"Muck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... I haven't got down to the primitive diet yet," he sighed, as he sat back. "The tinned goods on the Rattler, now I could make a hearty meal off of them, but this muck——" He took a half-pound strip of broiled shark and flung it to the dog. "I suppose I'll come to it if you don't ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... that blank staring hell of anonymousness, that bottomless, weak, watery muck of irresponsibility—that terrific, devilish vagueness which a crowd is and which a crowd has to be ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... too discreet To run a-muck, and tilt at all I meet; I only wear it in a land of Hectors, Thieves, supercargoes, sharpers, and directors. 1574 POPE: Satire i., ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... my own ould bones go to you that you shall niver pass bottle full nor glass empty. God preserve the light av your onderstandin' to you, my jewel av a bhoy, that ye may niver forget what you mint to be an' do, whin you're wallowin' in the muck! May ye see the betther and follow the worse as long as there's breath in your body; an' may ye die quick in a strange land, watchin' your death before ut takes you, an' onable to stir hand ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... Why do people send the medicines to me? Why do perfect strangers assume that, because I have taken up the task of muck-raking the Atlantic Ocean, I am in need of antidotes for mal de mer? Even suppose that I do suffer thus at sea? Is it anybody ...
— Ship-Bored • Julian Street
... was the last chapter of the Epistle of James. The deep, even voice of Nathaniel North sounded through that terrible denunciation of unholy riches with a gravity of conviction far more impressive than the anger of the modern muck-raker. The hearts of the children, remembering their conversation, were disturbed and vaguely troubled. Then came the gentler words about patience and pity and truthfulness and the healing of the sick. At the end ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... centre of the room. "It's at the bottom—in the muck! That's where it is. And it ought to be! What am I, out there on that silly platform they call a stage? A fool, that's all, making faces, and pretending to be somebody with another name, for two dollars! A monkey-on-a-stick for the children! Of course the world despises us! Why shouldn't it? It ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... Standard Oil Company is to pay good wages to its employees, and to see that they are comfortable and contented. As a result of this policy the Standard Oil Company is seldom bothered with strikes, and most of its workers have no connection with labor unions, do not listen to muck-rakers and other vile breeders of social discontent, and are quite satisfied with their little round of duties and ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... She-she-took-a-muck was a ferocious whale supposed to have lived at Hell's Gate, and to have swallowed Indians and their canoes. The whale was killed by ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... cries Barbro furiously; and goes on again: "Oh, 'twould serve you right if I took and heaved you out on the muck-heap for your ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... turned on him angrily. "Man," he said, "haven't you heard? That muck won't do now. I have to try to do Martlow justice." He went out to ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... but little oil, and never boil it: boiling it melts that vegetable dross into its heart which it is our business to clear away; for impure oil is death to colour. No; take your oil and pour it into a bottle with water. In a day or two the water will turn muddy: that is muck from the oil. Pour the dirty water carefully away and add fresh. When that is poured away, you will fancy the oil is clear. You're mistaken. Reicht, fetch me that!" Reicht brought a glass trough ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... "You horn-jawed, muck-faced jezebo of a sea-sculpin, you dare to yap out any more of that sculch and I'll come aboard you after we anchor and jump down your gullet and gallop the etarnal innards out of ye! Don't you know that I've got ladies ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... prevented the men from giving the old chief as much liquor as they were ready to bestow on him, lest he might get drunk, and take it into his head to run a-muck or jump overboard. He had taken enough, however, to send him fast asleep in the bottom of the boat, where he lay, as Jerry observed, "like a porpus in a ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... and Sanitrys, and Dooks, I do not mean To be rucking upon Charity, or rounding on wot's clean; But if yer wants to 'elp us as has lived so long in muck, The only thing wot's wanted ain't ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... mate, for me; that means money, and rules, sportsman form, and sech muck. I likes to pick out my own pals, go permiskus, and trust to pot-luck. A rush twelve-a-breast is a gammock, twelve squeakers a going like one; But "rules o' the road" dump you down, chill yer sperrits, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... muck-rake, doctor," I said as I got out of the motor (he had taken me up through the Park to Morningside and back, while I was telling him), "and I'll probably be a little ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... shepherds have encamped; and the palings were broken, the water in the trenches was disappearing, while fragments of glass and the bones of apes were to be seen amid the miry puddles. A scrap of cloth hung here and there from the bushes, and the rotten flowers formed a yellow muck-heap beneath the citron trees. In fact, the servants had neglected everything, thinking that ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... horror and condemnation throughout the civilized world is due to the fact that in the summer of 1914 the attention of the world was focused on events in France and Belgium. I have no quarrel with the Greeks and nothing is further from my desire than to engage in what used to be known as "muck-raking," but I am reporting what I saw and heard in Albania because I believe that the American people ought to know of it. Taken in conjunction with the behavior of the Greek troops in Smyrna in the spring of 1918, it should better enable us to form an opinion as to the ...
— The New Frontiers of Freedom from the Alps to the AEgean • Edward Alexander Powell
... whom should we write for, in this age which makes its own epic upon sounding anvils, and whose lyric is yelled from the locomotive running a muck through forest and field and beside the waters no longer still? Write poetry now, when noise has become normal, and we are like the Egyptians, who never heard the roaring of the fall of Nilus, because the racket was so familiar to them! The age "capers in its own fee simple" and cries ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... of all kinds from every available source. Remember that anything which will rot will add to the value of your manure pile. Muck, lime, old plastering, sods, weeds (earth and all), street, stable and yard sweepings—all these and numerous others will increase your garden successes of ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... the love of Pete!" gasped Curtis. "Any small efforts at muck-racking this refrigerator trust would be ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... thing you can do twice. No, I accept my destiny. It's all over. And now, Bertie, like a good chap, shove off. I want to compose my speech. I can't compose my speech with you mucking around. If you are going to continue to muck around, at least give me a couple of stories. The little hell hounds are sure to expect a ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... "My liege, I'll never lin, But I will thorough thick and thin, Until at length I bring her in; My dearest lord, ne'er doubt it." Thorough brake, thorough briar, Thorough muck, thorough mire, Thorough water, thorough fire; And thus goes Puck ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... the following, which he agreed was 'admirable sense,'—I certainly think the words would never have come together except in this way: I quartz pyx who fling muck beds. I long thought that no human being could say this under any circumstances. At last I happened to be reading a religious writer,—as he thought himself,—who threw aspersions on his opponents thick and threefold. Heyday came into my head; ...
— Over the Teacups • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... Boston," said the doctor; "I've cleared away the muck over this hatch. It's 'corked,' as you sailormen call it. Help me get ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... always will be, thank Gawd!" This ended the talk. But the last speaker, turning round, saw her two-year-old daughter asprawl in the garden, and with sudden change from satisfied drawl to shrill exasperation, "Git up out of all that muck, you dirty little devil," she said. For she was a cleanly woman, proud of her children, and disliking ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... have him then?" he asked. "Red, yaller, muck-dirt colour?"—and he stared significantly at the Tailless Tyke, who was lying at his master's feet. The little man ceased rubbing his knees and eyed the boy. David shifted uneasily beneath that dim, ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... I said, can't tell who was their grandfather. Now, Roger is like me, a Hamley of Hamley, and no one who sees him in the street will ever think that red-brown, big-boned, clumsy chap is of gentle blood. Yet all those Cumnor people, you make such ado of in Hollingford, are mere muck of yesterday. I was talking to madam the other day about Osborne's marrying a daughter of Lord Hollingford's—that's to say, if he had a daughter—he's only got boys, as it happens; but I'm not sure if I should consent to it. I really am not sure; for you see Osborne will have had ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... followed in an instant, for they had wanted only a leader. Above the roar of the flames Bert could hear the thud as the horses landed in the soft muck of the cow-yard, ten feet below. Then came a shout as the men rushed forward to ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... are anxious to run a muck Can't do better than join with Puck. They'll find him bon diable—spite of his phiz— And, in fact, his great ambition is, While playing old Puck in first-rate style, To be thought ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... years later I had another adventure with a weasel that had its den in a bank on the margin of a muck swamp in the same neighborhood. We had cleared and drained and redeemed the swamp and made it into a garden, and I had built me a lodge there. The weasel's hunting-grounds, where doubtless he had been wont to gather his supply of ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... once, a mile or two after starting, when he came to a stream. Into this he had waded, and had washed the muck stains from his clothes, ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... lose out. But in the end he had mastered the secret, and ever afterwards it was one of his proudest accomplishments; so that Giraffe always carried that little bow, and some dry tinder along, whenever he left camp, even though it would have been muck easier to put some ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... keenly at the girl as they walked slowly out into the office; he was wondering what her object might be in this pilgrimage. His mind flitted briefly over the ideas of muck-raking reporters and inquisitive lady novelists; yet surely this self-possessed but quiet young lady suggested nothing of either class, and besides, a niece of Silas Osgood's could scarcely deserve suspicion. At the same time, detecting in her manner what impressed him as ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... had some gratifying quality, because he repeated it. Then he stood up and repeated it again. "The fool I have been!" he cried; and now speech was coming to him. He tried this sentence with expletives. "Ass!" he went on, still warming. "Muck-headed moral ass! I ought to ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... out. I'd rather you would come again. I don't think you will bring that street-muck with ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... a little sharply. "Our men here are as big as you and I, every one of them. My God! you'll have to pay the price of being a high muck-a-muck, Marty! So, ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... render it impossible for any girl, once she has attained the age of fifteen, to continue unacquainted with the main facts of life, and some are initiated at an even tenderer age. How is it possible for any maiden to remain unenlightened in this regard these days when sensational, muck-raking prints throw the searchlight of publicity into every boudoir and spicy details of society's philandering fill column after column in the breakfast table newspaper? No matter how little curiosity a healthy-minded girl may have, by reason ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... Peter went on. "I've got work, too." He pointed at his pile of dirt on the table. "You see, there's gold in all that muck, ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... of four rails upon the soft muck, Russ began to lay the next tier across them, thus building a platform. It was a shaky platform, but he crept out upon it slowly and carefully and the lower ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jack's • Laura Lee Hope
... meeting, "Mr. —— says as how he's going to the House of Lords to leaven it. I tell you, you can't no more leaven the House of Lords by putting Mr. —— into it than you can sweeten a cart-load of muck with a pot of marmalade." During the General Election of 1892 I heard an old labourer on a village green denouncing the evils of an Established Church. "I'll tell you how it is with one of these 'ere State parsons. If you take ...
— Collections and Recollections • George William Erskine Russell
... at the steel masts rising and carrying huge yards of steel, rising higher and higher, until steel masts and yards gave way to slender spars of wood, while ropes and stays turned into a delicate tracery of spider-thread against the sky. That such a wretched muck of men should be able to work this magnificent ship through all storm and darkness and peril of the sea was beyond all seeming. I remembered the two mates, the super-efficiency, mental and physical, of Mr. Mellaire and Mr. Pike—could they make ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... "righteous cause." Why, even the very men who had lately been slaves were in the "righteous cause," and glorifying it, praying for it, sentimentally slabbering over it, just like all the other commoners. Imagine such human muck as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... at his tilted airship. His clothes were covered with mud from the ditch, some of the muck had splashed over his face so that he was a ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... the laying season began, and when both Bashti and Agno were acutely egg-yearning after six months of abstinence, that Agno led Jerry along the taboo path through the mangroves, where they stepped from root to root above the muck that ever steamed and stank in the stagnant air where ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... a heart remembering His former talks with Edith, on him breathed Far purelier in his rushings to and fro, After his books, to flush his blood with air, Then to his books again. My lady's cousin, Half-sickening of his pension'd afternoon, Drove in upon the student once or twice, Ran a Malayan muck against the times, Had golden hopes for France and all mankind, Answer'd all queries touching those at home With a heaved shoulder and a saucy smile, And fain had haled him out into the world, And air'd him there: his ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... all control and come crashing downward among the dogs, jolting one of the medicine chests from its lashings and butting its nose heavily against the foot of the next hummock immediately beyond. But the men scrambled to their places again, the medicine chest was replaced, and Muck Tu, the Esquimau dog-master, whipped forward his dogs. Ferriss, too, laid hold. The next hummock was surmounted, the dogs panting, and the men, even in that icy air, reeking with perspiration. Then suddenly and without the least ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... with drawn swords. The sbirri along the street pulled out their cutlass-knives; the dragoons rode on the footway, and struck out at the carriages filled with ladies as they passed by, while the police ran a-muck (I can use no other word) amongst the terror-stricken crowd. The cries of the crushed and wounded, the terror of the women, and the savage, brutal fury of the police, added to the panic and confusion of the scene. Not the slightest attempt at resistance was made by the unarmed crowd; in a few minutes ...
— Rome in 1860 • Edward Dicey
... received the penalty due to his sin in the life hereafter. For in the spirit land the ghost of such a poor-spirited wretch was sentenced to what the Fijians regarded as the most degrading of all punishments, to beat a heap of muck ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... I'll moider yuh! Pullin' dat whistle on me, huh? I'll show yuh! I'll crash yer skull in! I'll drive yer teet' down yer troat! I'll slam yer nose trou de back of yer head! I'll cut yer guts out for a nickel, yuh lousey boob, yuh dirty, crummy, muck-eatin' ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... mon; a guede clean shot as ere were made out thot muck!" exclaimed Kirkaldy, his face mantled with a grin of ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... much," protests Rupert. "You see, I lived in a little town in southern Illinois. Father ran a general store. I had to help in it—sold shingle nails, molasses, mower teeth, overalls. How I hated that! But there was the creek and the muck pond. I had an old boat. I played smuggler and pirate. I used to love to read pirate books. I wanted ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... my fat friend up. Boggsie's getting out of the whole thing without spending a bean knocked him cold. But he got his wind later. You ought to have heard his speech down there at the house, with a plate of melted strawberry muck in one hand and a glass of sour in the other, replying to Boggsie's vote of thanks to us two, and skinning his face at the Brown girl. Oh, it was ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... the run of luck May shed the slime—they've done it, Times and again they've done it. That turn to aspiration out of muck Is quick if heart's begun it, If heart's desire's begun it. But 'ware revenge if greater craft it is That jockeyed him to recognize defeat, Or greater force that overmastered his— Efficiency more potent than deceit That craved his crown and won it! Safer ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... and yet that mare, although, as you say, Miss Catharine, she was never healthy, has the most wonderful pluck, as you know. I remember once I had two ton o' muck in the waggon, and we were stuck. Jack and Blossom couldn't stir it, and, after a bit, chucked up. I put in Maggie—you should have seen her! She moved it, a'most all herself, aye, as far as from here to the gate, and then of course ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... whimsically. "You have a real talent for caricature, Mr. Cummings, and you should exercise it. You really got Peters. Poor Peters, he's a fine fellow, you know; but this business of living in the muck and filth, c'est malheureux. Besides, Peters is an old man. It's a dirty bloody shame, that's what it is. A bloody shame that all of us here should be forced to live like ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... of the 'dobe-holes that people rely upon through this journey. These 'dobe-holes are occasional wallows in clayey spots, and men and cattle know each one. The cattle, of course, roll in them, and they become worn into circular hollows, their edges tramped into muck, and surrounded by a thicket belt of mesquite. The water is not good, but will save life. The first one lay two stages from the well, and Genesmere accordingly made an expected dry camp the first night, carrying water from the well in the Santa Cruz, and dribbling all of it but a cupful among ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... rain, the mud, and the cold, The cold, the mud, and the rain; With weather at zero it's hard for a hero From language that's rude to refrain. With porridgy muck to the knees, With sky that's a-pouring a flood, Sure the worst of our foes Are the pains and the woes Of the RAIN, the COLD, ...
— Rhymes of a Red Cross Man • Robert W. Service
... harbors the gypsies as ravage the whole country, mostly; and now they have let loose this here young 'oman on to us. She is a POLL PRY: goes about the town a-sarching: pries into their housen and their vittels, and their very beds. Old Marks have got a muck-heap at his door for his garden, ye know. Well, miss, she sticks her parasole into this here, and turns it about, as if she was agoing to spread it: says she, 'I must know the de-com-po-si-tion of this 'ere, as you keeps under the noses of your young folk.' ...
— The Woman-Hater • Charles Reade
... with all the proper papers—lawful child o' some couple in Lunnon somewheres—mother dead, father drinkin'. And there was that Lunnon society's five shillin's a week for her. Jim's mother she wouldn't despise week-end money, but I never heard Jim was much of a muck-grubber. Let be how 'twill, they two mothered up Mary no bounds, till it looked at last like they'd forgot she wasn't their own flesh an' blood. Yes, I reckon they forgot Mary wasn't their'n ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... reported at dawn by Billy Muck, who had taken no part in the intimidation scheme, a wholesome awe crept into the old men's admiration; for a black fellow is fairly logical in ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... but seldom be exercised, and only by a few persons. They are privileged crimes. They are the dreadful prerogatives of greatness, and of the highest situations only. But when a Governor-General descends into the muck and filth of peculation and corruption, when he receives bribes and extorts money, he does acts that are imitable by everybody. There is not a single man, black or white, from the highest to the lowest, that is possessed in the smallest degree of momentary authority, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... in the hurry that Dad was in was the very devil! He felled the saplings—and such saplings!—TREES many of them were—while we, "all of a muck of sweat," dragged them into line. Dad worked like a horse himself, and expected us to do the same. "Never mind staring about you," he'd say, if he caught us looking at the sun to see if it were coming dinner-time—"there's no time to lose if we want to get ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... mug so wan and blue, [6] In mud and muck you're laid; Say, what's the matter now with ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... it up to him to start toward the foregoing programme, to be reached in (say) three years—two if possible. He must learn to grow these things absolutely better than they are now grown anywhere on earth. He must get the best seed. He must get muck out of the swamp, manure from somewhere, etc. etc. He must have the supreme flavour in each thing. Let him take room enough for each—plenty of room. He doesn't want much room for any one thing, but ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... and a heave. The official went skidding and slithering six feet through the mud, clutching at nothing and contorting himself in a frantic effort to keep from sprawling in the muck. By a margin thin as an eyelash he succeeded in preserving his balance and stood where he stopped, amazement and anger ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... if Hinkey is still running. If he runs long enough he'll probably fall in with some muck-raking magazine writer, who'll get out of Hinkey a startling story of why some soldiers ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... sure, it makes our task difficult to have to deal so muck with eccentricities and extremes. "How CAN religion on the whole be the most important of all human functions," you may ask, "if every several manifestation of it in turn have to be corrected and sobered down ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... could not bear to see anything abused, immediately snatched up a handful of grass from the side of the road under the fence, and commenced to wipe the worst of the muck away. ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... he thinks the stars have set him all a-fire. An' it'll take great thumpin' jumps sometimes, an' run along the tops of the trees, carrying its partner with it, an' then droppin' him jest as a fish hawk'll drop a pickerel to kill it before eatin'. An' its food, of all the muck in the whole Bush is—moss!" And he laughed a short, unnatural laugh. "It's a moss-eater, is the Wendigo," he added, looking up excitedly into the faces of his companions. "Moss-eater," he repeated, with a string of the most ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... bookseller. 'The dahned publishers are crawling to me. They've had their filthy lucre, and they know I can shift the stuff, and they're on their knees to me, begging me to take their muck by the hundred—at my ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... operation of a bird as an idle tradition, saying that the sap which produces the plant is such as "the tree doth excerne and cannot assimilate," and Browne ("Vulgar Errors") was of the same opinion. But the opposite opinion was perpetuated in the very name ("Mistel: fimus, muck," Cockayne),[163:1] and was held without any doubt by most of the ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... astir; the maid strolls back from the market, swinging her right arm and with the left clasping the basket of provisions to her side; the air grows thick with the smell and smoke of kitchens. It again becomes clear to our Lane that the real and normal consist solely of herself, her houses, and their muck-heaps. ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... bridge road is graveled all the way, and if this isn't blue clay I'll eat my hat. It might just be a private road to some farm, and the other road might have swung around after a bit. This muck- hole ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... were, they were still fearful savages. Messengers arrived from the neighbouring town to announce the death of their chief, Matiamvo. That individual had been addicted to running a-muck through his capital and beheading any one he met, till he had a large heap of human heads in front of his hut. Men were also slaughtered occasionally, whenever the chief wanted part of a body to perform ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... on deck than Jerry made a new discovery—land. He did not see it, but he smelled it. His nose went up in the air and quested to windward along the wind that brought the message, and he read the air with his nose as a man might read a newspaper—the salt smells of the seashore and of the dank muck of mangrove swamps at low tide, the spicy fragrances of tropic vegetation, and the faint, most faint, acrid tingle of smoke from ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... come this way, Miss Gordon," said Mr. Huntley solicitously, as he guided her across the black muck of the crossing, to which the snow had already been converted. "I hope you ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... the western coast of Skye, we passed the island of Muck, an unpleasant-sounding name. To the north is the curious island of Eig, the southern side of which is perfectly flat, but in the north rises a lofty perpendicular rock, called the Scuir of Eig. Within it is a large cavern, which was ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... air by day and night! While our thoraxes they tickle. Like the fumes from brass in pickle, Or from naphtha all alight; Making stench, stench, stench, In a worse than witch-broth drench, Of the muck-malodoration that so nauseously wells From the Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells— From the fuming and the spuming of ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... "You have done your work, and I fling you away, as I fling away all my tools at my pleasure. There, in the green muck and slimy filth, you ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... wall, sar," cautioned my guide; "dere am a gutter in de middle ob de road, and if you steps into dat you go in ober your shoes in muck." ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... piercing barks—much the sound that a pack of wolves raises when in full cry. Involuntarily I glanced backward to discover the origin of this new and menacing note with the result that I missed my footing and went sprawling once more upon my face in the deep muck. ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... has run a muck," said old Judge Girvin, "and while I am far from denying that In many—perhaps in most—cases his facts are correct, still his methods make for lawlessness among the masses. It might be well to meet him reasonably, ...
— The Gray Dawn • Stewart Edward White
... create this interest and stir his readers to action by either one of two methods: by exposing existing evils, or by showing what has been done to improve bad conditions. The exposure of evils in politics, business, and society constituted the "muck-raking" to which several of the popular monthly magazines owe their rise. This crusading, "searchlight" type of journalism has been largely superseded by the constructive, "sunlight" type. To explain how reforms have been accomplished, or are being brought about, is construed by the best of the ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... that Mr. Ames has never been worldly-wise enough to become an avowed cynic on the question. He probably knows as well as anybody that to clean up Montreal is in the same category as making Europe safe for the League of Nations; a much harder city to regenerate than even Philadelphia. Muck-raking has no effect, when two-thirds of the population read French papers which never use the rake, and when the boss of three-fourths of the rest is himself often a target for the yellows. Mr. Ames should long ago in this connection have ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... cross-cut de whole dam' creek an' don' fin' so much as one color. Sapre! Dat's fonny creek. She 'ain't got no gravel." The speaker threw back his head and laughed heartily. "It's fac'! I'scover de only creek on all de Yukon wit'out gravel. Muck! Twenty feet of solid frozen muck! It's lucky I stake on soch bum place, eh? S'pose all winter I dig an' don' ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... which they would never be sufficiently cultured to properly enjoy. Deaf and blind to every other consideration, to this end they had degraded their intellects by concentrating them upon the minutest details of expense and profit, and for their reward they raked in their harvest of muck and lucre along with the hatred and curses of those they injured in the process. They knew that the money they accumulated was foul with the sweat of their brother men, and wet with the tears of little ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... wallet. Still I did not understand. It was when I heard the lift door and knew you had gone forever that I understood. Loved you with all my heart, with all that poor old Stefani had fashioned out of muck and clay. If you held my head to your heart, if that is my blood there—Do you, can you care ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... America's head muck-rakers, I found that I was popular with the British ruling classes; they found my books useful in their campaigns against democracy, and they were surprised and disconcerted when they found I did not agree with their interpretation of my writings. I had told of corruption ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... lead me back to the main band. The signs were few and barely sufficient to allow me to keep up the pursuit. It was not until I came to a spring, the overflow of which had made muck of the ground, that I was afforded an opportunity to inspect the two sets of tracks. One set was made by moccasins almost as small as those I ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... The American Muck Book; treating of the Nature, Properties, Sources, History, and Operations of all the principal Fertilizers and Manures in Common Use, with Specific Directions for their Preservation, and Application to the Soil and to Crops; drawn from Authentic Sources. Actual Experience, and ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... pleasant till 'tis past: The mischief is that 'twill not last. Oh I have been to Ludlow fair And left my necktie God knows where, And carried half-way home, or near, Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer: Then the world seemed none so bad, And I myself a sterling lad; And down in lovely muck I've lain, Happy till I woke again. Then I saw the morning sky: Heigho, the tale was all a lie; The world, it was the old world yet, I was I, my things were wet, And nothing now remained to do But begin the ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... Lord God: Behold, I will bring a King of kings from the north, with horses and with chariots, and with horsemen and companies and muck people. He shall slay with the sword thy ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... bloomin', blasted, infernal ice, I tell you,' he shouted in a rage, standing in black muck almost to his knees, with the same material bespattered over him from head to foot. Indeed his red and perspiring face showed a couple of great, black smirches with which he ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... the hangars. Time, about eleven, The air full chill, the ground a mess of muck, And long time gazed I on the wintry heaven And thought of many a deed of Saxon pluck; How DRAKE, for instance, good old DRAKE of Devon, Played bowls at Plymouth Hoe. Twelve-thirty struck. No one had vaulted through the air's abyss; ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various
... every bit of grass, sir," was the growling objection; and still worse was the suggestion, which gradually rose into a command, that the "muck-heap" should be removed to the said home-field, and never allowed to accumulate in such close proximity ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as muck. I've put Peter and Mary to bed, and you must just go too, or you'll be having the rheumatics and I don't know what. Do go, missus, now ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... mustn't mind weather when the market's to be considered. Tell me now, sir—you've got time, haven't you, sir? Talkin' of the market, and I've been nearly dead, and not out o' the muck yet—does the people know what us ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... family bard of Seaforth, Macvuirich, the pensioner of Clanranald, and Hector the Lamiter, bard of M'Lean, were pre-eminent in this department. The Massacre of Glencoe suggested numerous elegies. There is one remarkable for pathos by a clansman who had emigrated to the Isle of Muck, from which circumstance he ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... covered with a flat stone or other suitable material, connect it with the outlet by an open ditch, unless the bottom of the ditch, when laid open to the proper depth, be found to be of muck or quicksand. In such case, it will be best to lay the tile at once, and cover it in for the whole distance, as, on a soft bottom, it would be difficult to lay it well when the full drainage of the field is flowing through the ditch. The tiles should be laid with ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... creature, now making for the opening to its den on the other side of the mound—a den which Loll no doubt was at that moment exploring. Her brother-in-law was preparing to spring across one of the little brown pools. . . . Then, to her despair, he stumbled, and one leg went down in the soft muck of the farther edge. As he fell, he tried to throw his rifle to the bank, but the heavy, metal-stayed butt jammed ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... but denoting the practice of the Malays, when infuriated to madness with bang (a preparation from a species of hemp), of sallying into the streets, or decks, to murder any whom they may chance to meet, until they are either slain or fall from exhaustion.—To run a-muck. To run madly and attack all we meet (Pope, Dryden). As in the case of mad dogs, certain death awaited them, for if not killed in being taken, torture ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... name. Matiamvo is the hereditary title, muata meaning lord or chief. The late Matiamvo seems, from the report of these men, to have become insane, for he is said to have sometimes indulged the whim of running a muck in the town and beheading whomsoever he met, until he had quite a heap of human heads. Matiamvo explained this conduct by saying that his people were too many, and he wanted to diminish them. He had absolute power of life and death. On inquiring whether human sacrifices were ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... repeated with a sigh of satisfaction. "Always; and hyiu muck-a-muck when big salmon run. No more ever come that bad year ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... a creaking gate and went up a flight of bricked steps to the door. He had guessed right; above a brass knocker filmed with the floating muck of the air he saw the numeral, Two, painted beneath the fanlight. The windows on the left were blank, curtained. The house rose silent and without a mark of life above the obscene clamor of the city. He knocked sharply and waited; then he knocked again. Nothing broke the stillness of the facade, ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... time," said Jonah, "I appeal to you all to let that dog-eared mountebank rake over his muck-heap, ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... went, and right spang in the thickest of the bushes an' muck we come across the queerest lookin' machine that ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... said Elliott. "You think I'm talking fearful flowery stuff. I'd have said Dear me at myself three years ago if I had ever caught myself thinking in terms of stars and roses. But it's all the beastly blood and muck of the war that does it,—sends one back with a rush to things like that. Makes one shameless. Why, I'd talk to you about God now without turning a hair. Nothing would have induced me so much as to mention seriously that I'd even heard of him three years ago. Why, I write ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... wet, even swampy, soil, it will do well on moist loam. It is cultivated like spearmint. In Michigan, western New York and other parts of the country it is grown commercially upon muck lands for the oil distilled from its leaves and stems. Among essential oils, peppermint ranks first in importance. It is a colorless, yellowish or greenish liquid, with a peculiar, highly penetrating odor and a burning, camphorescent taste. An interesting use is made of it by sanitary engineers, ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... of drumhead,—by which I mean to make them grow to the greatest size possible,—I want a strong compost of barn-yard manure, with night-soil and muck or fish-waste, and, if possible, rotten kelp. A compost into which night-soil enters as a component is best made by first covering a plot of ground, of easy access, with soil or muck that has been exposed to a winter's frost, to the depth of about eighteen inches, and raising ...
— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory
... I ever fell in love with a man he'd have to be a man and not a crawler," said Dawn. "Some girls think if they get a bit of a swell he's something; but I wouldn't care if a man were the Prince of Wales and Lord Muck in one, if he couldn't do things without muddling, I'd throw water ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... he begs the Society to be cautious and offer no encouragement to any disposed "'to run the muck' (sic) (it is Sir George's expression) against the religious and political INSTITUTIONS of Spain"; but "the delicacy of the situation does not appear to have been thoroughly understood at the time even by the Committee at home." {224b} They saw the ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... Nevertheless, in combination with proper ingredients, we do say it is a good and profitable manure for grass. For each acre mix from 200 to 400 lbs. with as many bushels of plaster, or ten to one of charcoal, or twenty to one of dry swamp muck or peat, woods mould or fine clay, and sow upon the meadow or pasture early in spring. If the season is moist, the benefit will be very great; if dry, it will probably be said, as it has been before; "Oh, this guano is good for nothing—I tried it once on grass and it ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... typical of the thousands of soldiers at the front, for French soldiers suffer that the children may never have to wade through this blood and muck. The foul creature that has bathed the world in blood must be slain forever. With the full consent of the intellect, of the heart and the conscience, these glorious French boys have given themselves to God, to freedom, and ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... A soft glutinous muck, worse than the outer swamp, tugged at his ankles. Corrupt fungi-growth and giant spiked ferns reached far above him ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse
... elated by good or depressed by bad fortune, but capable of excesses when roused. Under the influence of religious excitement, losses at gambling, jealousy or other domestic troubles they are liable to amok or run-a-muck, an expression which appears to have passed into the English language." With strangers, the Brunai Malay is doubtless taciturn, but I have heard Brunai ladies among themselves, while enjoying their betel-nut, rival any ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... Virtue. Compare him with the most famous of the Dutch masters, and he rises into glory; coarseness and vulgarity in them had no point out of which could come instruction. If they picture the issues of their own minds, they must have been gross and sensual; they ransacked the muck of life, and the grovelling in character, for themes that one should see only by compulsion. But Hogarth's subjects were never without a lesson, and, inasmuch as he resorted for them to the open volume of humanity, like those of the most immortal of our writers, his works are "not for an ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... show in the kind of a life I lead. I never have been in love with it myself, and only took to it in the first place because the devil happened to drive me that way. The Lord knows I don't want to lead any one else through such a muck. So ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... from the picturesque exhibition he assisted to frame, partly from the anxiety I connected with his image for some days) fastened afterwards upon my dreams, and brought other Malays with him, worse than himself, that ran "a-muck" {18} at me, and led me into a world of troubles. But to quit this episode, and to return to my intercalary year of happiness. I have said already, that on a subject so important to us all as happiness, we should listen with pleasure to any man's experience or experiments, even though he ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... cook for. Well, we comes up here on our way to the Koaka Velt on some kind of scientific trip er other I dunno, and it didn't matter as long as I was paid and the two prospectors they brings in gold, and tin, and copper, and all sorts of muck, and the perfesser was busy 'blow-piping' and 'classifying' and what not, and every day he gets more 'centrick. Then he gets sick only a bit of fever, but it laid him out bad for a time: and he couldn't shave, and he couldn't bath, and that ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... fairly begins: Whish! sound the brooms as they are whisked here, there, every where, in attempts to strike the hog; one man giving a strong blow, strikes another one who was stooping down to arrange his garters, where he dislikes to be struck, and instantly the one struck runs a muck, hitting wildly left and right. Two or three men charge on one another and brooms fly in splinters all round. One champion got a head-blow and had his wind knocked out by another blow simultaneously; round they go, and at it they go, beating the air ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... his store of rags and bones and old iron rubbish? They are mere rakings of the refuse-heap, things that human society once needed and then rejected. He collects them again, and now the poor can buy them. And he buys the soldiers' bread too, when they want to go on the spree, and throws it on his muck-heap; he calls it fodder for horses, but the poor buy it of him and eat it. The refuse-heap is the poor man's larder —that is, when the pigs have taken what they want. The Amager farmers fatten their swine there, and the sanitary commission talks ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo |
