticence, he now doubtless knew a great deal more than she did. Paris was fast taking all the remaining rust off him; and Rosalie stood before him, delighted yet angry, undecided whether to scratch his face or let him give utterance ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... is all you want.' And making an extra scratch with a pencil, the female model surveyed the new-comers with a triumphant air, plainly saying: 'See there! I can write, but I am ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... who gave Henry VI. of Lancaster the crown of Saint-Louis, and the blazon of England still bears—until I scratch them out with ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... in the last sentence and her proud soul rebelled, but smoothly as ever she spoke: "I have searched and there is not the littlest scratch. But Ananda is weeping because the deer is dead, and his mother is angry. What ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... around, he ran abroad, Of every puddle drinking. The house with rage he scratch'd and gnaw'd, In vain,—he fast was Sinking; Full many an anguish'd bound he gave, Nothing the hapless brute could save, As if his ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... innocence, the remark of a certain ancient and reverend man, though sour, was critically accurate,—that "it is the weakness of infants' limbs, and not their minds, which are innocent." It is most true. Many an impotent infantine screech or slap or scratch embodies an abandonment and ecstasy of utter uncontrolled fury scarcely expressible by the grown-up man, though he should work the bloodiest murder to express it. And what adult manifestation, except in the violent ward of an insane retreat, or perhaps ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... Charity," said he, gratefully. "But I can't afford to scratch my neck." And coolly he took a fold of my brown silk skirt, patted it over the straw, and with a sigh of satisfaction rested ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... cat to carry it to the mill, Sing ivy, sing ivy; The miller he swore he would have her paw, And the cat she swore she would scratch his face, Sing ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... confronted with the visible temptation of pomatum, he hesitates, and scratches his head violently. Surrounding him there are ten or twenty other natives with their minds in a similar wavering state, but yet anxious to be served forthwith. In consequence of the stimulating scratch, he remembers that one of his wives said he was to bring some Lucifer matches, another wanted cloth for herself, and another knew of some rubber she could buy very cheap, in tobacco, of a Fan woman ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... you how she acted," said Harry, with a laugh, "and old Scratch isn't half bad 'nough. Say! She wanted to have a wedding for her best doll the other day, and she cut a lace curtain off a yard from the floor to make a wedding veil ...
— Princess Polly's Playmates • Amy Brooks
... again; and now he had a chance to make another discovery. He had felt sharp stinging sensations which caused him to scratch himself frantically. Then suddenly he realized that he was lying upon a ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... nothing has been heard of Lieutenant IVANITCH," was the remark of our leading journal a propos of Russian disappearances. Is it not probable that IVANITCH, unable to find a post to suit him, has gone on tour with a "scratch company"? ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, December 5, 1891 • Various
... she could not scratch, and Agnes and Ruth "plucked" her and wiped off the molasses as best they could. But it was several days ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... respectful to Mr. Linton; but he worshipped Mrs. Brown, the cook, and her appearance at the kitchen door, which he could see from his stand, caused an instant outbreak of cheers and chatter, varied by touching appeals to "scratch Cocky." His chief foe was Mrs. Brown's big yellow cat, who not only dared to share the adored one's affections, but was openly aggressive at times, and loved to steal the ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... the work in hand. Don Diego sulkily made the sign of the cross at the Name, and Don Ruy noted that the good father was good on the parry—and if he could use a blade as he did words, he would be a rare fencer for sport. One could clang steel all day and no one be the bearer of a scratch! ...
— The Flute of the Gods • Marah Ellis Ryan
... the breath from a furnace; and Wunpost woke up suddenly to hear his wilted terrier barking furiously as he raced towards the house. There was a moment of silence, then the spit and yell of a cat and as Wunpost stood grinning his dog came slinking back licking the blood from a scratch across his nose. He was a fullblooded fox terrier, but small and white and trembly; and the baby-blue in his eyes pleaded of youth and inexperience as he ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... world—and that was against him. However, Time and the progress of modern enlightenment put things right; and the mis-alliance passed muster very well. We are all getting liberal now; and (provided you can scratch me, if I scratch you) what do I care, in or out of Parliament, whether you are a Dustman or a Duke? That's the modern way of looking at it—and I keep up with the modern way. The Ablewhites lived in a fine house and grounds, a little out of Frizinghall. Very worthy people, ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... Kinnear turned into Nelson's Channel, the very worst channel in the very worst straits in the world, unlit, uncharted, and full of the wildest currents swirling through pinnacle rocks and over hidden reefs. The cruiser stopped, dumbfounded. The Ortega then felt her way ahead, got through without a scratch, and took her ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... TOOL.—A most useful special tool, which combines in its make-up a level, plumb try-square, miter-square, bevel, scratch awl, depth gage, marking gage, miter gage, beam compass, and a one-foot rule. To the boy who wishes to economize in the purchase of tools this is an article which ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... the open road, until broad sunlight warned him to a safer path across the fields. He had been too much of a rambler during those long Saturday afternoons at Ashfield, to have any dread of a tramp through swamp-land or briers. "Who cared for wet feet or a scratch? Who cared for a rough scramble through the bush, or a wade (if it came to that) through ever so big a brook? Who cared for old Brummem and his white-faced nag?" In fact, he had the pleasure of seeing the parson's venerable chaise lumbering along the public road at a ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... are not a witch, Olive. You are not. If Ann says so I will pinch her and scratch her. I will! yes, I will—I will scratch her till the blood runs. You are not a witch. I was the one that got them into jail. I stuck pins into my doll, but I have made up for it now. They'll be ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... man was rounded up, among others a body of American engineers. Laborers, sappers, raw recruits as well as soldiers of every arm. There were plenty of machine guns, but few men knew how to handle them. With this scratch army in temporary trenches, he lay for six days, and as Lloyd George said, "They held the German army and closed that gap ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... wound, not even a bruise or a scratch, was to be found. Hence, it became evident that this terrible struggle must have been exceedingly short. The murder of the pretended soldier must have been consummated between the moment when the squad of police heard the shrieks of despair and the moment when Lecoq peered through ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... down the street, "Carry them as you please." So mine is looped in the strap that supports my belt, and the pack is slung. And while everyone else is adjusting his pack, or dropping the sides of the tent near his cot, or loosening the tent guy-ropes, I scratch this.—Now the bugle, and the whistle, and the last hasty running and calls, and in a moment we shall be assembled, each with ten blank cartridges in his belt (the first time we have had them) and shall be off in ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... assistance because of a wound on his head. Knowing that the Dayaks are always ready to seize an opportunity to obtain medicine, even when they are well, I postponed examining into his case. He had merely a scratch on his forehead—not even ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... bullet had only grazed me, and the laugh of relief Lowell gave when he raised his head, and said, "Why, it's only a scratch," meant as much to me as though he had rendered me some great service. For it seemed to prove a genuine, friendly concern, and no one, except Laguerre, had shown that for me since I had left home. I had taken a fancy to Lowell ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... (thus indicating they were loose), the machine turned on its back, and settled a little faster than a parachute. When we reached Maloney he was unconscious and lived only thirty minutes. The only mark of any kind on him was a scratch from a wire on the side of his neck. The six attending physicians were puzzled at the cause of his death. This is remarkable for a vertical ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... on the part of women to form a new party, nor to favor their own sex. They are more inclined than men to scratch the ticket and, as illustrated in the case of Judge Lindsey, they sometimes rally efficiently around an independent candidate, especially on a moral issue. On the whole, women vote with their husbands, ...
— Woman in Modern Society • Earl Barnes
... the Jotun gave her another jubilant toss. "You blustering field-mouse! Showing your teeth already? Who knows? If you meet a blind Englishman without a weapon, you may even kill him. Here," he tumbled her roughly to the ground, "tie up your pin-scratch and then come after me. I must go up yonder to Canute, under the oak tree. If you are too tired to wield the sword, tie your hand to the hilt, and no man shall have a better will to do harm to the English. Frode the Dane will ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... hand to his head, to find a big lump directly back of the ear. His ear was cut, and there was a scratch ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... cruises I had plenty of money, and determined to have another spell on shore, that I might get rid of it. Then I picked up Sue, and spliced again; but, Lord bless your heart, she turned out a regular built tartar—nothing but fight fight, scratch scratch, all day long, till I wished her at old Scratch. I was tired of her, and Sue had taken a fancy to another chap; so says she one day, "As we both be of the same mind, why don't you sell me, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... friendy. Then she would stop and speak a few pretty words to me. She use to shake my cape, with all her strength and might, Every time I told her, They would both put one foot into my hand, Every time I told them, They would both scratch my hand, and peck on my cap, Every ...
— A Complete Edition of the Works of Nancy Luce • Nancy Luce
... spontaneously charges itself with electricity. If the glass has a weak spot, a scratch say, an electric spark is produced at that point and the vessel crumbles, just like a ...
— Marvels of Modern Science • Paul Severing
... Bobby safely into the hotel lobby. He was exasperated beyond measure that this very evening, of all, should have ended in his participation in a vulgar street brawl. So far he had succeeded in keeping Bobby from knowing that he was wounded, but the beastly scratch was bleeding furiously, and he had to keep his hand behind, him to prevent her ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... the doctor, with the same measured utterance. 'You recoil from this arrangement. Do you expect me to convince you? You know very well that I have never held the Mormon view of women. Absorbed in the most arduous studies, I have left the slatterns whom they call my wives to scratch and quarrel among themselves; of me, they have had nothing but my purse; such was not the union I desired, even if I had the leisure to pursue it. No: you need not, madam, and my old friend'—and here the doctor ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... harmless to the ground, and there was not even a scratch on the wicked lord's skin, and for a moment Buccleuch ...
— Tales From Scottish Ballads • Elizabeth W. Grierson
... life in hunting and was very successful, killing the last gang of wolves to be found in his neighborhood; and he slew innumerable bears, with no worse results to himself than an occasional bite or scratch. ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... Lorenzo, as though to render him assistance in the divine service, suddenly attacked him with daggers, but unskilfully. Lorenzo scrambled to his feet, and, casting his heavy mantle of State over his shoulders, drew his sword in self-defence. Turning to see who his opponents were, he received a scratch in the neck from Stefano's steel. Then, from the raised dais, he descried the tumult at the choir gates, whilst cries of "Il Giuliano e ...
— The Tragedies of the Medici • Edgcumbe Staley
... divisional surgeon, or some other medical official, directs me to bring this poor fellow's body to London to-night. Every care must be taken, warmth and air applied, and so on. They've evidently got a notion that, since life appears to go so easily in the Grey Room, and leave no scratch or wound, either life has not gone at all, or that it may be within the power of science to bring it back again. In a sense this is a reflection upon me—as though it were possible that I could make any mistake between death and suspended ...
— The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts
... hands look longer, as is the fashion now-a-days. No sooner had Sancho caught sight of them than, bellowing like a bull, he exclaimed, "I might let myself be handled by all the world; but allow duennas to touch me—not a bit of it! Scratch my face, as my master was served in this very castle; run me through the body with burnished daggers; pinch my arms with red-hot pincers; I'll bear all in patience to serve these gentlefolk; but I won't let duennas touch me, though the devil ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... William, on perceiving them, quietly pushes them back again, without a word. So great is his repugnance to dooming even a hardened criminal to death, by a mere scratch of his pen. ...
— ZigZag Journeys in Northern Lands; - The Rhine to the Arctic • Hezekiah Butterworth
... children's teeth come without paine" was this: "Take the head of a Hare boyled a walm or two or roahed; and with the braine thereof mingle Honey and butter and therewith anoynt the Childes gums as often as you please." Still further advice was to scratch the child's gums with an osprey bone, or to hang fawn's teeth or wolf's fangs ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... not have restrained Lawrence from such an invitation, much less a little scratch on the hand; and his injury having been dressed by this time, he was about to set out with the messenger, when James appealed to him from the next room, begging to be allowed to look ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... an almost monstrous shortness of legs, so that they move by jumping rather than by walking; they are said not to scratch up the ground. I have examined a Burmese variety, which had a skull ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication - Volume I • Charles Darwin
... port quarter or the starboard bow. These ships were designed for fighting head-on; and hence to use them to best advantage Admiral Ting formed his squadron in line abreast, with the Ting-yuen and Chen-yuen in the center. The rest of the line were a "scratch lot" of much smaller vessels—two armored cruisers (Lai-yuen and King-yuen) with 8 to 9-inch armored belts; three protected cruisers (Tsi-yuen, Chi-yuen, and Kwang-ping) with 2 to 4-inch armored decks; on the left flank the old corvette Kwang-chia; and ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... like they have wings for the kitchen door, so can get in and get the guns and fight from the windows. I know whatte they want, so I run to the door to throw wide, and whatte I see but that devil Franco lock it and stan in front. I jump on him so can scratch his eyes out, but he keeck me in the estomac and for few minutes I no ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... to the whole mass of our planet. It should never be forgotten that what we call 'catastrophes,' are, in relation to the earth, changes, the equivalents of which would be well represented by the development of a few pimples, or the scratch of a pin, on a man's head. Vast regions of the earth's surface remain geologically unknown; but the area already fairly explored is many times greater than it was in 1837; and, in many parts of Europe and the United States, the structure of the superficial crust of the earth has ...
— The Advance of Science in the Last Half-Century • T.H. (Thomas Henry) Huxley
... that you would scratch the whole lot," said I, "even the pocket diary for 1915 that I send ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... beautiful Madam Whitworth before my Cherry had befallen me as a gift, and which I had without thought brought into that prison with me, I parried the blow of the knife at my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner, but not in such a manner as to prevent a glancing of that knife, which inflicted a scratch of considerable depth upon my forearm under its sleeve ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... silly boy, and you tell him I said so," answered the tall policeman promptly. "Of course a bad boy might not want to see me; but this was a mighty good lad, to my way of thinking. He has an old head on young shoulders, to get you out of such a mix-up without a scratch." ...
— Sunny Boy and His Playmates • Ramy Allison White
... the question whether the severity of a hurt should be considered in apportioning the punishment, we are reminded of "examples which are universally known. Harley was laid up more than twenty days by the wound which he received from Guiscard;" while "the scratch which Damien gave to Louis the Fifteenth was so slight that it was followed by no feverish symptoms." Such a sanguine estimate of the diffusion of knowledge with regard to the details of ancient crimes could proceed from no pen but ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... Nopitu, which come invisibly, or possess those with whom they associate themselves. The possessed are called Nopitu. Such persons would lift a cocoa-nut to drink, and native shell money would run out instead of the juice and rattle against their teeth; they would vomit up money, or scratch and shake themselves on a mat, when money would pour from their fingers. This was often seen, and believed to be the doing of a Nopitu. In another manner of manifestation, a Nopitu would make himself known as a party were sitting round an evening fire. A man ...
— A Philological Essay Concerning the Pygmies of the Ancients • Edward Tyson
... Gosh-A'mighty, son—I thought you had started in to clean out the ranch! You downed my rooster and you like to plugged me an' that heifer there. The bullit come singin' along and plunked into the rain-bar'l and most scared me to death. What in the ole scratch started you on the ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... rather than pleasure, come to this mor- 212:9 tal sense? Because the memory of pain is more vivid than the memory of pleasure. I have seen an unwitting attempt to scratch the end of a finger which had been cut 212:12 off for months. When the nerve is gone, which we say was the occasion of pain, and the pain still remains, it proves sensation to be in the mortal mind, not in matter. 212:15 Reverse the process; take away this so-called mind instead ...
— Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures • Mary Baker Eddy
... what he or I'd call hurt at all. He's got a scalp wound, where a bullet bounced off his skull. It's only a scratch. Then he's got another in the shoulder; but it's not ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... it isn't true. Anyhow: I want every one of those cars checked for any oddity, no matter how small. If there's an inch-long scratch on one fender, I want to know about it. If you've got to take the cars apart, then ...
— Out Like a Light • Gordon Randall Garrett
... them,' she said, 'and invest the proceeds in my own name; but even that will hardly keep the wolf from the door, for Frank is growing more and more imbecile every day, and Tom is good for nothing. He'll have to scratch for himself, though, I ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... see the dew-bedabbled wretch Turn, and return, indenting with the way; Each envious brier his weary legs doth scratch, Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay: For misery is trodden on by many, And being ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... toil and moil, sweat on the shirts on the backs of them that dries only to crust, meat and bread in their bellies, roofs that don't leak, a brood of youngsters to live after them, to live the same beast-lives of toil, to fill their bellies with the same meat and bread, to scratch their backs with the same sweaty shirts, and to go into the dark knowing only meat and bread, and, ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... Why the devil should I scratch around for pennies. I'll make one swoop, and that's an end to it! Only God give us the nerve! Thanks, Lazar. You've treated me like a friend. [He rises] Now, get busy! [He goes up to him and taps him on the shoulder] If you get the thing ...
— Plays • Alexander Ostrovsky
... he gave a slow, puzzled scratch at his shaggy head as if hard at work trying to make out a mystery, before turning once more ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... years and at the time of report, measured 1.15 and 1.02 meters. In 1874 they were under the care of the Royal Geographical Society of Italy. They were intelligent in their manner, but resented being lionized too much, and were prone to scratch ladies who ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... acquired, and my ideas upon every subject. When the whole surface of the table was covered with my lucubrations, I perused and re-perused them, meditated on what I had already meditated, and, at length, resolved (however unwillingly) to scratch out all I had done with the glass, in order to have a clean superficies upon ...
— My Ten Years' Imprisonment • Silvio Pellico
... struck Arnold squarely on the shoulder, nearly knocking him down and making him lose hold of his bag. The other struck Lily's bag, and conditions became worse; but she held on despite a scratch. Lily ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... very much against you," answered the Fairy; "and it is quite plain to me that those spurs are meant to scratch with. No, I cannot ...
— Wonder-Box Tales • Jean Ingelow
... there was a great slope or semi-mound which had in old times been utilised as a wholesale grave for the victims of plague and other epidemics. It strikes me now as most perilous, but we boys used to dig and scratch among bones and other debris for on occasional coin or lead token, whereof I found several; it is only a wonder that we did not unearth pestilence, but mould is fortunately very antiseptic. Another playground peculiarity was that after the hoop season, usually driven in duplicate ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Toyish Conceits, as ever to be said to be in Fashion, or out of Fashion. I remember there was a Fashion, not many years since, for Women in their Apparel to be so Pent up by the Straitness, and Stiffness of their Gown-Shoulder-Sleeves, that They could not so much as Scratch Their Heads, for the Necessary Remove of a Biting Louse; nor Elevate their Arms scarcely to feed themselves Handsomly; nor Carve a Dish of Meat at a Table, but their whole Body must needs Bend towards the Dish. This must needs be concluded by Reason, a most Vnreasonable, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... bucket down by the pond,' says t'other, 'safe an' sound an' not a scratch on her; you come and look,' says he. So Tim follows him, he hobblin', and they goes to the pond side, and there, sure enough, stood a tin bucket full of wather, an' on the wather the refliction of ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Cape; but he felt confident that we had come out to the westward of Le Maire. Marble was silent; but he had observed, and made his calculations, before either of the others had commenced the last. I saw him scratch his head, and go to the chart which lay on the companionway. Then I heard ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... waited, and jealously. Those within also waited, for a sentry was passing just above. Presently he was gone, and Charley leaned forward and put his ear against the tent, when he heard the scratch of a match. ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... or read of. In clouds they came, and pinged and buzzed and bit till we were nearly mad. Tobacco smoke only seemed to stir them into a merrier and more active life, till at length we were driven to covering ourselves with blankets, head and all, and sitting to slowly stew and continually scratch and swear beneath them. And as we sat, suddenly rolling out like thunder through the silence came the deep roar of a lion, and then of a second lion, moving among the reeds ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... "Jest a scratch on mah cheek," replied Johnson. "But it was so close, sah, dat it done made me mad. I hit one ...
— The Young Treasure Hunter - or, Fred Stanley's Trip to Alaska • Frank V. Webster
... sleep for a long time, and lay contemplating the scenes of the day. I was merely scratched on the face myself during the whole day, besides being a little shaken by the bursting of the shell I mentioned; but this scratch had been terribly aggravated by a private who had been standing next to me having overprimed his musket, with the consequence that when he fired, my face being so close, the powder flew up and caught my wound, which though only originally a slight one soon made me dance ...
— The Autobiography of Sergeant William Lawrence - A Hero of the Peninsular and Waterloo Campaigns • William Lawrence
... Then either there were no pictures in his book, or (if there were any) they were done by some other man that loved him not a groat and would not have walked half a mile to see him hanged. But now it is so easy for a man to scratch down what he sees and put it in his book that any fool may do it and be none the worse—many others shall follow. This ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... in mute astonishment alternately at the paper and the gray unknown. In the meantime he had dipped a new pen in a drop of blood which was issuing from a scratch in my hand just made by a thorn. He presented it to me. "Who are you?" at last I exclaimed. "What can it signify?" he answered: "do you not perceive who I am? A poor devil—a sort of scholar and philosopher, who obtains but poor thanks from his friends for his admirable arts, ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... end of the first bout neither of us had received a scratch, but Griscelli showed signs of fatigue while I was quite fresh. Also he was very angry and excited, and when we resumed he came at me with more than his former impetuosity, as if he meant to bear me down by the sheer weight and rapidity of his strokes. His favorite attack was a cut aimed ...
— Mr. Fortescue • William Westall
... contest lay, and the others determined that I was one man's competitor and Stocks [John Ellerton Stocks, M.D., London, distinguished himself as a botanist in India. He travelled and collected in Beloochistan and Scinde; died 1854.] (he is now in the East India service) the other. Scratch, scratch, scratch! Four o'clock came, the usual hour of closing the examination, but Stocks and I had not half done, so with the consent of the others we petitioned for an extension. The examiner was willing to let us go on as long as we liked. Never did I see man write like Stocks; one might ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... so; Thou bear'st with her, because she bears with thee. Thou may'st be ashamed to stand in her defence: She is a strumpet, and thou art no honest man To stand in her defence against thy wife. If I catch her in my walk, now, by Cock's[250] bones, I'll scratch ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... not gone to see Mr. Lusch in Waterloo, for I had learned that so far from being killed, Captain Gowdy had come through Shiloh without a scratch, and that he had soon afterward resigned and gone back to Monterey County. It has always been believed, but I don't know why, that he was allowed to resign either because of his relationship to the great Confederate ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... up their ears. The next min-ute they saw what it was. A dog came to-ward them at full speed, howl-ing with fright, while close at his heels was a cat wild with rage. Her ears were laid back, and she meant to catch and scratch the dog if she could. But he was too fleet for her, and as they looked they saw puss give up the chase and ...
— A Bit of Sunshine • Unknown
... one of Her Majesty's visits to the Crystal Palace. Among the American manufactures were some fine soaps, and among these a small head, done in white Castile, and so exactly like marble that the Queen doubted the soap story, and in her impulsive, investigating way was about to test it with a scratch of her shawl-pin, when the Yankee exhibitor stayed her hand, and drew forth a courteous apology by the loyal remonstrance—"Pardon, your Majesty,—it is ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... get out of the paddock, it may be safely asserted; and then, when he was examined, it was discovered, much to the wonder of everybody, including himself, that, beyond a scratch or two from the branches of the elm, he was quite unhurt, in spite of the toss the bull gave him and his unexpected flight ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... says. 'The woman is earning her daily bread—actually helpin' her husband. Did you ever hear o' such a thing! I'll have to scratch 'em off my list. It's ...
— Keeping up with Lizzie • Irving Bacheller
... and spooks? I been meetin' up with 'em all my life. When I was younger I was such an old scratch I'd meet 'em right in de road, some without heads. I'd take to my heels and then I'd stop and look 'round and they'd ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... Conceits, as ever to be said to be in Fashion, or out of Fashion. I remember there was a Fashion, not many years since, for Women in their Apparel to be so Pent up by the Straitness, and Stiffness of their Gown-Shoulder-Sleeves, that They could not so much as Scratch Their Heads, for the Necessary Remove of a Biting Louse; nor Elevate their Arms scarcely to feed themselves Handsomly; nor Carve a Dish of Meat at a Table, but their whole Body must needs Bend towards the Dish. This must needs be concluded by Reason, a most Vnreasonable, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... six years of such far-flung internal preparedness in our history. And this has been done without any dictator's power to command, without conscription of labor or confiscation of capital, without concentration camps and without a scratch on freedom of speech, freedom of the press or the rest of the Bill ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... nevertheless believe he'll play it. That's why," Miss Barrace kindly went on, "we take such an interest in you. We feel you'll come up to the scratch." And then as he seemed perhaps not quite to take fire: "Don't let him ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... contemptible assailants. Of all that they wrote against him, nothing has survived except what he has himself preserved. But the constitution of his mind resembled the constitution of those bodies in which the slightest scratch of a bramble, or the bite of a gnat, never fails to fester. Though his reputation was rather raised than lowered by the abuse of such writers as Freron and Desfontaines, though the vengeance which he took on Freron and Desfontaines ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... placed in a beaker of water and the water is heated by a Bunsen burner. As the water becomes warmer and warmer the level of the mercury in the tube steadily rises until the water boils, when the level remains stationary (Fig. 9). A scratch is made on the tube to indicate the point to which the mercury rises when the bulb is placed in boiling water, and this point is marked 212 deg.. The tube is then removed from the boiling water, and after cooling for a few minutes, it is placed in a vessel containing finely ...
— General Science • Bertha M. Clark
... lime in the food is often obvious when children show a tendency to eat chalk, and even to scratch walls in order to eat the ...
— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann
... they are unsurrounded by protecting fence or the moral restrictions of dominant Mussulmans, and the sheep, cows, and goats of the "infidel giaour" graze among them; and oh, shade of Mohammed! hogs also scratch their backs against the tombstones and root around, at their own sweet will, sometimes unearthing skulls and bones, which it is the Turkish custom not to bury at any great depth. The great number and extent of these cemeteries seem ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... he cried; "you've got off light, for there's no a scratch on your lily-white cheek, and the blood-letting from the nose will clear out the dregs of ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... her hands and shins, which were rendered necessary in consequence of Tony's activity with his nails and the toes of his boots, to say nothing of his teeth. For many weeks past—it seemed to her years—Miss Trim had not bandaged a cut, or fomented a bruise, or mollified a scratch with ointment. She absolutely felt as though she ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... with a frightened, piteous look in its eyes, and mewed in a strange manner. For a moment I was startled, for the animal clung to my breeches. The poor creature looked half-starved. In its frenzy, it might bite or scratch my leg or hand. Blood-poisoning would be likely to follow. I gently lowered my gloved hand and caressed its head. With a soft purr it relaxed its hold of my leg and dropped to the ground. Feeling more comfortable I unfastened my satchel and, taking out ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... neither. You've ungently, Brutus, Stole from my bed: and yesternight at supper You suddenly arose, and walk'd about, Musing and sighing, with your arms across; 240 And when I ask'd you what the matter was, You star'd upon me with ungentle looks: I urg'd you further; then you scratch'd your head, And too impatiently stamp'd with your foot: Yet I insisted, yet you answer'd not, 245 But with an angry wafture of your hand Gave sign for me to leave you. So I did, Fearing to strengthen that impatience ...
— The New Hudson Shakespeare: Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare
... then yet is, we yt should be partners of humilitie and peace, shall be examples of jangling & insulting. Yet your money which you ther [Southampton] must have, we will get provided for you instantly. 500li. you say will serve; for ye rest which hear & in Holand is to be used, we may goe scratch for it. For Mr. Crabe, of whom you write, he hath promised to goe with us, yet I tell you I shall not be without feare till I see him shipped, for he [i.e. his going] is much opposed, yet I hope he will not faile. Thinke ye best of all, and bear with patience what is wanting, and ye Lord guid ...
— The Mayflower and Her Log, Complete • Azel Ames
... services, the Somerset East Mounted Rifles had become reduced to less than half their original strength: yet fortune so far favoured me that when at length the corps was disbanded I was one of the very few who escaped without so much as a scratch to show ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the bear swam along the edge to a lower place, and we pulled Chadozee up by means of our lariats. All this time he had been groaning so loud that we supposed he was badly torn; but when I looked for his wounds I found a mere scratch." ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... of the yellow hen was reprehensible in the extreme. The comments passed upon her would have been sufficient to make her wince, had she been a hen of any sensibility. But regardless of the disapproval so openly expressed, she continued to scratch and summon her brood, with every indication of being perfectly ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... greatest innocence and assuming to be thinking of anything but making an attack. So playful a creature, enjoying itself thoroughly in the sunshine, could never have approached a walrus herd before. Now it was rolling legs upward, and giving itself a peculiar wriggle, as if to scratch its back; then it was sitting up like a cat, and reaching round to have a lick at the part of its person which had just been rubbed in the ice. A minute later it was on its flank, with all four legs stretched out, and its muzzle in the snow; and all these changes were made with ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... events," I thought, "I'll be handsomely clothed if there's a scratch-quarrel with Walter Butler—which God avert!" Then for the first time it occurred to me that it might not be Walter Butler, but I myself, lying stretched on the lawn behind the Coq d'Or, and I was comforted to know that, ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... the great shaggy head moved, only an infuriating scratch was given, the smoke betrayed the man's place, and the Grizzly made savage, three-legged haste ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Thompson Seton
... ground," and the attempt made by three battalions, with two other battalions in reserve, to capture it. A battalion of Zouaves, under the command of Colonel Cere, carried it in fine style, but the Russian reserves came up in great force, and their own reserves "declining to come to the scratch," as Gordon laconically put it, the Zouaves were in their turn compelled to fall back, with a loss of 200 killed. Encouraged by this success, the Russians gave the French another surprise a few days later, throwing up a second battery 300 yards further in advance of the first ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... passed, bringing with them no further sound, and she slowly opened her fingers. Through them, instead of a prostrate corpse, she saw the boy standing erect before her. There was a smear of dust upon his coat and face where he had fallen, and a scratch upon his cheek, which bled a bit, but otherwise he was apparently unhurt. From beneath his long lashes as she looked, the blue eyes met hers, deliberate ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... some of our officers to bring us round to face them proved unavailing. I am utterly unable to give any clear account of what followed immediately after that, for we were all, friends and foes, mixed up for some minutes in the wildest confusion, and how I ever got out of it all without a scratch is a mystery to me. More than once I was in violent collision with Colorado men, distinguished from ours by their uniform, and several furious blows with sword and lance were aimed at me, but somehow I escaped them all. I emptied the six chambers of my Colt's revolver, but whether my bullets ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... clearing dust three figures were visible, extricating themselves from the ruins. Sanders, the hotel chauffeur, was groaning and rubbing his ankle. His only passenger, a bald, thick-set man, with smooth face and bulldog jaw, had a bleeding scratch down his right cheek and a badly torn coat. Whittington, apparently unharmed, was chalky ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... first cleaned as thoroughly as possible to remove all extraneous impurities. In the cleaning operations care should be taken to scratch or abrade the bran as little as possible, for this reason: The outer coating of the bran is hard and more or less friable. Wherever it is scratched a portion is liable to become finely comminuted in the subsequent reductions, so finely that it is impossible to separate it from the flour by bolting, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... you've never been a journalist! The agony, the violence to soul, when you have to come up to scratch, when your copy has to be delivered by a certain hour! Writing without time to revise or even to read what you've already written—the compositors setting up the beginning of an article while you're still writing the middle. . . . And the public pays its ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... from eating canned meat is just a "bug-a-boo." It should be clearly understood that botulism is one of the very rare maladies. The chances for getting it by eating canned goods, say the experts, is rather less than the chances from dying of lockjaw every time you scratch your finger. To regard every can as a source of botulism is worse than regarding every dog as a source of hydrophobia. Moreover, for the very timid, there is the comforting certainty that the exceedingly slight danger is completely eliminated by re-cooking the ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... cooked! Mark that. There is not a surer shot, or a deadlier foe on earth then Persimmon Bill. He has defied the whole border for the past three years—ridden right into a military post and shot men down, and got away without a scratch. They say he has been adopted by the Sioux, and if he has, with such backing he'll do more ...
— Wild Bill's Last Trail • Ned Buntline
... from another direction as he saw this strange sight: a horse galloping madly over the prairie, on its back a young man shouting loudly, and in his arms a small dirty child, alternately snarling at his captor, trying to scratch his face, ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... some of the causes we have stated is the extreme idleness of the Irish labourer. There is nothing of the value of which the Irish seem to have so little notion as that of time. They scratch, pick, dawdle, stare, gape, and do anything but strive and wrestle with the task before them. The most ludicrous of all human objects is an Irishman ploughing. A gigantic figure—a seven-foot machine for turning potatoes in ...
— Peter Plymley's Letters and Selected Essays • Sydney Smith
... suffered a little in the beginning of the action; three Mexicans had been killed and eighteen wounded, as well as two Apaches. Of my Shoshones, not one received the smallest scratch; and the Arrapahoes, who had been left to scour the prairie, joined us a short time after the battle ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... small rubber-pouch containing a few drams of the poison; the pouch was worn strapped to the waist on the left side, when on their hunting excursions, and they were extremely careful in handling it and the arrows. The slightest scratch with the poison would cause a ...
— In The Amazon Jungle - Adventures In Remote Parts Of The Upper Amazon River, Including A - Sojourn Among Cannibal Indians • Algot Lange
... certain person down among the crowd, who had a yellow wig, should be at once put away, or something bad would happen. This done, the Czar became quiet again. The Czarina added, he was subject to such attacks of frenzy; and that, when she saw it, she would scratch his head, which moderated him. 'VOILA MONSIEUR,' concluded the King, addressing me: ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... "Just a little scratch, sir," protested the trooper. "But even if I had no right arm at all, I could ride and shoot, and when it came to yelling I'd ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... story in a few incoherent phrases. The old man examined and dressed his wound, but remained curiously silent throughout the story. At last he said: "See here, my lad; let me tell you, this is serious business. I don't mean this scratch of a bullet—don't you be uneasy about that; but this whole row is mine. They haven't any grudge against you, but you're a sheep herder for me, and that is bad business just now. If you've killed a man ...
— The Eagle's Heart • Hamlin Garland
... ago, a tuft of grass growing at the foot of one of the grand marble columns of the Parthenon at the Acropolis at Athens, I found a compass mark in the footing, or foundation—a mere scratch in the stone—made, probably, by some architect's assistant, before the Christian era. I make no claim to more than having made a scratch of some sort on the foundation stone of some pillar, or other, of Confederation. And I throw together these ...
— Canada and the States • Edward William Watkin
... force of constables claimed admittance, forty-one women, virtually indistinguishable one from the other, ran out into the street, and the bewildered minions of the law were left lifting their helmets to scratch puzzled heads and admitting "the wimmen were a bit too much for us, this ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... skirmish, Lincoln had received the scratch of a lance, at which he was chafing in his own peculiar way, and vowing revenge upon the giver. It might be said that he had taken this, as he had driven his short bayonet through his antagonist's arm, and sent him off with this member hanging by his side. ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... after three cruises I had plenty of money, and determined to have another spell on shore, that I might get rid of it. Then I picked up Sue, and spliced again; but, Lord bless your heart, she turned out a regular built tartar—nothing but fight fight, scratch scratch, all day long, till I wished her at old Scratch. I was tired of her, and Sue had taken a fancy to another chap; so says she one day, "As we both be of the same mind, why don't you sell me, and then we may part in a respectable manner." I agrees; and I puts a halter round her neck, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... voice said in his earphones. "Just sit tight. I'm bringing you back in. There's a call here from Sun Lake City. They want you down there in a hurry. We'll have to scratch you ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse
... were accompanied by a corresponding gesture. With the point of his knife, the savage traced a circle upon my breast—just as if he had been scribing it on the bark of a tree. The scratch was light, though here and there it drew blood. At the words "red spot in the centre," as if to make the direction more emphatic, he punctured the spot with his knife till the blood flowed freely. Had he driven the blade to its hilt, I could ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... The ropes, cased in frozen spray, were as thick as a man's arm, and if the wind had increased much we would have had to cut away the sails, since there was no possibility of lowering them. Some members of the scratch crew were played out by the cold and the violent tossing. The schooner was about seventy feet long, and she responded to the motions of the storm-racked sea in a manner that might have disconcerted ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... To make the polish look nice, rub it with an old silk handkerchief, being careful first of all to dust off any small particles, which otherwise are apt to scratch the surface. ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... let her child run barefoot, no matter how they clamor to do it. If they wish to go shoeless, let them wear bathing sandals without stockings, is the advice of the writer, who adds, the germ of tetanus, better known as lockjaw, is frequently found in the soil and a child with even a small scratch or cut takes big risks. For girls, especially, running barefoot should be a forbidden pleasure as it makes the ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... sir; a scratch from a splinter, sir. The same shot that tripped up poor Wiggins, sent a ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... civilian in a safer position. The missile landed some ten paces from where they were and exploded, covering them both with earth and debris. The citizen kept his feet and received not so much as a scratch, while the officer had both ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... distressing moments, my faithful Kees never moved from my side. We sometimes got out of our carriage, and then his sure instinct led him to a plant. Frequently the stalk was fallen off, and then all his endeavours to pull it out were in vain. In such cases, he began to scratch in the earth with his paws; but as that would also have proved ineffectual, I came to his assistance with my dagger, or my knife, and we honestly divided the refreshing root with ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... Here is one of them:—Robin went as fiddler to a wedding. When the candles came he blew them out, and giving the men boxes on the ears he set them fighting. He kissed the prettiest girls, and pinched the ugly ones, till he made them scratch one another like cats. When the posset was brought he turned himself into a bear, frightened them all away, and had it all ...
— Fairy Tales; Their Origin and Meaning • John Thackray Bunce
... not been a plaything for young pointers—it has not occupied a bacon scratch, or a bread and cheese cupboard—it has not been scribbled on within and without; but it has been treasured ever since 1538, to the honour of a succession of worthy clergymen."—O si ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... to see you wandering about here, alone," he said. "The men on the road are a scratch gang, picked up anyhow, not like the regular miners. I hope you are ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... steels chromium steels chromium-vanadium heat treatments nickel-chromium steels nickel steels screw stock silico-manganese steel standard steels Salt bath for tempering Scleroscope test Scratch hardness Screens for furnaces Screw stock, S. A. E. Sensible heat Sentinels, melting of Separating work from compound Shields for furnace doors Shore Scleroscope Short method of carburizing Shrinking ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... Cameron had not had a scratch, and the men had come to think he had a charmed life. More than he knew he was beloved of them all. More than they knew their respect for him was deepening into a kind of awe. They felt he had a power with him ...
— The Search • Grace Livingston Hill
... It was but a scratch of the pen to the King. It was everything to the Virginians, and when news of it reached them all Virginia was ablaze. They who had clung to the King in his evil days, they who had been the last people belonging ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... was almost human. With a low growl, she dropped the thoroughly cowed poodle at Peggy's feet and then turned and stalked from the room, the very picture of scornful dignity. Mrs. Stewart snatched the poodle to her breast. There was not a scratch upon it save the one inflicted by Sultana, and richly deserved, as the tuft of the handsome cat's fur ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... misfortune to be recognised as thieves and robbers by the Government, and it is one of my duties to point this out to them. As a matter of fact they are no more thieves than you or I. It is as natural for them to scratch in the sand for antiquities as it is for us to pick flowers by the roadside: antiquities, like flowers, are the product of the soil, and it is largely because the one is more rare than the other that its promiscuous appropriation has been constituted an offence. The native who is sometimes ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... Dutch and Indians came to Montreal with news that peace had been signed in Europe; and, at the end of May, Major Peter Schuyler, accompanied by Dellius, the minister of Albany, arrived with copies of the treaty in French and Latin. The scratch of a pen at Byswick had ended the conflict in America, so far at least as concerned the civilized combatants. It was not till July that Frontenac received the official announcement from Versailles, coupled with an address from the king to the people ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... a sprinkling of the general public, whose time apparently hangs heavily on their hands. In a Stage-box is the Author herself, with a sycophantic Companion. A murky gloom pervades the Auditorium; a scratch orchestra is playing a lame and tuneless Schottische for the second time, to compensate for a little delay of fifteen minutes between the first and second Tableaux in the Second Act. The orchestra ceases, and a Checktaker at the Pit door whistles "Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!" ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... potters, the brothers Elers from Nuremberg, settled for a time in Staffordshire, and introduced an improved manufacture, but they shortly after removed to Chelsea, where they confined themselves to the manufacture of ornamental pieces. No porcelain capable of resisting a scratch with a hard point had yet been made in England; and for a long time the "white ware" made in Staffordshire was not white, but of a dirty cream colour. Such, in a few words, was the condition of the pottery manufacture ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... of sinners everywhere and the same defects in all the saints. Sometimes I even wished some one would develop a new sort of wickedness, a kind that would vary the dreadful monotony of repentance and cause William to scratch his theological head for a different kind of sermon. But no one ever did; whether we were in the mountains or in the towns, among the rich or the poor, the people transgressed by the same mortal "rule of three" and fell short of the glory of God ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... your hanner and your Orange face. Ah, the Orange boys are the boys for keeping faith. They never served me as Dan O'Connell and his dirty gang of repalers and emancipators did. Farewell, your hanner, once more; and here's another scratch of the illigant tune your hanner is so fond of, to cheer up your ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... this way, then. Whether you join now or not, come down once in a while as my guest, and fill in for the scratch matches. Later you may be able to pick up a ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... home from Arizona. He mounted with Caesar under his left arm. The dog had never learned to climb a perpendicular ladder, and never did he feel so much his master's greatness and his own dependence upon him, as when he crept under his arm for this perilous ascent. Up there was even gravel to scratch in, and a dog could do whatever he liked, so long as he did not bark. It was a kind of Heaven, which no one was strong enough to reach ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... ill-treated by his companions; they used to scratch and bite him, and jump on him till they were tired, while he never offered to resist, but cried in the most heart-rending manner. One young squirrel, however, was his secret friend, and whenever an opportunity offered of doing ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... with lawn tennis," she said, "but beyond that I find that not a dozen years ago you were a scratch golfer, and you certainly won the amateur championship ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... at them. "Hungry, hungry," cried he; "is that a proper expression to use before a father who is sitting down here, all gayety" (scratching wildly with his pen) "and hilarity" (scratch) "to write a com—com—" he choked a moment; then in a very different voice, all sadness and tenderness, he said: "Where's the youngest—where's Lucy? As if I didn't know ...
— Peg Woffington • Charles Reade
... inspire them with his own knowledge, and to give them that training in working together which, in all those kinds of activities which require large numbers of men to work together, whether on the cricket field, at football, in an army, or in a navy, constitutes the advantage of a practised over a scratch team. ...
— Britain at Bay • Spenser Wilkinson
... without taking anything. All the house was in utter confusion for a while; but finding nothing stolen, they went to bed again. The boy sat holding his breath a short while; but making up his mind to get out of his narrow prison, began to scratch the bottom of the box with his finger-nails. The servant of the house, listening to the noise, supposed it to be a mouse gnawing at the inside of the box; so she came out, lamp in hand, and unlocked it. On removing ...
— The Religion of the Samurai • Kaiten Nukariya
... rains lash down through the jungles, and he was always filled with strange longings and desires that he was too young to understand or to follow. He would see the white haze steam up from the labyrinth of wet vines, and he would tingle and scratch for the feel of its wetness on his skin. And often, when the mysterious Burman night came down, it seemed to him that he would go mad. He would hear the wild tuskers trumpeting in the jungles a very long way off, and all the myriad noises of the mysterious night, and at ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... and the character of the ground leads to the belief that large nuggets may yet be found in the river bed. After going through a great many of the levels I felt tired, and sat down, and, to amuse myself, proceeded to scratch in the side of the heading in order to fill a little pannikin, which Miss Cornwall said each of the children and I were to have to wash out in the old-fashioned miner's way. Each pannikin was marked and sent to the top in charge of one of ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... sometimes very strong and hooked, as is the case with the birds of prey, while in other species it is only slightly curved and is not meant as a weapon of offense or defense, but chiefly to enable the bird to "scratch for a living." ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... were borne from the roundhouse at Conemaugh, two miles away, are conspicuous. Amid the general wreck, beneath one of these heavy iron tanks, a looking glass, two feet by one foot in dimensions, was discovered intact, without even a scratch on the quicksilver. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... abstracted companion; so much so, indeed, that Tim Linkinwater suspected he must have made the mistake of a figure somewhere, which was preying upon his mind, and seriously conjured him, if such were the case, to make a clean breast and scratch it out, rather than have his whole life embittered by ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... only to discover that some of their necessary parts are either in Auckland, or in Sydney, or in Melbourne, or, perhaps, in all three cities. It will be but poor consolation to learn that the rest of them may, perhaps, be discovered among the sands of the desert—that is to say, if they scratch about long enough looking for them. Personally, if I get the chance, I shall immediately go about purloining other people's physical perfections, so that, when at last I am ready for the next move onward, ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... Darkovi['c], the leader of the Montenegrin deputies, that his followers and the rebels should not come to blows. The reply, which annoyed the General, was to the effect that if the rebels made an attack, then Darkovi['c] with his scratch forces would defend himself—and the battle lasted for two or three days. A junior French officer, who had been in command of a small detachment at Cetinje, told me that the noise of firing had awakened him every night and he had not ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... she began, directly she saw him, "last night you did not see my family, you must admire them, we are all here together for tea; this is our second, holiday tea. You can make friends with them all; only Shurotchka won't let you, and the cat will scratch. Are ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... "Scratch out those last words," said Mrs Peagrim irritably. "You really are hopeless, Miss Frisby! Couldn't you see that I had stopped dictating and was searching for a phrase? Otie, what is a good phrase for ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... subterfuge," Sommers answered hotly, "fit only for clergymen and beggars for charities. I am not sure, anyway, that I want 'to do for' people. I think no fine theories about social service and all that settlement stuff. I want to be a man, and have a man's right to start with the crowd at the scratch, not given a handicap. There are too many handicaps in ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... any more than Dr. Johnson did why the Scotch, who couldn't scratch a living at home, and came up to London, always kept on bragging about their native land and ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... a monkey?" is asked. The other player might answer: "Because it is full of tricks." "Why is my cat like a candle?" "Because its eyes glow like a candle in the dark." "Why is my cat like a pin?" "Because its claws scratch like ...
— My Book of Indoor Games • Clarence Squareman
... ask you to leave Lady Claudia alone. If you come to that—but there, I was just going to scratch back like a school-girl. Let us remember our manners, ...
— Father Stafford • Anthony Hope
... said, with a little laugh. "A mere scratch. Why, if it were a patient I was attending—you, for instance—I should say you were making ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... finger because of blood poisoning. I had a scratch on my finger. Pulled a hangnail out of it. I went around a lady who had a high fever and she asked me to sponge her off and I did it. I got the finger in the water that I sponged with and it got blood poisoned. I like ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... is full; 160 Such as take lodgings in a head That's to be let unfurnished. He could raise scruples dark and nice, And after solve 'em in a trice; As if Divinity had catch'd 165 The itch, on purpose to be scratch'd; Or, like a mountebank, did wound And stab herself with doubts profound, Only to show with how small pain The sores of Faith are cur'd again; 170 Although by woeful proof we find, They always leave a scar behind. He knew the seat of Paradise, Could tell in what degree it lies; And, as ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler
... did not think it would look right on the stage. As Katherine she wanted me to wear steely silver and bronzy gold, but all the brocades had such insignificant designs. If they had a silver design on them it looked under the lights like a scratch in white cotton! At last Mrs. Carr found a black satin which on the right side was timorously and feebly patterned with a meandering rose and thistle. On the wrong side of it was a sheet of silver—just the right steely silver ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... usual signs of life. In the rear a woman draws water from a well, lowering the bucket from the end of a long well-sweep, heedless of the stir about the door. Fowl scratch about in search of food, and there is a dog at one side. Some one within looks with idle curiosity from the window into the yard. It is little touches like these which give the ...
— Rembrandt - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures and a Portrait of the - Painter with Introduction and Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... who refuses to lend himself to the business on any terms, and bolts on principle; while the rider of the black horse remains in stationary meditation.) Go on—that black horse—go on! (The chestnut is at length brought up to the scratch snorting, but again flinches, and retires with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, July 5, 1890 • Various
... to receive no hurt in this battle, excepting a small scratch on the side of my neck by the push of a pike; but my friend received a very dangerous wound when the battle was as good as over. He had engaged with a German colonel, whose name we could never learn, and having killed his man, and pressed very ...
— Memoirs of a Cavalier • Daniel Defoe
... moment, comrades," said Leo, "and, chief, give me your arm; my scratch grows stiff; I cannot walk fast. We ...
— Ayesha - The Further History of She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed • H. Rider Haggard
... slight. Carrying my arm in a sling gives too serious an impression. I merely had one of the fingers of my left hand shot away, and a scratch on my shoulder." ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... have trampled down the bushes as they went through. I wish their skins were as thin as mine," Mysa said as she wiped away the blood from a deep scratch on her cheek; "they would keep up in their own woods then and not come down ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... the Witch may be ordered to touch afflicted Persons in order to their healing or recovery out of a sick Fit, why may not the Diseased Person be as well ordered to touch the Witch for the same cause? And if to touch him, why not to scratch him and fetch Blood out of him, which is but an harder kind of touch? But as for this Mr. Perkins doubts not to call it a Practice of Witchcraft. It is not safe to meddle with any of the Devils Sacraments or Institutions; For my own part, I should be loath to say to a Man, ...
— The Wonders of the Invisible World • Cotton Mather
... her own gate, and in Peace's mind this could mean only one thing,—Allee had fallen below grade in her arithmetic that afternoon and had been kept after school to make it up. As a further indication that this was the case, she was intently studying the front page of a scratch-tablet, and when Peace called to her, she hastily hid the paper under her apron, while her rosy cheeks grew rosier still, and a look of guilty alarm flew into ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... Great Isabel so that he should have some means to help himself if nothing could be done for him from the shore. And here she had come out to meet him empty and inexplicable. What had become of Decoud? The Capataz made a minute examination. He looked for some scratch, for some mark, for some sign. All he discovered was a brown stain on the gunwale abreast of the thwart. He bent his face over it and rubbed hard with his finger. Then he sat down in the stern sheets, passive, with his knees close together and ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... but not a drinking one, and it runs right through the up-stairs to the skylight. You have to pay for that. Think of charging for daylight! We went to a bird show and I saw a cockatoo sitting on a pole asleep. 'Scratch its back with your parasol, Gladys,' said mother, so I did, and it opened one eye when I stopped, and said, 'Encore,' I was put out to think even the birds didn't talk American, but when I said so, mother laughed but I don't ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... cocus, ebony, etc.; these may be rapidly polished in the lathe, on account of their texture, with the white polish. In spiriting-off a very soft piece of chamois leather (if it is hard and creased it will scratch) should be damped with methylated spirits, then wrung so that the spirit may be equally diffused; the lathe should then be driven at a rapid speed, and the leather held softly to the work. In a few minutes, if a dark wood, a brilliant ...
— French Polishing and Enamelling - A Practical Work of Instruction • Richard Bitmead
... When we feel that kind of irritability we should ignore it, as we would ignore a little snapping dog across the street, while at the same time removing its cause as quickly as we can. There is nothing that delights the devil more than to scratch a man with the irritability of hunger, and have him respond to it at once by being ugly and rude to a friend; for then the irritation immediately becomes moral, and every bit of selfishness rushes up to join it, and to arouse ...
— The Freedom of Life • Annie Payson Call
... half-seas over. He wore black cloth gaiters up to his knees, and padded to make his legs look stouter; his trousers were lined with the thickest fustian; his waistcoat was buttoned up to his cheeks; a red scratch wig hid half his forehead, and he had added nearly three inches to his height; in short, the oldest frequenter of the Cafe David could not have recognized him. From his squarecut coat of black cloth with full skirts he might have been taken ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... his mind had anything to them or if they were entirely impracticable. Here was opportunity, definite, concrete, and spelled with a capital O, here was a deliberate invitation to avail himself of a short cut out of his embarrassment. A mere scratch of a pen and he would have money enough to move on to some other Dallas, and there gain the start he needed—enough, at least, so that he could tip his waiter and pay cash for his Coronas. Business men are ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... my Missus say, 'John O., you let my nigger alone.' You see, my Missus had her niggers en den old Boss had his niggers cause when old Missus been marry Massa John O. Bethea, she had brought here share of niggers from whe' she was raise in de country. It been like dis, old Missus father had scratch de pen for everyone of his chillun to have so many niggers apiece for dey portion of his property so long as dey would look after dem en treat dem good. Den if dere been talk dat dem chillun never do what he say do, dey was to take ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... calliope and not even turning his head to look at the cabin. In half an hour Hale thought he heard something crashing through the bushes high on the mountain side, and, a little while afterward, the boy crawled through the bushes to him alone. His cap was gone, there was a bloody scratch across his face and he was ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... unamiable and even distinctly ferocious. That, being made gooseherd, and finding the birds troublesome, he knocks them about, killing some goslings, may not be an unpardonable atrocity. And even when, being set to scratch his father's back, he employs a wool-comb for that purpose, much to the detriment of the paternal skin and temper, it does not very greatly go beyond the impishness of a naughty boy. But when, being promoted ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... do! If you do not like it, just say to yourself: The big boy is dreaming, I will awaken him, I will step in front of him and draw myself up to my full height [With gestures], and let him see that it is no longer a little child that stands before him—[He points to a scratch on the door]—that shows how big you were at eleven!—but a very proper, grown-up girl, who could reach the sugar when it is upon the sideboard! Surely you remember! That was the place, the firm fortress, where it was safe from us even without being locked up. We used to amuse ourselves by slapping ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... sense of any writing than by reading it without stops! Most of the parsons that read the first and second lessons practise Mr. Cooke's method of making them intelligible, for they seldom observe any stops. George Selwyn proposes to send the man his own sermon, and desire him to scratch out the stops, in order to help ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... she sighed "All right," and put up her cheek to pay the price. His arms tightened about her, and his lips were not content with her cheek. He fought to win her lips, but she began to tear off her gloves to scratch his eyes out if need ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... as to myself and the children. Several fierce men with swords jumped on my cart. One struck at the baby, but I parried the blow with a pillow, and the little fellow only received a slight scratch on the forehead. Then they dropped their swords and began tearing at our goods at the back of the cart. Heavy boxes were dragged over us, and everything was taken. Just then a dreadful looking man tried to reach us from the back of the cart ...
— How I Know God Answers Prayer - The Personal Testimony of One Life-Time • Rosalind Goforth
... Q. Now the witches scratch you, and pinch you, and bite you, don't they? A. Yes. Then he put his hand upon her breast and belly, viz. on the clothes over her, and felt a living thing, as he said; which moved the father also to feel, and ...
— The Emancipation of Massachusetts • Brooks Adams
... the people. They have the makings of a wonderful nation. They are keen as mustard and without silly antique prejudices inherited from the middle ages. It is true, as a nation, they have something of a swelled head. But give them a chance; they will come up to the scratch some day; ...
— On the Fringe of the Great Fight • George G. Nasmith
... hog? Eschilus fore threatned by the fall of an house, when he stood most upon his guard, strucken dead by the fall of a tortoise shell, which fell out of the tallants of an eagle flying in the air? and another choaked with the kernell of a grape? And an Emperour die by the scratch of a combe, whilest he was combing his head? And Aemylius Lepidus with hitting his foot against a doore-seele? And Aufidius with stumbling against the Consull-chamber doore as he was going in thereat? And Cornelius ...
— Literary and Philosophical Essays • Various
... that best of monarchs, viz., his father Santanu. And, O king, passing through many forests, rivers, hills, and woods abounding with trees, he arrived (at the capital) in no time. Of immeasurable prowess in battle, the son of the ocean-going Ganga, having slain numberless foes in battle without a scratch on his own person, brought the daughters of the king of Kasi unto the Kurus as tenderly if they were his daughters-in-law, or younger sisters, or daughters. And Bhishma of mighty arms, impelled by the desire of benefiting ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... he will," replied Kitty. "Isobel Carson rang up just now to ask if Nan would come over. It appears that, barring the injury to his back, he escaped without a scratch. He didn't even know he was hurt till he found he couldn't use his legs. Of course, he'll be in bed. Isobel says he seems almost his usual self, except that he won't let anyone sympathise with him over his injury. He's just savage ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... congeners. They are fearless while haunting their nesting places, and are not to be scared with a gun; and are often beaten down with poles and cudgels as they stoop to go under the eaves. Swifts are much infested with those pests to the genus called hippoboscae hirundinis; and often wriggle and scratch themselves, in their flight, to get rid of ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... : cikatro. scarf : skarpo. scarlet : skarlato. scene : vidajxo, sceno. scenery : pejzajxo. scent : odoro, parfumo; flari. scissors : tondilo. scold : riprocxi, mallauxdi. scorpion : skorpio. scoundrel : kanajlo. scour : frotlavi; scourge : skurgxi. scrape : skrapi, raspi. scratch : grati. screen : sxirm'i, -ilo. screw : sxrauxbo. scrupulous : konscienca, skrupula. sculpture : skulpti. scum : sxauxmo. scurvy : skorbuto. seal : sigel'i, -o, (animal) foko. seaside : marbordo. season : sezono; spici. seasonable : gxustatempa. secret : sekreta, kasxita. secretary : sekretario. ...
— The Esperanto Teacher - A Simple Course for Non-Grammarians • Helen Fryer
... hills, and I was watching at home, thinkin' maybe of the next Michaelmas fair, and many a fine bit of fun thereby. The fire was gone out, but I had lighted a scrap of candle, which sweeled sadly down, I remember, in the socket. Well, just as I was getting sleepy I heard a scratch, and then a whine at the door. 'What's to do now,' thinks I, 'that the dogs are here again so soon?' an' without more ado, I lifted the latch, when, sure enough, it was them, dirty draggled beasts, they might ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... straw and rags. Her little hands were almost frozen with the cold. Ah! perhaps a burning match might be some good, if she could draw it from the bundle and strike it against the wall, just to warm her fingers. She drew one out-"scratch!" how it sputtered as it burnt! It gave a warm, bright light, like a little candle, as she held her hand over it. It was really a wonderful light. It seemed to the little girl that she was sitting ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... importunate whine, and began to scratch against the door. The lad threw it open—the dog brushed past him in an instant, and his quick, short, continuous yelping, expressed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 262, July 7, 1827 • Various
... they can but scratch my beautiful nickel-plate," he said. "But there will be no 'worst,' for I think I can manage to frighten these absurd soldiers very easily. Follow me closely, all ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the strongest instinct of our nature. Nature is still 'red in tooth and claw,' though she has begun to make fine flourishes with tooth-brush and nail-scissors. Even the mild dog on my hearth-rug has been known to behave like a wolf to his own species. Scratch his master and you will find the caveman. But the scratch must be a sharp one: I am thickly veneered. Outwardly, I am as gentle as you, gentle reader. And one reason for our delight in fire is that ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... of real melody, and will afford one more delight perhaps than any other class. The robin is the most familiar example. Their manners, flight, and form are the same in each species. See the robin hop along upon the ground, strike an attitude, scratch for a worm, fix his eye upon something before him or upon the beholder, flip his wings suspiciously, fly straight to his perch, or sit at sundown on some high branch caroling his sweet and honest strain, and you have seen what is characteristic of all the thrushes. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... approvingly, as he finished his examination, "but I don't perceive any trace of a scar on either the right or left. Will you go over them, Jervis? The robbery took place a fortnight ago, so there has been time for a small cut or scratch to heal and disappear entirely. Still, the matter is ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... Carrington, he won't come to the scratch. Perhaps as well for him that he does not," said the colonel, chuckling in ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... my old outfit. To-morrow I'm going to the city to round them up. They've stood by me before in many a tight place. It cost them a lot sometimes. But they stuck just the same. Now I've got a chance to stick by them. And I'm going to do it because I know they'll come up to the scratch." ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Tom and Jack seemed to be in the ascendant, for they did not receive even a scratch. Later they found reason to believe that a number of the leaden missiles had come very close to their persons; for the marks upon the body of the plane itself, as well as the tiny holes in the stout linen covering ...
— Air Service Boys Over The Enemy's Lines - The German Spy's Secret • Charles Amory Beach
... he will afterwards find to his sorrow that he exchanged them for something far more tenacious in these microscopic Harvest-mites. If he has obtained a good supply of them, he will in a few hours begin to suffer from severe itching, and for the next two or three days will be likely to scratch until ...
— Our Common Insects - A Popular Account of the Insects of Our Fields, Forests, - Gardens and Houses • Alpheus Spring Packard
... a sentence from his last letter: he often writes to me as well as to Gladys. Yes, here it is: 'Your last letter has been a great comfort to me, my dear Etta: it was more than a poor fellow had a right to expect. I do believe that this long absence has served my purpose, and the scratch I got at Singapore. Girls are curious creatures; one never can tell how to tackle them, and my special cousin knows how to keep one at a distance, but I begin to feel I am making way at last. She wrote to me very sweetly ...
— Uncle Max • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... always said, give me Master B for kind-heartedness-like. Many's the job as we've been on together, sir, though I never did no racing nor aught of that, but just the plain labour, as you might say. I'm getting a bit too old and stiff for it nowadays, sir—just scratch about in the garden here and grow a bit of a logarithm, or raise a common denominator or two. But Mr. Euclid he use me still for ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... to Elliott for corroboration on this point and Elliott grew almost interested trying to decide whether or not Chanticleer knew he was "Chanticleer" and not "Sunflower." There were also "Fluff" and "Scratch" and "Lady Gay" and "Ruby Crown" and "Marshal Haig" and "General Petain" and many more, besides "Brevity," so named because, as Priscilla solicitously explained, she never seemed to grow. They all, with the exception of Brevity, looked ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... bio-graphy, an' she'll go down to histhry as a termygant. A termygant, Hinnissy, is a woman who's heerd talkin' to her husband after they've been marrid a year. Hogan says all janiuses was unhappily marrid. I guess that's thrue iv their wives, too. He says if ye hear iv a pote who got on with his fam'ly, scratch him fr'm ye'er public lib'ry list. An' ...
— Observations by Mr. Dooley • Finley Peter Dunne
... sharp. The mouse, which is not the field-mouse, as Halliwell states, but an animal of a different order of quadrupeds, has a very sharp snout. Shrewd means sharp generally. Its bad sense is only incidental. They seem connected with scratch; screw; shrags, the end of sticks or furze (Halliwell); to shred (A.-S., screadan, but which must be a secondary form of the verb). That the shrew-mouse is called in Latin sorex, seems to be an accidental coincidence. That is said to be derived from [Greek: urax]. ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 26. Saturday, April 27, 1850 • Various
... had supreme contempt for "no count niggers that didn't hav' no white Folks". She was thrifty and frugal. Having a large family, most of her small earnings was spent on them. However, she early taught her children to scratch for themselves. Two of her daughters died after they had each brought several children into the world. Charlotte thought they were being neglected by their fathers and proceeded to take them "to raise ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... to say to that terrible woman, papa?" shuddered Jessica as they neared the Brant home. "I'm afraid she'll scratch ...
— Grace Harlowe's Junior Year at High School - Or, Fast Friends in the Sororities • Jessie Graham Flower
... the young gnome was playing with the cat, and began to pull his tail. The cat, not liking this, began to scratch Class 81, Q. At this, the little fellow cried and yelled, while the cat scratched all the more fiercely. But Selma, who ran into the room on hearing the noise, was equal to the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... bath; and this he did in order to mortify his comfort-seeking body. He practiced during a long time such rigid poverty that he would neither receive nor touch a penny, either with leave or without it. For a considerable time he strove to attain such a high degree of purity that he would neither scratch nor touch any part of his body, save ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... of that: she would be contented, with him,—on a desert island! Oh, if he could only always be enough for her! He vowed to himself, in sudden boyish solemnity, that he would always be enough for her. Aloud, he said he thought he could scratch up two ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... back he was gone," said the Captain. "But I bear marks of a scratch which he gave me, ...
— Captain Dieppe • Anthony Hope
... inhabitants of this globe, least among the many that people infinite space? Our minds embrace infinity; the visible mechanism of our being is subject to merest accident. Day by day we are forced to believe this. He whom a scratch has disorganized, he who disappears from apparent life under the influence of the hostile agency at work around us, had the same powers as I—I also am subject to the same laws. In the face of all this we call ourselves lords of the creation, wielders of the elements, ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... stopped, as on the previous night, being overcome by a sudden sense of silence. There was not the faintest sound of gnaw, or scratch, or squeak. The silence was as of the grave. He remembered the odd occurrence of the previous night, and instinctively he looked at the chair standing close by the fireside. And then a very odd ...
— Dracula's Guest • Bram Stoker
... little battle, while it lasted," he stated, "but it ain't deuce high alongside this fight we've got on our hands right now. For he's just as near over as I'd care to see a man, unless it was someone I'd a little prefer dead! It ain't that scratch on the head that's got him slippin', either." Joe paused and turned to address Garry Devereau's still white face itself. "You sat in an' backed my game like a gentleman born," he said, "and now I'm a-goin' to ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... were in Armenia, I durst not let her know when you were hurt: For at the first on every little scratch, She kept her Chamber, wept, and could not eat, Till you were well, and many times the news Was so long coming, that before we heard She was as near her ...
— A King, and No King • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... in London, and she it was who carried the letter to Charles Rennett—a letter that made him scratch his head many times before he took a sheet of paper, and addressing the manager ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... knee-joint, remaining fast there for a stride or two, and then falling to the ground. At first the beast did not seem to be incommoded by this wound; indeed, it only caused it to gallop quicker, and Benita rejoiced, thinking that it was but a scratch. Then she forgot about it, for some of the Matabele, who had guns, began to shoot them, and although their marksmanship was vile, one or two of the bullets went nearer than was pleasant. Lastly a man, the swiftest runner of them all, shouted ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... that besides that of a fine lady, which is all mere art and mummery, every such woman hath some real character at the bottom, in which, whenever nature gets the better of her, she acts. Thus the finest ladies in the world will sometimes love, and sometimes scratch, according to their different natural dispositions, with great fury and violence, though both of these are equally inconsistent with a ...
— Amelia (Complete) • Henry Fielding
... say) struggles against this sweet enchantment of autumn, but Nature is too strong for us. Why is it that all these strikes occur just at this time of year? The old hibernating instinct again, perhaps. The workman has a subconscious yearning to scratch together a nice soft heap of manila envelopes and lie down on that couch for a six months' ear-pounding. There are all sorts of excuses that one can make to one's self for waving farewell to toil. Only last Sunday we saw ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... each other, that young Scott called together his retainers, and addressing them, said—"Look ye, friends, is it not a crying sin and a national shame to see things going aglee as they are doing? There seems hardly such a thing as manhood left upon the Borders. A bit scratch with a pen upon parchment is becoming of more effect than a stroke with the sword. A bairn now stands as good a chance to hold and to have, as an armed man that has a hand to take and to defend. Such a state ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... warmly"Heaven forbid that any process of philosophy were capable so to sear and indurate our feelings, that nothing should agitate them but what arose instantly and immediately out of our own selfish interests! I would as soon wish my hand to be as callous as horn, that it might escape an occasional cut or scratch, as I would be ambitious of the stoicism which should render my heart like a piece of the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... were to tell it. I don't like to hear reading," replied Enna in her imperious way, at the same time taking quiet possession of Elsie's little rosewood rocking-chair—a late present from her papa, and highly prized by the little girl on that account—and beginning to scratch with her thumb nail ...
— Elsie Dinsmore • Martha Finley
... deserted without a word of notice or explanation, and in a few days none remained but little Isaac. The ladies had no maid or attendants; and the general, commanding all the mighty forces of the United States on the Pacific coast, had to scratch to get one good meal a day for his family! He was a gentleman of fine social qualities, genial and gentle, and joked at every thing. Poor Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Ogden did not bear it so philosophically. Gibbs, Fitzgerald, ...
— The Memoirs of General W. T. Sherman, Complete • William T. Sherman
... china dragon that always stands on top of it. But I could see that she was not enjoying their visit. She was afraid that Stuart's rockers would bump against her handsome old mahogany furniture, or that they would scratch it in some way, or break some of her fine vases ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... Trirodov, "we are looked upon by the rest of Europe as almost Mongols, as a race mixed with Mongolian elements. You know the saying: 'Scratch a Russian and you will find ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... you!' says I (for I had never a want of wit); and so we fell to work at the gooseberry-bush, laughing and talking as happy as might be. In the course of our diversion Nora managed to scratch her arm, and it bled, and she screamed, and it was mighty round and white, and I tied it up, and I believe was permitted to kiss her hand; and though it was as big and clumsy a hand as ever you saw, yet I thought the favour the most ravishing one that was ever conferred upon me, and ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Brer Fox, he fotch up, en dey pass de time er day wid one er nudder monst'us perlite; en den, bimeby atter w'ile, Brer Rabbit, he up'n say, sezee, dat he got some mighty good news fer Brer Fox; en Brer Fox, he up'n ax 'im w'at is it. Den Brer Rabbit, he sorter scratch he year wid his behime foot en ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... Miss Sprotts, the dog resigned his comfortable place with a plaintive growl, but the cat, of a more irritable temperament, set up and made a sudden scratch at her hand, drawing ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... each other at what looked, in the screen, like just over pistol-range, two of them firing into the third, which was replying desperately. The third one blew up, and somebody was yelling out of a screenspeaker, "Scratch one traitor!" ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... side of her, and the place is surrounded by a fence of bushes except in front, where her mother kindles a fire. Here the girl stays all day, sitting with her arms crossed and the palms of her hands resting on the sand. She may not move her arms except to take food from her mother or to scratch herself; and in scratching herself she may not touch herself with her own hands, but must use for the purpose a splinter of wood, which, when it is not in use, is stuck in her hair. She may speak to nobody but her mother; indeed nobody else would think of coming near her. At evening ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... they found him without scratch or blemish, save for a curious and inflamed disfiguration on his left arm, just below the shoulder. Though this soon healed, it was long before its mystery was explained; but when Truman Flagg saw it, he pronounced it to be the tattooed mark ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... at those who had gathered about him to render succor. One of the sailors now picked him up in his arms, and laid him upon the tarpaulin of the main hatch, when, certain restoratives having been applied by Luke's wife, he soon began to scratch his head, and exhibit such other signs of animation as made it certain the country would not be deprived of his services just yet. Nor was it many minutes after he had given out such strong proofs of his willingness to meet death, when he looked piteously up at the good woman, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... not crying, however, but thinking, thinking, thinking, and trying to find some way out, when he heard a little scratch, scratching on the corner of the shed. He sat up and listened. The scratching went on. He held his breath. Could it be that some one was trying to get in to help him? Nonsense, of course it was only a rat. Next ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... where she had boxed them and as he turned a rather foolish face surprisedly toward the intruders, a scratch showed livid on one cheek. The girl's hair streamed disheveled by the struggle. She caught up, hastily, a handsome opera cloak to ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... will do that. I was wondering if it has ever struck you how prettily and kindly your little hands behave to each other. Right hand is the cleverest and quickest, of course, but left hand is always willing and ready too. They take care not to hurt or scratch each other, and if by chance one is ever hurt, the other is as tender as possible not to rub or touch the ...
— The Thirteen Little Black Pigs - and Other Stories • Mrs. (Mary Louisa) Molesworth
... Justice!" He laughed sardonically. "Poor old lady, she couldn't stop within forty miles of Perkins' Committee if she had forty bandages over her eyes, and both ears plugged with cotton! You wait till their farce of a trial is over. You may get off, by a scratch—I hope ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
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