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Tattered   /tˈætərd/   Listen
Tattered

adjective
1.
Worn to shreds; or wearing torn or ragged clothing.  Synonym: tatterdemalion.  "The tattered flag" , "Tied up in tattered brown paper" , "A tattered barefoot boy" , "A tatterdemalion prince"
2.
Ruined or disrupted.  Synonym: shattered.  "A tattered remnant of its former strength" , "My torn and tattered past"






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Tattered" Quotes from Famous Books



... and the drama. The sun was still shining warmly aslant the heavens; the wind, crisp and sweet, wandered by on laggard wings, the conies cried from the ledges; the lambs were calling—and in the midst of it one tattered fragment of humanity was heaping the iron earth upon another, stricken, perhaps, by ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland

... right, for, after a while, his companions also smelled smoke, and a little later the yelping of their dogs was answered by shrill cries from within the timber. Suddenly two tattered scarecrows of children emerged from the thick growth, stared for an instant, and then, with terrified expressions, darted ...
— Under the Great Bear • Kirk Munroe

... peace; ten times more dishonourable ragged than an old faced ancient: and such have I, to fill up the rooms of them that have bought out their services, that you would think that I had a hundred and fifty tattered Prodigals lately come from swine-keeping, from eating draff and husks. A mad fellow met me on the way, and told me I had unloaded all the gibbets, and press'd the dead bodies. No eye hath seen such scarecrows. I'll not march through Coventry with them, that's flat: ...
— King Henry IV, The First Part • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]

... done: scoundrels whitewashed; some degree of scavengering upon the gutters; and at a cheap rate, thirdly? That surely is an occasion on which, if ever on any, the Genius of Reform may pipe all hands!—Poor old Genius of Reform; bedrid this good while; with little but broken ballot-boxes, and tattered stripes of Benthamee Constitutions lying round him; and on the walls mere shadows of clothing-colonels, rates-in-aid, poor-law unions, defunct potato and the Irish difficulty,—he does not seem long for this ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle

... her pretty head and began to sob hysterically, standing there under the growing daylight of the Boulevard, in her tattered evening gown. ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers

... delightful capability to enjoy. If ever we feel young afterwards, it is with the comrades of that time: the tunes we hum in our old age, are those we learned then. Sometimes, perhaps, the festivity of that period revives in our memory; but how dingy the pleasure-garden has grown, how tattered the garlands look, how scant and old the company, and what a number of the lights have gone out since that day! Grey hairs have come on like daylight streaming in—daylight and a headache with it. Pleasure has gone to bed with the rouge on her cheeks. Well, friend, let us ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray

... across the sky, and the second morning shone upon the world, on lakes and oceans, and on drops of dew. But as the ball went bounding on its way, the prowling mists and the rain conspired together and took it and wrapped it in their tattered cloaks and carried it away. And through the rents in their garments gleamed the golden ball, but they held it fast and carried it right away and underneath the world. Then on an onyx step Inzana sat down and wept, who could no more be happy without her ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... the princess till morning. Guess, however, what was my surprise, when on awaking I found myself lying in my first humble lodging, stripped of my rich vestments, and saw on the ground my former mean attire; namely, an old vest, a pair of tattered drawers, and a ragged turban, as full of holes as a sieve. When I had somewhat recovered my senses, I put them on and walked out in a melancholy mood, regretting my lost happiness, and not knowing what ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.

... work of a Spanish town; not Federals or Confederates were ever more impartial in the confiscation of neutral chickens. I was keeping my grapes a secret to surprise the fair Fidele with, but the robins made them a profounder secret to her than I had meant. The tattered remnant of a single bunch was all my harvest-home. How paltry it looked at the bottom of my basket,—as if a humming-bird had laid her egg in an eagle's nest! I could not help laughing; and the robins seemed to join heartily in the merriment. There was a native grape-vine close by, blue with its ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell

... sunlight of the November day came down through the tattered foliage, and threw the shadows of the friends on the path where they sat, with their soft hats pulled over their foreheads. They were silent so long that when the second of them resumed their conversation he had to ask, "Where ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells

... satisfied the Indians by paying a large ransom and shipped Jogues down the river. He received nothing but kindness from the Dutch everywhere and, on his arrival at Manhattan (New York), was furnished by the Governor with a suit of clothes, instead of his tattered skins, and given a passage ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson

... noble fortune my pen was to earn for me in the dim, delightful future. That afternoon my sisters made a pilgrimage to behold this famous placard, and finding it torn by the wind, boldly stole it, and came home to wave it like a triumphal banner in the bosom of the excited family. The tattered paper still exists, folded away with other relics of those early days, so hard and yet so sweet, when the first small victories were won, and the enthusiasm of youth lent romance ...
— Lives of Girls Who Became Famous • Sarah Knowles Bolton

... not more than six years old, and had a bright, intelligent, but pale and peaked face. He wore thin, patched trowsers, a small, ragged cap, and large, tattered boots, and over his shoulders was a worn woolen shawl. I could not see the remainder of his clothing, but I afterward discovered that a man's waistcoat was his only ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... Bridge, Stephen's Green, and Grafton Street, the reception was of a most cordial nature, while an immense crowd in College Green raised deafening cheers as the sturdy warriors marched past. Enthusiasm reached its height when the tattered colours of the battalion, borne by two stalwart young ensigns, came into view. The officers and men appeared delighted with the cordial reception extended to them on all sides. At Grattan Bridge the band of the Seaforth Highlanders, ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring

... injured, it was impossible to bring the gun back into position for firing. The concrete roofs of the ammunition rooms and barracks were shot to pieces and the traverses were reduced to rubbish heaps by the bursting of the numerous shells of the enemy. And all that was finally left round the tattered Stars and Stripes was a little group of heavily wounded gunners, performing their duty to the bitter end, and these heroes were honored by the enemy by being permitted to keep their arms. They were sent by steamer from Seattle to the Canadian ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff

... of Port Royal should be permitted to remain on their lands, with their corn, cattle, and furniture, for two years, if so disposed, on their taking the oath of allegiance to the Queen of Great Britain. The destitute condition of the garrison was manifested by their tattered garments and absence of provisions necessary to sustain them even for a few days. In conformity with the terms of the capitulation four hundred eighty men in all were transported to Rochelle, in ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson

... on, one little hand sticking to her plump, molasses-smeared cheek, the other holding fast to her headless doll. Beside her on the floor lay a tattered picture-book, a big bottle half full of red shelled corn, and John Jay's most precious treasure, a toy watch that could be endlessly wound up. He had heaped them all beside her, hoping they would keep her occupied until his return, in case ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston

... blows and ruffles up the water, which now after the floods is the colour of coffee slops, one feels cold and bored and miserable; the strains of a concertina on the bank sound dejected, figures in tattered sheepskins standing motionless on the barges that meet us look as though they were petrified by some unending grief. The towns on the Kama are grey; one would think the inhabitants were employed in the manufacture of clouds, boredom, soaking fences and ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov

... ceased, but she could not sleep. A full moon strained its rays through the tattered curtain, and as it climbed, she watched the panel of light on the wall opposite steal down past a text above the washstand, past the washstand itself, to the bare flooring. "God is love" said the text, and Molly had paid a pedlar twopence for it, years before, at Epworth fair—quite ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... lightly on his shoulder. Quick as a panther, he sprang to one side, placing himself on the defensive, and his hand upon his pistol ready for any emergency. His startled gaze met a pitiful sight. Ragged and tattered, his hands, trembling and face blanched with the first touch of delirium tremens, stood Oscar Cook. Tottering up to Cummings, ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton

... to believe that Captain Fowler, now absent in conflict with the French, would return and wed her according to his promise, but one day came a tattered messenger with bitter news of the captain's death. She made no talk of her grief, and, while her face was pale and step no longer light, she continued in the work that custom exacted from women of that time: help for the sick, alms for the poor, teaching ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... l'audace,' would rush at the huge foe in a perfect transport of wild fury, and go to work at once to enclose him in her toils of triple silken cables. I always fancied, indeed, that Eliza was in a thoroughly housewifely tantrum at seeing her nice new web so ruthlessly torn and tattered by the unwelcome visitor, and that she said to herself in her own language: 'Oh well, then, if you will have it, you shall have it; so here goes for you.' And go for him she did, with most unladylike ferocity. Indeed, Eliza's best friend, I must fain admit, could never have said of ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen

... turned up safe and sound in Sunwich. Captain Nugent walking into the town saw him first: a tall, well-knit young man in shabby clothing, whose bearing even in the distance was oddly familiar. As he came closer the captain's misgivings were confirmed, and in the sunburnt fellow in tattered clothes who advanced upon him with out-stretched hand he reluctantly ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... and for that; the thrill of delight sent through the heart as the well-remembered march swells upon the ear; the very notes of that rough voice which we have heard amidst the crash of battle and the rolling of artillery, speak softly to our senses like a father's welcome; from the well-tattered flag that waves above us to the proud steed of the war-worn trumpeter, each has a niche in ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever

... pulled at the short-stemmed pipe, the wagon seat sagging heavily with his weight at every jolt of the wheels, while from under his tattered hat rim his fierce eyes looked out upon the wild landscape with occasional side glances ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright

... de Conde, who was present at this conversation, was overjoyed at my having a chaplain. As poor Poussatin was in a very tattered condition, I had no time to provide him with a proper habit at Perpignan; but giving him a spare livery of one of the Marshal de Grammont's servants, I made him get up behind the prince's coach, who was like to die with laughing every ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre

... little amusing. It would have been better perhaps for me to feel the comic side of it. At any rate, whether I had given cause or not it went without saying that I could not pay the price. I could not accept. I could not, for a bundle of tattered papers, marry a ridiculous, pathetic, provincial old woman. It was a proof that she did not think the idea would come to me, her having determined to suggest it herself in that practical, argumentative, heroic way, in which the timidity however had been so much ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James

... see what sort of a fellow this doctor was, whom the shereef treated so familiarly. They galloped their high-mettled horses up to the doctor; and stopping short to examine him, made a 193 reflection on him and returned. The doctor observed the wild and tattered appearance of these excellent horsemen. There was nothing evil-minded in them; but their observations were remarkable. The Doctor wore powder, a custom unknown in this country: one party would say, "He has got lime in his head to kill the vermin;" another would observe that "He was old ...
— An Account of Timbuctoo and Housa Territories in the Interior of Africa • Abd Salam Shabeeny

... rather with pain," said De Haan. Each of the committee drew a tattered copy from his pocket, and followed De Haan's demonstration with ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... the middle of the freight-car, looking down in wonder at the fugitives, was a tall vagabond of the most picturesque type. No ragamuffin was ever so tattered and torn as this rakish individual. His clothes barely hung together on his lank frame; he was barefoot and hatless; a great mop of black hair topped his shrewd, rugged face; coal-black eyes snapped and twinkled beneath shaggy brows and a delighted, knowing grin spread ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... far-off Athens, or some procession up the steps of the Acropolis, where first they met. Anyhow his fixed gaze now shows that he has passed in thought at least beyond the hell around him. Not far behind should be ranged groups of haggard men, with tattered clothes and dulled or tigerish eyes, some dignified, some broken down by grief; while here and there newly fallen corpses, and in one hideous corner a great heap of abandoned dead, should point the ghastly words of Thucydides: [Greek: ton nekron ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... miles they covered, at a man-killing pace that brought them into the fort, hollow-eyed and gaunt, and with their bodies swollen and raw from the sting of black flies and mosquitoes that swarmed through the holes in their tattered garments. ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx

... savanna, where they waded to the neck in grass; or the deep swamp, where, out of the black and root-encumbered slough, rise the huge buttressed trunks of the Southern cypress, the gray Spanish moss drooping from every bough and twig, wrapping its victims like a drapery of tattered cobwebs, and slowly draining away their life, for even plants devour each other, and play their silent parts in the universal ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.

... deserted by their crews or whose fighting men had all been slain. But he had no intention to abide by his compact. In the general confusion he contrived to get on board his own disabled dragonship. There he exchanged his tattered armour for a good suit of seaman's clothes, with a large cloak, a sword, and a bag of gold. He remained on board until nightfall, and then, dropping into a small sailing boat that he had been careful to provide himself with, he stole out of the bay and was soon far away ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton

... linen hood out of her bag, it was clotted with blood all over, and torn and tattered, and said, "This hood, Hauskuld Njal's son, and thy sister's son, had on his head when they slew him; methinks, then, it is ill doing to stand by those from ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders

... by, was killed in the ill-fated expedition to the Isle of Rhe. In the corner of the chapel is the bust of Sir George Rooke, Vice-Admiral, who led the assault on Gibraltar by which it was first captured. And the title of "Warrior's" Chapel is further justified by the presence here of tattered standards, memorials of dead comrades, left by the ...
— The Cathedral Church of Canterbury [2nd ed.]. • Hartley Withers

... which you profess to feel. But, in return, your sister must allow me to feel no more than I profess. I like a fine prospect, but not on picturesque principles. I do not like crooked, twisted, blasted trees. I admire them much more if they are tall, straight, and flourishing. I do not like ruined, tattered cottages. I am not fond of nettles or thistles, or heath blossoms. I have more pleasure in a snug farm-house than a watch-tower,—and a troop of tidy, happy villages please me better than the finest banditti in ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... stag of the forest. These he had concealed, accordingly, in a safe hiding-place, or cache, to be touched at on our return; and now as he emerged from the dark pine copse, with his ropy locks tasselling his flat skull, and a tattered blanket-coat fluttering in ribbons from his brown and brawny chest, his interest in the venture appeared in the careful manner in which he drew after him a long, slender tobaugan, heavily packed with the hard-won proceeds ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various

... by Marjorie or her mother. Long she sat, moodily reviewing the year that had promised so much, yet had yielded her nothing but dissension and sorrow. One bare, ugly fact confronted her, looming up like a hideous monster whose dreadful claws had shredded her peace of mind and now waved at her the tattered fragments. It had all been her fault. For the first time she saw herself as she really was. A jealous, suspicious, hateful girl. It was she, not Marjorie, who had been unfaithful to friendship. But she had gone on blindly, unreasoningly, preferring ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester

... over the blue-print plans of the Freja, one of the boat's flags, that had been used by the expedition throughout all the time of its stay in the ice, hung suspended—a faded, tattered ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... back from the window like a startled fawn; timorous, yet curious, too, for she ran only a few steps, then turned and stood peering. The moonlight slanted over the western roof of the building and fell on her. A slight, boyish figure in short, tattered trousers and a boy's shirt, open at her slim, rounded throat. The moonlight gleamed on the white shirt fabric to show it torn and ragged. Her arms were upraised; her head, with clustering, flying dark curls, was tilted as though listening for a sound from me. A ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... took down a tattered arithmetic and a slate and pencil, and, going out of doors, flung himself down on the cliff and opened the arithmetic ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger

... It was old and sordid-looking, painted dark-red and dishevelled with narrow, tattered announcements. The grass was growing high up the wooden sides. If only it wasn't rotten? He crouched and probed and pierced with his pen-knife, till a country-policeman in a high helmet like a jug saw him, got off his bicycle ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence

... to see whence this interruption proceeded. A grim and unsightly picture met his eye. A bright fire was burning in the middle of the floor, at the other end of the barn; and around it, and lit weirdly up by the red glare, lolled and sprawled the motliest company of tattered gutter-scum and ruffians, of both sexes, he had ever read or dreamed of. There were huge stalwart men, brown with exposure, long-haired, and clothed in fantastic rags; there were middle-sized youths, of truculent ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... three entered the house, pulling the door to behind them. Slowly they mounted the rickety stairs. At the top was the ragged curtain hiding the recess where Tommy had hidden that day. Tuppence had heard the story from Jane in her character of "Annette." She looked at the tattered velvet with interest. Even now she could almost swear it moved—as though some one was behind it. So strong was the illusion that she almost fancied she could make out the outline of a form.... Supposing Mr. Brown—Julius—was ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie

... certain grimy, gritty old rag with which he was wont to polish his golf clubs. It was caked with dirt, and most disreputable, but it was of just the right material, or weight, or size, or something, and he had for it the unreasoning affection that a child has for a tattered rag doll among a whole family of golden-haired, blue-eyed beauties. Ma Mandle, tidying up, used to throw away that rag in horror. Sometimes he would rescue it, crusted as it was with sand and mud and scouring dust. Sometimes he would have to train ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber

... us peer into the shadows. There was a reverse side. A girl of about thirteen years of age was standing at the corner of Hastings and Granville offering matches for sale to the stony world. She was bareheaded, thinly clad, shivering. Her clothing was tattered and torn. Her shoes were several sizes too large, and were some person's cast-off ones. It was Christmas, and no one was seeking for matches. They were all in search of gold and silverware, furs and fancies, to give away to people who did ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... A tattered mendicant, who could not collect any coins, lost as he was in the midst of the crowd, and who had not probably found sufficient indemnity in the pockets of his neighbors, had hit upon the idea of perching himself upon some conspicuous point, in order to attract looks and alms. He had, accordingly, ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo

... not an everyday life. It was then and there, if at any time and anywhere, that the "roaring loom of Time" might be heard: a new garment was being woven for an age that longed to throw off the wornout, tattered, and ill-fitting one inherited from its predecessors; and discontent and hopefulness were the impulses that set the shuttle so busily flying hither and thither. This movement, a reaction against the conventional formalism and barren, superficial scepticism of the preceding ...
— Frederick Chopin as a Man and Musician - Volume 1-2, Complete • Frederick Niecks

... Major Chevenix. He saw us, flushed a little, and gravely saluted. I never liked the man; but will admit he made a fine figure there. And I pitied him a little; for while his eyes rested on Flora, hers wandered to the rear of the third company, where Ensign Ronald Gilchrist marched beside the tattered colours with chin held up and a high colour on his young cheeks and a lip that quivered as ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... the weary woman, whose garments were tattered and torn, and whose hands and face were scratched and bleeding. "I told you how it would be! I told you we could not carry this ...
— Frank Merriwell's Son - A Chip Off the Old Block • Burt L. Standish

... in state, a young Salarik warrior, his splendid cloak rent and hanging in tattered pieces from his shoulders as a sign of his official grief. He carried in one hand a burned out torch, and in the other an unsheathed claw knife, its blade reflecting the sunlight with a wicked glitter. Behind him ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... Lo! howling horribly, the sounding blast, Which Boreas in his sudden fury blows, Scourges with tattered sail the reeling mast: Almost as high as heaven the water flows: The oars are broken; and so fell and fast That tempest pelts, the prow to leeward goes; And the ungoverned vessel's battered side Is undefended from the ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto

... this misery, and every day Miranda grew more desperate of all deliverance, and saw staring her in the face, nearer and nearer, some hideous and shameful end; when one day going down with the wives of the cacique to draw water in the river, she saw on the opposite bank a white man in a tattered Spanish dress, with a drawn sword in his hand; who had no sooner espied her, than shrieking her name, he plunged into the stream, swam across, landed at her feet, and clasped her in his arms. It was ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley

... circling ring, And from their sight thus glides the angry King, Beneath the wood himself he doth disguise In tattered garments, on his steed he flies; And when he comes in sight of Erech's gate, His beggar's mantle throws aside; in state Again enrobed, composed his anxious face, Through Erech's gates he rides with kingly grace; O'er ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous

... my boasted schoolcraft Was gained from such base toil, gained with such pain, That the nice nurture of the mind was oft Stolen at the body's cost. I have gone dinnerless And supperless, the scoff of our poor street, For tattered vestments and lean, hungry looks, To pay the pedagogue.—Add what thou wilt Of injury. Say that, grown into man, I've known the pittance of the hospital, And, more degrading still, the patronage Of the Colonna. Of the tallest trees The roots ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 338, Saturday, November 1, 1828. • Various

... unusually wretched semblance of a man. A tattered coat—some one's cast-off overcoat—green, greasy, mud-stained, clung round his shaking knees; trousers which might have been of any hue originally, but were now "sad-colored," flapped about his thin legs and fringed his ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett

... crazy man," thought the sexton; and he was frightened. He opened the doors carefully and stood back, peering into the darkness. Out past him rushed the figure of a man in tattered, scanty clothes, with unkempt hair and white, wild face. The sexton did not know that he had ever seen him before, but he looked long after him, wondering at his wildness ...
— Stories to Tell Children - Fifty-Four Stories With Some Suggestions For Telling • Sara Cone Bryant

... upon a basket; the girl, warming her hands by a few withered sticks that are blazing on the ground, and a wretched mendicant,[3] wrapped in a tattered and parti-coloured blanket, entreating charity from the rosy-fingered vestal who is going to church, complete the group. Behind them, at the door of Tom King's Coffee-house, are a party engaged in a fray, likely to create business for both surgeon and magistrate: we discover ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... feed, as well as warm us. We (the women) were shown up a filthy flight of wooden stairs into a dilapidated room, the plastered walls of which were all smeared and discolored, the windows begrimed and darkened with dirt. Upon the three beds, which nearly filled up this wretched apartment, lay tattered articles of male and female apparel; and here we drew round the pine-wood fire, which blazed up the chimney, sending a ruddy glow of comfort and cheerfulness even through this disgusting den. We were to wait here for the arrival of the cars from ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble

... during his experience with the Red Cross did Zaidos find time to watch the marvelous skill of a field surgeon. The soldier, a large and muscular man, was almost in ribbons. His flesh was actually tattered, and the dirt had been driven into the wounds. A leg had been blown off, and both arms were broken. Yet he lived. There was quick and silent work for awhile. When the doctor finally stood up and looked critically at his finished ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske

... of art, hung over the narrow painted mantelpiece. The fond mother had had this masterpiece framed and glazed in the days when her son was still a little lad, unspoiled by University life and those splendid aspirations which afterwards made his home hateful to him. There were some tattered books upon a shelf by the bed—school prizes, an old Virgil, a "Robinson Crusoe" shorn of its binding. The boy's name was written in them in a scrawling schoolboy hand; not once, but many times, after the fashion of ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon

... kitchen, where, lying on the dresser ready to put away, there was a goodly store of silver forks and spoons which Bessie had been busily engaged in cleaning that morning. These he also transferred, to the extent of several dozens, to the capacious pockets of the tattered military great-coat that he wore. Whilst thus employed he was much disturbed by the barking of the dog Stomp, the same animal that had mauled him so severely a few weeks before, and was now, as it happened, tied up in his kennel—an old wine barrel—just outside ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard

... already, To curb the vaunting that affronts high Heaven! And thou, O venerable Mother-queen, Beloved of Xerxes, to the palace pass And take therefrom such raiment as befits Thy son, and go to meet him: for his garb In this extremity of grief hangs rent Around his body, woefully unstitched, Mere tattered fragments of once royal robes! Go thou to him, speak soft and soothing words— Thee, and none other, will he bear to hear, As well I know. But I must pass away From earth above, unto the nether gloom; Therefore, old men, take my farewell, and clasp, Even amid the ruin ...
— Suppliant Maidens and Other Plays • AEschylus

... when she arrived, in the selfsame corner, dressed in one of his remarkable check tweed suits; he seldom said good morning, and invariably when she appeared he began to fidget with increased nervousness, with some tattered ...
— The Old Man in the Corner • Baroness Orczy

... Davis they met in his turret-like office room in the Bryson block, examining a tattered book under a microscope. He learned that Davis had a private library of more than 8,000 volumes and was one of the rare old book lovers of the city. His office room was stacked with books he had purchased, several of ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... the highway a dusty tramp forlorn, A tattered coat conceals beneath a bent and aged form, With hardened weary visage, a bell he faintly rings; The air is rent with pitying ...
— Poems - A Message of Hope • Mary Alice Walton

... oh goody! the land's sakes! yew don't mean ter say that, Long?" wofully screeched Aunt Poll, whose ideas of war were derived in great measure from the tattered copy of Josephus extant in the Parsons family; and who was at present calculating the probable effect of a battering-ram on their back buttery, and thinking how horrid it would be to eat up Uncle 'Zekiel in case of famine,—even after long courses ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various

... broth, repulsive in appearance and smell and biting pieces of earth-colored bread as hard as a brick; the cell was impregnated with horrible odours; the bare stone flags of the floor were icy cold; a ragged, dirty sack of straw, and a thin, tattered coverlet swarming with vermin covered the bench in the corner; in the morning the prisoner, like the others, was obliged to clean his cell and work at things whose contact sickened him; at noon he walked up and down the prisonyard, amid thieves and robbers, who jeered ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau

... which in prehistoric times had flowed into the sea, and had ever since declined the kindly draping offices of nature, vibrated in waves of heat. Even the imperishable cocoanut trees, whose tall, bare, curved trunks rose from the lava or the burnt red earth, were gaunt, tattered, and thirsty-looking, weary of crying for moisture to the pitiless skies. At last the ceaseless ripple of talk ceased, crew and passengers slept on the hot deck, and no sounds were heard but the drowsy flap of the awning, and the drowsier creak of the rudder, as the Kilauea swayed sleepily on the ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... rounds; the camp-fires were burning low. Over on the western hills bounding the Thessalian plain-land lingered the last bars of light. It was oppressively warm, and man and beast were utterly fatigued. Quintus Drusus stripped off his armour, and flung himself on the turf inside his tattered leather tent. Vast had been the changes eighteen months of campaigning had made in him. He had fought in Italy, in Spain, in the long blockade of the Pompeians at Dyrrachium. He had learned the art of war in no gentle school. He had ceased even so much as to grumble ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis

... King once said of a Prince struck down, "Taller he seems in death." And this speech holds truth, for now as then 'Tis after death that we measure men, And as mists of the past are rolled away Our heroes, who died in their tattered grey, Grow "taller" and greater in all their parts Till they fill our minds as they fill our hearts. And for those who lament them there's this relief— That Glory sits by the side of Grief, Yes, they grow "taller" ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope

... chanced to stand near the end of the platform. Pretty soon I felt a rough brushing against my elbow. As I turned I saw a small white child, poorly clad, being thrust upon the end of the flower-laden platform. Then followed an old white man, collarless, wearing a dingy blue shirt and a coat somewhat tattered. After him came two strapping fellows, apparently his sons. All grouped themselves there and listened eagerly, freely spitting their tobacco juice on the platform steps ...
— Booker T. Washington - Builder of a Civilization • Emmett J. Scott and Lyman Beecher Stowe

... Be encouraged by recollecting who observes and who can repay you. Indeed the poor of every class were the particular objects of the Saviour's attention during his residence on earth; and he has rendered the tattered garment of poverty respectable by having ...
— Female Scripture Biographies, Vol. II • Francis Augustus Cox

... render sufficiently distinct the more prominent objects around; the eye, however, struggled in vain to reach the remoter angles of the chamber, or the recesses of the vaulted and fretted ceiling. Dark draperies hung upon the walls. The general furniture was profuse, comfortless, antique, and tattered. Many books and musical instruments lay scattered about, but failed to give any vitality to the scene. I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow. An air of stern, deep, and irredeemable gloom hung ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... believe anything of the eloquent young preacher. "The people were in expectation, and all men reasoned in their hearts concerning John, whether haply he were the Christ" (Luke iii. 15). If he had given the least encouragement to their dreams and hopes, they would have unfurled again the tattered banner of the Maccabees; and beneath his leadership would have swept, like a wild hurricane, against the Roman occupation, gaining, perhaps, a momentary success, which afterwards would have been wiped out in blood. "And he confessed, and denied not; and he confessed, ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer

... all events,—one a tall, grizzled, weather-beaten, stoop-shouldered old man, in tattered raiment, and the other more battered still, but with no "look of the sea" about him,—stood on a sand-drift, gloomily gazing at the group of shipwrecked people on the shore, and the helpless mass of timber and spars out there among the beatings ...
— Dab Kinzer - A Story of a Growing Boy • William O. Stoddard

... The dying! Alas! you deceive yourselves. You are going the wrong road. You augment the poverty of the poor to increase the riches of the rich. You should do the reverse. What! take from the worker to give to the idle, take from the tattered to give to the well-clad; take from the beggar to give to the prince! Oh yes! I have old republican blood in my veins. I have a horror of these things. How I execrate kings! And how shameless are the women! I have been told a sad story. How I hate Charles II.! A woman whom my ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... in the heart of St. Petersburg, occupied by the artisan classes, no vagaries in costume call forth the least surprise. Besides the young man's fierce disdain had reached such a pitch, that, notwithstanding his extreme sensitiveness, he felt no shame at exhibiting his tattered garments in the street. He would have felt differently had he come across anyone he knew, any of the old friends whom he usually avoided. Yet he stopped short on hearing the attention of passers-by directed to him by the thick ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne

... conveyances. It was I, with my ancient compunctions, who shuddered when at last they put to death all the perverts, the criminals, and the insane, ridding the world of the scum for which they had no more need. It was then that I was forced to produce my tattered old papers, proving my identity and my story. They knew it was true, in some strange fashion of theirs, and, thereafter, I was kept on exhibition ...
— The Coming of the Ice • G. Peyton Wertenbaker

... The Prince's chamber is prepared, with all 510 The very furniture the Prince used when Last here, in its full splendour. (Aside). Somewhat tattered, And devilish damp, but fine enough by torch-light; And that's enough for your right noble blood Of twenty quarterings upon a hatchment; So let their bearer sleep 'neath something like one Now, as he one day will for ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron

... slung over his back, his hand over his eyes to shade them as he stared at our little cavalcade. Most of the half-naked countryfolks we met had this dismal appendage to Eastern rustic life; and the weapon could hardly be one of mere defence, for, beyond the faded skull-cap, or tattered coat of blue or dirty white, the brawny, brown-chested, solemn-looking fellows had nothing seemingly to guard. As before, there was no lack of travellers on the road: more donkeys trotted by, looking sleek and strong; camels singly and by pairs, laden with a little ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray

... a short distance in front of the trees. Then, each man knowing his place, they fell back out of the scorching sunshine to the shade of the tree's, and waited. In half an hour a loud drumming was heard, and a motley body, two or three thousand strong, of peasants in a confused mass, with a tattered banner or two, made ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty

... no pity in the pale moon. The cold, steady stars shine down on the upturned faces of the South's best and bravest. No craven blenching when the tattered Stars and Bars bear up in battle blast. And yet the starry flag crowns mountain and rock. It sweeps through blood-stained gorges and past battle-scarred defile. Onward, ever southward. The two giant swordsmen reel ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... from behind the old Marine Hospital a woman leading a little child by the hand. Both were wretchedly clad. Thrown about the woman's shoulders was an old quilt. Her shoes were tied with strings, which were wrapped around the soles to keep from leaving her feet. Her skirt, tattered and torn, hung dejectedly about her scant form. The child, barefooted and with only one piece to hide its nakedness, dodged behind its mother as it walked to keep the wind from striking with its full ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton

... sandwiched between a Turco from Morocco and a Senegalese negro soldier, I found a white man, who jumped up to see me and was extraordinarily glad to find that his message had borne fruit. Clad in the tattered but still unmistakable uniform of a French artilleryman, three months' beard upon his face, with white wax-like cheeks, blue nose and a dreadfully hunted expression, stood this six emaciated feet of England. ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey

... had dumped the unconscious kid into the back of the small squad car, and gone looking for more game, Gordon went over to look at the tattered scraps left of the ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey

... popguns!" said Rob shortly. But when he saw how tattered the boy's jacket was, he said more softly, "P'r'aps you'd like ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe

... Conrad, he retaliates by approaching the sex somewhat gingerly. His women, in the main, are no more than soiled and tattered cards in a game played by the gods. The effort to erect them into the customary "sympathetic" heroines of fiction always breaks down under the drum fire of the plain facts. He sees quite accurately, it seems to me, how vastly the ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... sweeping in darkness and with the speed of an arrow, betwixt the barriers, he felt his charger swimming beneath him in comparatively tranquil waters. Another flash illumined hill and river, and he beheld the little canoe dancing along in safety, scarce fifty yards in advance, with Stackpole waving the tattered fragments of his hat aloft, and yelling out a note of triumph. But the lusty hurrah was unheard by the soldier. A more dreadful sound came to his ears from behind, in a shriek that seemed uttered by the combined voices ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird

... of "The Liberator" recently at the Boston Public Library. They say it is very precious, and a custodian stood by and tenderly turned the leaves for me. I was not allowed even to touch it, and when I was through looking at the tattered pages, they locked it up in ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard

... certainly unreasonable. This is the ground of my refusing your gift. I have no thought of asserting my independence [3].' To the same effect is the account of Tsze-sze, which we have from Liu Hsiang. That scholar relates:— 'When Chi was living in Wei, he wore a tattered coat, without any lining, and in thirty days had only nine meals. T'ien Tsze-fang ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge

... a half-playful lunge with his bayonet at a gaunt, yellow-faced spectre of a man who staggered on to the boat with a child in his arms wrapped in a tattered blue quilt. A gust of the chilly wind picked his shapeless, loose-fitting hat off as he leaped to avoid the bayonet-point, and his head was seen to be shaven. The crowd on the bank laughed loud at his clumsiness and at his grotesque head. Joel ...
— The Lions of the Lord - A Tale of the Old West • Harry Leon Wilson

... old Nursery Rhymes brings back queer lost memories of a man's own childhood. One seems to see the loose floppy picture-books of long ago, with their boldly coloured pictures. The books were tattered and worn, and my first library consisted of a wooden box full of these volumes. And I can remember being imprisoned for some crime in the closet where the box was, and how my gaolers found me, happy and impenitent, ...
— The Nursery Rhyme Book • Unknown

... amazement of Phil Lancing, the blankets began to heave; and being speedily tossed aside, behold there came forth the figure of a tattered, half-grown boy—a boy with a face as brown as that of an Indian, and with a pair of defiant black eyes that flashed fire as he looked straight at the owner of ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... have been our lines. Occasionally there are patches of untidiness. 'Shells,' says the officer laconically. There is a racket of guns before us and behind, especially behind, but danger seems remote with all these Bairnfather groups of cheerful Tommies at work around us. I pass one group of grimy, tattered boys. A glance at their shoulders shows me that they are of a public school battalion. 'I thought you fellows were all officers now,' I remarked. 'No, sir, we like it better so.' 'Well, it will be a great memory for you. We are all ...
— A Visit to Three Fronts • Arthur Conan Doyle

... every quarter and at every hour, among the busy confident strongly-stepping Parisians one sees these other people, dazed and slowly moving—men and women with sordid bundles on their backs, shuffling along hesitatingly in their tattered shoes, children dragging at their hands and tired-out babies pressed against their shoulders: the great army of the Refugees. Their faces are unmistakable and unforgettable. No one who has ever caught that stare of dumb bewilderment—or that other look of concentrated ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton

... Horace, and began to poke about with a sinking heart, and a horrid dread that he might have come to the wrong shop, for the big pot-bellied vessel certainly did not seem to be there. At last, to his unspeakable joy, he discovered it under a piece of tattered drugget. "Why, this is the sort of thing I meant," he said, feeling in his pocket and discovering that he had exactly a sovereign. "How much do you ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey

... in fact beating an unobtrusive retreat towards the corner of the bungalow, and would probably have effected his escape but for Bernard, who, moved by the anguished entreaty in Stella's eyes, suddenly strode forward and gripped him by his tattered garment. ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell

... commoner, panting for one-and-twenty, could have treated the academical authorities with more gross disrespect. The needy scholar was generally to be seen under the gate of Pembroke, a gate now adorned with his effigy, haranguing a circle of lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and dirty linen, his wit and audacity gave him an undisputed ascendency. In every mutiny against the discipline of the college he was the ringleader. Much was pardoned, however, to a youth so highly distinguished ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... Resolution.—In tattered rags, unshod and leaning on a stick, the wretch is saying, "I will arise and go to ...
— Diversions in Sicily • H. Festing Jones

... a courtliness that was so incongruous with his unkempt appearance and patched and tattered garments;—"If the Senhora permits, the men may smoke now. In another hour the channel will not be navigable. We have a hot and tiring day before us, and I advise sleep for those to whom it is vouchsafed. If the weather continues to improve, the next tide will bring us a smooth sea. ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... delicate, blue garland which binds the luminous, shadowed brows of water-nymphs; while the iris, its swords sweeping every way in regal profusion, stretched out over agrimony and water-growing king-cups the lilied sceptres, tattered glories of yellow and purple, of the kingdom ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... him; he slept on the floor, on a mattress which in daytime was hidden with his scant wardrobe and cooking utensils in a corner, behind a gray faded curtain. His pictures, simple pieces of canvas with tattered edges, nailed to the four walls, leaving hardly an inch uncovered, were the only decoration and furnished a most peculiar wall paper, which heightened the ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... any of these localities to meet his need, his eye suddenly brightened as, with the air of a fellow who knew what he was about, he took off his cap and, removing the tattered lining, adjusted it in a smooth pad over the ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge

... hear eagerly; and a string of doleful tragedies, merry Italian tales, and Spanish voyages, which all the London prentices know. All the mass has been treated, with more or less skill, by every playwright, and the prompter has the soiled and tattered manuscripts. It is now no longer possible to say who wrote them first. They have been the property of the Theatre so long, and so many rising geniuses have enlarged or altered them, inserting a speech, or a whole Scene, or adding a song, that no man can any longer claim ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various

... subdued in an instant, when he encountered the stern and awful eye of his father. A sign dismissed him from the throne, which Hyder himself ascended, while the official menials hastily disrobed him of his tattered cloak, and flung on him a robe of regal splendour, and placed on his head a jewelled turban. The Durbar rung with acclamations to Hyder Ali Khan Behauder, "the good, the wise, the discoverer of hidden things, who cometh into the Divan like the sun ...
— The Surgeon's Daughter • Sir Walter Scott

... to be preferred, as here they get the benefit of the warmth generated by the insects. One very cold winter I wrapped up one of my hives with a shawl. Before long I noticed that the shawl was beginning to have a very torn and tattered appearance. On examination, I found that a native mouse had established itself in the top of the hive, and had levied a ruinous tax upon the shawl to make itself a nest. Never was a fabric more completely reduced into its original elements than were large sections of that shawl. It was a masterly ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs

... by one, came first the chiefs, privileged by birth to attend the King; and each, as he reached the mouth of the pass, drew on the upper side, among the stones of the rough ground. Then a banner, tattered and torn, with the lion ensign that the Welch princes had substituted for the old national dragon, which the Saxon of Wessex had appropriated to themselves [171], preceded the steps of the King. Behind him came his falconer and bard, and the rest of ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... smells and negative quantities! Only the ground-floor is now inhabited. From the front, your view northward, Nimburg way, across the Elbe Valley, is fertile, wide-waving, pretty: but rearward, upstairs,—having with difficulty got permission,—you find bare balks, tattered feathers, several hundredweight of pigeon's dung, and no outlook at all, except into walls of office-houses and the overhanging brow of Heights,—fatal, clearly, to any view of Daun, even from a third story!" (TOURIST'S NOTE, 1858.)—Tempelhof ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle

... uncertain issue of marrying a girl to 'do for them.' Life under their altered circumstances was simplified. It seemed unnecessary to carry a meal from the room it was cooked in to another for the purpose of eating it, so the front rooms of the house, with their tattered furniture, were left to moulder quietly in the persistent damp. One door was felt to be sufficient for the ingress and egress of two people from a house. The kitchen door, being at the back of the house, was oftenest the sheltered one, so the front ...
— Hyacinth - 1906 • George A. Birmingham

... having an inscription on the fly leaf, apparently in Bunyan's autograph, 'This for my good and dearly beloved frend mistris Backcraft.' It has a false title, bearing the imprint of 'London, Printed for Francis Smith, at the Elephant and Castle without Temple Barr, 1669.' The editor's copy, soiled and tattered, cost him twenty shillings, a striking proof of its rarity. This has the original title, with the real date, 1665, but without a printer's or publisher's name-from which it may be inferred that no one dared to patronize the labours ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... up the slope from the river, his buckskins much tattered, showing a swift cross-country run, "I have news of the great tribe. Like the forest leaves in fall in point of numbers they are, and they wear a wealth of wampum and elk teeth, so much that they are rich beyond any other tribe. Their young men are tall and heavy of stature and wonderful ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe

... in writing; I would give thee tribute meet, Showing those too fond of slighting Th' orphan's cause, that it is sweet, Pure modest worth with love to greet, Though that worth may not appear In form bedecked in gorgeous gear, But one in tattered garb complete. ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd

... one player would not yield the halfpenny he had certainly lost, and the altercation must have ended in blows if a corpulent, elderly cleric had not indignantly reproved them, and boxed their ears. A row of tattered beggars, very well contented in the sunshine, were seated on a step, likewise smoking cigarettes, and obviously they did not consider their ...
— The Land of The Blessed Virgin; Sketches and Impressions in Andalusia • William Somerset Maugham

... the hay, where a poor wretch was almost dead with terror. There was no nest there, and so she failed to see the ghastly face, pinched with hunger and pain, the glassy eyes, the uncombed hair, and soiled tattered garments of him who once was known as one of ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes

... shout, from fort and fleet, greeted the old flag as, all tattered with shot and shell, it rose above the battlements into its native air. The whole audience sprang to their feet. Several bands began to play their most inspiring music. Men swung their hats and grasped each other by the hand; women and ...
— The Flag Replaced on Sumter - A Personal Narrative • William A. Spicer

... all tattered and torn, That kissed the maiden all forlorn, That milked the cow with the crumpled horn, That tossed the dog, That worried the cat, That killed the rat, That ate the malt That lay in the ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... them came a sunburnt, tattered and muscular-looking individual. He wore a ragged red shirt, his trousers were full of holes, and his feet were bare. His face was covered with freckles and he had big saucy blue eyes and an impertinent turned-up ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky

... France. In the midst of the great lonely plain this famous residence of King Louis looks low and mean—Honored pile! Time was when tall musketeers and gilded body-guards allowed none to pass the gate. Fifty years ago, ten thousand drunken women from Paris broke through the charm; and now a tattered commissioner will conduct you through it for a penny, and lead you up to the sacred ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various

... can suggest him vividly to our recollection. I would not too blatantly assert that even a doll on which much affection had been lavished was wholly inert and material in the inorganic sense. The tattered colours of a regiment are sometimes thought worthy to be hung in a church. They are a symbol truly, but they may be something more. I have reason to believe that a trace of individuality can cling about terrestrial objects in a vague and almost imperceptible ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge

... will not look—where at my feet the little coffins are, The boxes where the beggar children lie, unburied and unwatched. I will not look again, for once I saw how one was broken, torn by the sharp teeth of dogs. A little tattered dress was there, and some crunched bones.... I need not look. What can it ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens

... poor woman out of the dyke. He went to his assistance, and found the woman paralyzed with cold, and speechless. Locked in her arms, which were as rigid as bars of iron, was a dead child, whilst another with its tiny icy fingers was holding a death-grip of its mother's tattered garment. Her story was short and simple, which she was able to tell next day: she had made an effort to reach the workhouse, but sank exhausted ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... in flannel shirt and overalls, he lived in flimsy tents, tattered canvas houses, and sometimes holes in the ground. One abode of luxury, long cherished in memory, was a ten-by-twelve redwood shanty on Feather River. It not only boasted a window, but there was a round hole in the "shake" roof, ...
— The Spenders - A Tale of the Third Generation • Harry Leon Wilson

... at last, and leapt into each other's arms. It was with no avail that a distress minute was passed by The Hundred Thousand Committee (a somewhat unworkable body) that henceforth sex was to be a function exercised absolutely for the good of the state: tattered poets were to be seen wildly ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne

... there knew them. These six men were Gilbert o' the Red Cap, Adam o' the Dell, Diccon Cruikshank, William o' Leslie, Hubert o' Cloud, and Swithin o' Hertford. Two others were yeomen of merry Yorkshire, another was a tall stranger in blue, who said he came from London Town, and the last was a tattered stranger in scarlet, who wore ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle

... he to find one?" said he of the tattered hat; "where's the gwr boneddig to find a prydydd? No occasion to go ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow

... be light in the room on the right. Trying to assure herself that her father was a protection, she pushed open the door. She looked into an airless room, scattered with rubber boots, unsavory old corduroy caps, tattered magazines. By the stove nodded a wry-mouthed, squat old woman, and a tall, cheaply handsome man of forty. Tobacco juice stained the front of his stiff-bosomed, collarless shirt. His hands ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... MATSY and PATSY—Long, tattered trousers, old suspenders, large, well worn shoes, calico shirts, torn and patched. Bright calico neckties. Caps. In Act III Matsy wears a large black mustache, a long black coat, much too large, and a stiff hat three sizes too big, while ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare

... shining, and a rich color mantled in her cheeks. She looked positively lovely, and several people turned and stared at her. Her face was of a refined and even noble cast; and the incongruity of the uncovered head and the poor and tattered clothing only made her beauty the more striking. "Ha, ha!" laughed a coarse voice in ...
— A Girl of the People • L. T. Meade

... some months, when she drew near her native glen, and the cottage that had been her father's, that had been her own, stood before her. She had travelled all the day and sold nothing. Her children were pulling by her tattered gown, weeping and crying, "Bread, mother, give us bread!" and her own ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various

... short months this girl carried in her arms a baby. This baby was wrapped in a tattered shawl and cried piteously from hunger, for the mother had not enough to eat. She was cold, and sick, and in disgrace. Her husband, too, was ill, and sorely in debt. It ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard

... up in his rough bunk, with the tattered gray blankets over him, one hand was clutched on the side of the bed and there was a great horror in his eyes. "The sea; the sea," he kept saying, "don't let me hear it. It's THEIR voices. Listen! They're beating at the sides of the ship. Keep them ...
— The Hohenzollerns in America - With the Bolsheviks in Berlin and other impossibilities • Stephen Leacock

... Garb of Fakir, renouncement, fakir's garments be; In lowliness; patched and tattered clothes His robe of tatters and of rags still ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... against any who could not defend themselves—a miserable sickly Spaniard, who had been forced to work until he had actually dropped, having recently been more especially the object of their attentions. Their supremacy, however, was contested by a party of seven or eight tattered countrymen of the latter, with one or two Portuguese, who were always ready with their knives, and who formed a sort of opposition. To this ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie

... old Virginian ways; And who more fit my tale to scan Than you, who knew in far-off days The eager horse of Sheridan; Who saw the sullen meads of fate, The tattered scrub, the blood-drenched sod, Where Lee, the greatest of the great, Bent to the ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... "it's a great help, of course, to know it, but it isn't necessary. I keep the words in my pocket to prompt Dandie, and the Wrig can only say two lines, she's so little." (Here he produced some tattered leaves torn from a book of ballads.) "We've done it many a time, but this is a new Dunfermline Castle, and we are trying the play in a different way. Rafe is the king, and Dandie is the 'eldern ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... They answered, "We are the maids and the slave-girls of the minister." The boy said, "Go and tell the minister's wife that her sister's son is here. Tell her that he is standing by the village tank, that his coat is tattered and that his garments are torn, and ask her to let him come into her house through the back door." The slave-girls took him in through the back door. His aunt had him bathed, and gave him clothes to wear, and food to eat, and drink, and a pumpkin hollowed out and ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid

... steps, which was constructed by Wren to furnish a private access to the library. In crossing thence to the northern gallery, there is a fine view of the entire vista of the cathedral. The model-room used to contain Wren's first design, and some tattered flags once hung beneath the dome. Wren's noble model, we regret to learn, is "a ruin, after one hundred and forty years of neglect," the funds being insufficient for its repair. A staircase from the southern gallery leads ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury

... a pedlar to an evening house; Sweet Lettice, from her lattice looking down, Wondered what man he was, so curious His black hair dangled on his tattered gown: Then lifts he up his face, with glittering eyes,— "What will you buy, sweetheart?—Here's honeycomb, And mottled pippins, and sweet mulberry pies, Comfits and peaches, snowy cherry bloom, ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare

... There is no pulpit; the only ornament is a rude representation of the Meccan Mosque, nailed like a pothouse print to the wall; and the sole articles of furniture are ragged mats and old boxes, containing tattered chapters of the Koran in greasy bindings. I enter with a servant carrying a prayer carpet, encounter the stare of 300 pair of eyes, belonging to parallel rows of squatters, recite the customary two-bow prayer in honor of the mosque, placing sword and ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton



Words linked to "Tattered" :   destroyed, tatterdemalion, shattered, worn



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