"Scum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... showed him another cask, and bade him observe the liquor that was in it. This he did, and saw it was covered all over with a thick scum and froth. Tommy.—And is this what you call fermentation? The Woman.—Yes, master. Tommy.—And what is the reason of it? The Woman.—That I do not know, indeed; but when we have pressed the ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... be your position really as regards the two main sections of the Labour Party?" he asked. "We are absorbing the best of them, day by day," she answered quickly. "What is left of either will be merely the scum. The people will come to us. Their discarded leaders can crawl back to obscurity. The people may follow false gods for a very long time, but they have the knack of recognising the truth when it is ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stretched the broad expanse of mud and of water, mingled and mixed together in the wildest chaos, like a portion of some world in the process of formation. Here and there on the dun-coloured surface of this great marsh there had burst out patches of sickly yellow reeds and of livid, greenish scum, which only served to heighten and intensify the gloomy effect of ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... expensive way of boiling fish. A broth is made by boiling three onions, two carrots, two turnips, some parsley, pepper, salt, sufficient water, a tumbler of white wine, and a tumbler of vinegar together; the scum is removed as it rises, the fish is simmered in the broth. This broth is called Court bouillon. Fish cooked thus is eaten hot or cold, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... the problem is even more embarrassing and deplorable; here, as nowhere else in civilized society, thousands of our fellowmen are exiled from the enjoyments of civilization, forced into life's lowest strata of existence, branded with that fatal word scum. If they aspire to rise, society shrinks from them; they seem of another world; they are of another world; driven into the darkness of a hopeless existence, viewed much as were lepers in olden times. Over their heads perpetually rests the dread of eviction, ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... scum of society should be kept in its place," observed another, scarcely less bitter than young Richmond in his jealousy of the lad who claimed so much of the attention of the little ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... cursing Parrawhite with the anger of despair. He had not one scrap of pity for him. All his pity was for himself. That he should have been brought into this!—that this vile little beast, perfect scum that he was, should have led him to what might be the utter ruin of his career!—it was shameful, it was abominable, it was cruel! He felt as if he could cheerfully tear Parrawhite's dead body to pieces. But even as these ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... "much such a magistrate as Noll was a monarch. Your heart is up, I warrant, because you have the King's pardon; and are replaced on the bench, forsooth, to persecute the poor Papist. There was never turmoil in the state, but knaves had their vantage by it—never pot boiled, but the scum was cast uppermost." ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... nice comfort my children are to me! One son a fool, and the other a lost sinner that's left his home to live with smugglers and gypsies and villains, the scum of the earth! ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... certainly a troublesome phase to deal with; but burglaries are exceedingly rare, and it may fairly be said, that life and property are more secure in the Australian capitals than in any European towns of the same size. As in all large cities, the scum or dregs of the population gradually localizes itself, and thus becomes easier of control, even though it may increase in amount. And here, Adelaide has an advantage in being seven miles distant from its seaport, which naturally retains a large portion of the noxious element. Melbourne has ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... though now the Jew must leave. The city of Granada was not yet surrendered, and the Queen and King held all soldiery that they might at Santa Fe, built as it were in a night before Granada walls. Yet there seemed at large bands enough, licentious and loud, the scum of soldiery. Ere I reached the village that I now saw before me I had met two such bands, I wondered, and then ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... consistence, but of a resinous taste, and a smell like oil of turpentine; chiefly found in the Baltic sea or the coast of Prussia.' Humph! 'Some have imagined it to consist of the tears of birds; others the'—humph!—'of a beast; others the scum of the Lake Cephesis, near the Atlantic; others a congelation in some fountains, where it is found swimming like pitch.' Really, brother," continued the lawyer, fixing his eyes on the little girl, and shutting the book, "I can't see ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... with rage, big, prosperous—brandishing cudgel] The Jew—show me the Jew who seduced my daughter! Show him to me, I say! That corrupt scum of society—the man who broke into my house and stole my daughter. [Waves his cane and smites the air] Where is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... withholds Strict confidence. Seems as the latter way Broke but the bond of love which Nature makes. Whence in the second circle have their nest Dissimulation, witchcraft, flatteries, Theft, falsehood, simony, all who seduce To lust, or set their honesty at pawn, With such vile scum as these. The other way Forgets both Nature's general love, and that Which thereto added afterwards gives birth To special faith. Whence in the lesser circle, Point of the universe, dread seat of Dis, The ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... boils, after the meat is in it, the scum should be carefully removed from time to time, while it is cooking. If the scum be allowed to boil down, it will settle on the joint and discolour it. It is best, however, as a precaution, to wrap the meat in a very clean cloth; this will effectually preserve its colour. Salt meat should ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... populace threw off all restraint. Yet I still continued to walk quietly amidst the hootings of the vulgar; and a taste for botany, which I had begun to contract with Doctor d'Ivernois, making my rambling more amusing, I went through the country herbalising, without being affected by the clamors of this scum of the earth, whose fury was still augmented by my calmness. What affected me most was, seeing families of my friends, or of persons who gave themselves that name, openly join the league of my ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... your father is a drum, Your mother is a kettledrum, you scum! Your brother is a tambourine—tum, tum! And you—why, you 're a captain of the ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... alas! no verdurous visions come, Save yon exigous pool's conferva-scum,— No concave vast repeats the tender hue That laves my ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... greeted him, and the rattle of tankards on a table, as he joined what was evidently his coterie. Standing outside, I heard song and ribaldry within. The heir-presumptive to the throne of the Empire was too obviously a drunken brawler; a friend and comrade of the lowest scum in Frankfort. ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... triumph,—Danton, Robespierre, Marat. And of the three it was Marat who worked deepest on her imagination, Marat always baying for {189} blood, always scenting fresh victims, always corrupting opinion with his scum of printer's ink and poison. To Charlotte Corday it appeared that in this one individual all that was noble and beautiful in the Revolution was converted into all that was hideous and ignoble; and ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... Arizonan rose. "Mebbeso. You're a dirty dog, Jerry Durand. From the beginning you were a rotten fighter—in the ring and out of it. You and yore strong-arm men! Do you think I'm afraid of you because you surround yoreself with dips and yeggmen and hop-nuts, all scum of the gutter and filth of the earth? Where I come from men fight clean and out in the open. They'd stomp ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... belongs to the cycle of Antar and King Omar bin Nu'man: its exaggerations make it a fine type of Oriental Chauvinism, pitting the superhuman virtues, valour, nobility and success of all that is Moslem, against the scum of the earth which is non-Moslem. Like the exploits of Friar John of the Chopping-knives (Rabelais i. c. 27) it suggests ridicule cast on impossible battles and tales of giants, paynims and paladins. The long romance ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... your brother! Why the deuce should I? Do you think I belong to the rag, tag, and bobtail, that'll mix with the very scum of society so long as there's money about? Do you think I'd lower myself to associate with ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... beginning to-morrow morning early, one of us will be on that point while daylight lasts,—Indians do not generally travel at night, and when we sight them we will signal and warn them, and the convicts will be none the wiser. The Seminoles are no cowards and we can join them and wipe that scum of humanity off the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... a principal highway from the Porte de Charenton to the town, the piles of refuse had been pretty thoroughly overhauled by the dogs and human scum that ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... porters, loafers, and the scum, Who have no sense for the diviner weeds, Who drink their muddy beer and muddier rum, Insatiate, like ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... cannot understand WHY these foolish Neapolitans should laugh and sing and shout in the manner they do, merely because they are glad to be alive. And after much dubious consideration, he decides within himself that they are all rascals—the scum of the earth—and that he and he only is the true representative of man at his best—the model of civilized respectability. And a mournful spectacle he thus seems to the eyes of us "base" foreigners—in our hearts we are sorry for him and believe that if he could manage to shake off the fetters ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... and purposeless, the unmeaning creations of an unconscious cause," born only to perish, which a relentless reviewer has imposed upon his theory—rightly enough upon the atheistic alternative—the theistic view rids him at once of this "scum of creation." For, as species do not now vary at all times and places and in all directions, nor produce crude, vague, imperfect, and useless forms, there is no reason for supposing that they ever did. ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley
... Catholics. He had circulated pamphlets purporting to be written by a Catholic, upholding the Pope, and ridiculing most unmercifully the pretenses of Protestantism, declaring it a compromise with the devil, made up of the scum of the Catholic Church. This pamphlet declared Calvin a monster, and arraigned him for burning Servetus, and hinted that all Calvinists would soon be paid back in their own coin. No one else could have penned this vitriolic pamphlet but Voltaire—he knew both sides. But since Geneva regarded ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... pitied; and a kingdom without a king is to be pitied. These constitute the source of pain and weakness to embodied creatures: the rains, decay of hills and mountains; absence of enjoyment; anguish of women; and wordy arrows of the heart. The scum of the Vedas is want of study; of Brahmanas, absence of vows; of the Earth, the Vahlikas; of man, untruth; of the chaste woman, curiosity; of women, exile from home. The scum of gold is silver; of silver, tin; of tin, lead; and of lead, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... of years. Our moon may be nearly cold, but the earth is still warm—indeed, very hot inside. Jupiter is believed by some observers still to glow with a dull red heat; and the high temperature of the much larger and still liquid mass of the sun is apparent to everybody. Not till it begins to scum over ...
— Pioneers of Science • Oliver Lodge
... gathered from the moralists, it was dark enough. For obvious reasons it is desirable not to elaborate. It is perhaps more profitable, as well as refreshing, to consider the brighter side. That there were noble women and good wives, and that the froth and scum and dregs of idle town-life did not make up the existence of the contemporary Roman world, may be seen from passages like the following, which are either quoted or condensed from a letter of Pliny concerning a lady named Arria. The events belong to ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... doing what she had no right to do, and that she might some day be walked off to Galway assizes. Then again, she had an absurd pride about it, which often made her declare that she'd never be beat by such a "scum of the 'arth" as Barry Lynch, and that she'd fight it out with him if it cost her a hundred pounds; though no one understood what the battle was which she ...
— The Kellys and the O'Kellys • Anthony Trollope
... the English, Spanish, or French pirates were much better," said the mate, laughing. "Pirates are generally the scum of the ports they sail from; reckless, murderous ruffians. But I should say that of all pirates out in the East, the gentle, placid, mild-looking Chinaman makes the worst; for he thinks nothing of human life, his own ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... business had I there? If my mother had seen that wretched servant girl brushing my hair the old lady would have died—I, the child of many prayers, the hope of a house, and stumping home on a foggy morning after sitting among the scum of earth all night. I mean to be a philosopher, but what a beastly, silly school to cultivate political philosophy in! What do I know more than I knew before?—that one vulgar girl maintains three vulgar criminals, and that ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... scum of all the wicked, set free on this instant the captive princess whom you hold imprisoned in that coach, or else prepare for death, which is the just punishment of ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... They stood for the scum of the streets. How they lived was a mystery, except to people who kept fowls, or forgot to lock their doors at night. A few were vicious idlers, sponging on their parents for a living at twenty years of age; others simply mischievous lads, with a trade at their fingers' ends, if they chose ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... The story is sufficient to indicate the utter state of lawlessness which prevailed there. Peopled by outlaws and by the scum of France, Holland, Ireland, Scotland, and England, they were a pretty tough proposition. Their violence was rivalled only by their impudence; and fleets of wherries[8] would sail in company into Ireland and Scotland loaded with cargoes of cheap brandy, ...
— King's Cutters and Smugglers 1700-1855 • E. Keble Chatterton
... kind, he was a gentleman. I've worked for him fifteen years steady. Then the Eastmans came in, and there was nothing but hurry and drive, grumbling about high wages, buying cheap wools, and if cloth was poor, blaming the men. Then wages went down and down, and, when the men stood out, the scum of all the places around was brought in. Yerbury improved, and beer-saloons multiplied. Houses were thrown together and sold; and now they're all falling apart, and standing empty, and half a dozen families are crowding into one miserable tenement. Who made the money? Was ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... summer months, and to take part in the magnificent festivals given by the Grand Mogul; but times have greatly changed since, and the happy valley is today no more than a beggar retreat. Aquatic plants and scum have covered the clear waters of the lake; the wild juniper has smothered all the vegetation of the islands; the palaces and pavilions retain only the souvenir of their past grandeur; earth and grass cover the buildings which are now ...
— The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ - The Original Text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery • Nicolas Notovitch
... they had with them and the way that those villains treated their captive I noted that his face paled, and that there came a look into his eyes which I had not often seen there, but which meant no good for Jensen and his scum if Lancelot got the top of them. For Lancelot was a staunch Churchman and a respecter of ministers of God's Word, and as loyal to his religion as he ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... their nation, are fain to get their bread with tongue and pen, by retailing to 'silly women,' 'ever learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth,' second-hand German eclecticisms, now exploded even in the country where they arose, and the very froth and scum of the Medea's caldron, in which the disjecta membra of old ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... "Kail through the reek," to give one a severe reproof. Kail-brose, pottage of meal made with the scum of broth. Kale-yard, a vegetable garden. Ken, to know. Kend, knew. Kenna, kensna, know not. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... heavy man, and he had not known sentiment for years; he was a big man, and it took much to move him, literally and figuratively; he was a man in whom the dreams of God that haunt the soul in youth, though overlaid by the scum that gathers in the fight for money, had not, as with the majority, utterly died ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Mucor-stems, l. 283. Mucor or mould in its early state is properly a microscopic vegetable, and is spontaneously produced on the scum of all decomposing organic matter. The Monas is a moving speck, the Vibrio an undulating wire, the Proteus perpetually changes its shape, and the Vorticella has wheels about its mouth, with which it makes an eddy, and is supposed thus to draw into its throat invisible animalcules. These ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... small mass of protoplasm surrounded almost always by a thicker skin or covering, known as the cell wall and enclosing a complicated kernel known as the nucleus. The protoplasm seems to be the living substance itself. The cell wall is not a simple dead scum on the outside of the protoplasm, but is itself able to do certain things which can only, so far as we know, be done by living substances. For instance, of two materials dissolved in the water in which ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... brauely, let vs too't pell mell, If not to heauen, then hand in hand to Hell. What shall I say more then I haue inferr'd? Remember whom you are to cope withall, A sort of Vagabonds, Rascals, and Run-awayes, A scum of Brittaines, and base Lackey Pezants, Whom their o're-cloyed Country vomits forth To desperate Aduentures, and assur'd Destruction. You sleeping safe, they bring you to vnrest: You hauing Lands, and ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... stirred it round and round and round, And he sniffed at the foaming froth; When I ups with his heels, and smothers his squeals In the scum of the boiling broth. ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... you! For what are you swollen With pride, you old dotard, You scum of the pig-sty? Have done with your jabber! You've lost your strong grip On the soul of the peasant, The last one you are. By the will of the peasant Because he is foolish 650 They treat you as master To-day. But to-morrow The ball will be ended; ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... uprooting time of corruption, it is the harvest-time of what is best and noblest in a people. And that time has come. You, like your father, have learned to despise and hate us. Perhaps you are right. You have mingled with the scum which rises to the surface of still waters. The scum shall be cleared away, and if it costs us the lives of our greatest, it will not be at too high a price. We as well as you need the bitter lesson which only ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... coffee. He then produces the bulbous stalks, and squeezes a portion of the juice into the pot. He now adds the pounded fangs of the labarri and counacouchi snakes,—which he generally has in store, as well as the ants. The ingredients are next boiled over a slow fire, and the scum being taken off, the liquid remains till it becomes reduced to a thick syrup of a deep brown colour. It is now fit for use. The arrows are then dipped into it, and if it is found of sufficient strength, it ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... written upon musical subjects, notably in his volume, "The Musical Amateur", and in his delightful account of his musical experiences in the Army, "Fiddler's Luck", 1920. He is also the author of several books of travel, such as "Romantic Germany", and "Romantic America", but it was with his poem, "Scum o' the Earth", published in one of the magazines in 1912, that he first came into prominence as a poet. As its name implies, it is a poem taking up the question of America's debt to the immigrant, and ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... they went on and came to a spring and drank of its water and afterwards the woman bathed in it and the blood stained water flowed over all the country and so we see stagnant water covered with a red scum. Going on from there they reached a low lying flat and halted; almost at once they saw a thunder storm coming up from the South and West; and ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... and verse for his statements, he succeeded in covering the Brethren with ridicule. He accused them of blasphemy and indecency. They spoke of Christ as a Tyburn bird, as digging for roots, as vexed by an aunt, and as sitting in the beer-house among the scum of society. They sang hymns to the devil. They revelled in the most hideous and filthy expressions, chanted the praises of lust and sensuality, and practised a number of sensual abominations too loathsome to be described. At one service held in Fetter Lane, Count Zinzendorf, ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... wine grower is glad to see his must deposit the greater part of these chemical ingredients in the "tartar," a product much disliked, and therefore named Sal Tartari, or Hell Salt; and Cremor Tartari, Hell Scum (Cream ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... heaven; For earth and all this airy region Cannot contain the state of Tamburlaine. [Stabs CALYPHAS.] By Mahomet, thy mighty friend, I swear, In sending to my issue such a soul, Created of the massy dregs of earth, The scum and tartar of the elements, Wherein was neither courage, strength, or wit, But folly, sloth, and damned idleness, Thou hast procur'd a greater enemy Than he that darted mountains at thy head, Shaking the burden mighty ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... matter concerning the British inhabitants of the colonies alone, and with which the nation at large has little or no concern. For if we inquire, who corrupt the natives? the answer is, our vile and worthless population, the very scum of mankind, whom we have cast out as evil from the bosom of their native land. But a further question naturally offers itself. Who were, in many instances, the passive, if not the active, corrupters of these very corrupters themselves? Who have neglected to provide means for their christian instruction, ...
— Australia, its history and present condition • William Pridden
... this literature cannot with any certainty point them out. To voice a hoary truism, time alone is the test of "vitality." In our present flood of books, as in any other flood, it is the froth and scum which shows most prominently. And the possession of "vitality," here as elsewhere, postulates that its possessor must ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... armed bands, who revived in the centre of the Peninsula the strife of almost prehistoric times. The flutter of the dark riding-habit of this heroine served as a standard to the battalions of Zouaves, to the troop of French, German, and Italian adventurers, the scum of all the wars on the globe, who found it pleasanter to follow a woman anxious for fame than to enlist themselves into ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... debacle we are witnessing to-day all over Europe (including the British Islands), the break-up of old institutions, the generally materialistic outlook on life, the coming to the surface of huge masses of diseased and fatuous populations, the scum and dregs created by the past order, all point to the End of a Dispensation. Protestantism and Commercialism, in the two fields of religion and daily life have, as I have indicated before, been occupied in concentrating the mind of each man solely on his OWN welfare, the salvation of his ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... politics. His ideal man was Morny, as he curtly called him. He read the reports of the discussions of the Corps Legislatif, and laughed with glee over the slightest words that fell from Morny's lips. Ah, Morny was the man to sit upon your rascally republicans! And he would assert that only the scum detested the Emperor, for his Majesty desired that all respectable people should have ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... also for a share of that good fortune? You think there's a difference, but I tell you it's imaginary—pure moonshine. Why, the very people whose opinion you're afraid of—what did they do themselves when the South African craze was on? I'm told that the scum of the earth had only to own some Chartered shares, and pretend to be 'in the know' about them—and they could dine with as many duchesses as they liked. I knew one or two of the men who were in that deal—I wouldn't have them ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... of the tricks of fence taught me by Captain Galsworthy. The only work which all the prisoners had to perform in turn was the drawing of water from a well in the keep. The water of the moat, as I had seen when we crossed it on entering, was covered with a green scum, the rivulet which fed it not being of sufficient volume to keep it ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... either of them to hear you making use of such language? After all, who and what are the men who thus habitually indulge in obscenity and profanity? Are they not the vicious and disreputable, the brutal drunken ruffians, the scum of the slums, the lowest of the low, the very outcasts and pariahs of society? And is it for one of these that you would like to be mistaken? is it with this repulsive brotherhood that you would choose to ally yourself? Hardly, I would fain hope. No, ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... the Golden Hind, American-owned privateersman with French letters of marque? Possibly one of the desperate gang they had landed called the Black Smugglers, scum of the Low Dutch ports, come to draw an ill report upon the good and wholesome fame of ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... France and of a rigid respectability. She married her second daughter last week. They all spend their days at the tango classes, from early morning till dark—mothers and daughters, grandmothers and demi-mondaines, Russian Grand Duchesses, Austrian Princesses—clasped in the arms of incredible scum from the Argentine, half-castes from Mexico, and farceurs from New York—decadent male things they would not receive in their ante-chambers ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... yet; but, my God! Penhallow, my life is one to kill the toughest. What with army mishaps, inefficiency, contractors backed by Congressmen—all the scum that war brings to the top. Do you know ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... Union. We do, and we do it by the votes of these people, who are as far below our niggers as the niggers are below decent white men. Who that reflects that this country has been controlled for fifty years by such scum, would give a d—— ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... no verdurous visions come, Save yon exiguous pool's conferva-scum, - No concave vast repeats the tender hue That laves ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... prepared to have the regiment removed. The 25th Infantry, with its honor undimmed by any such wanton crime, with a record unexcelled by any regiment in the service, was the target for all sorts of criticism and persecution as soon as it arrived. The one is a white regiment, composed of the scum of the earth, the other a black regiment composed of men who have yet to do one thing of which they should be ashamed. Yet Denver welcomes the one with open arms and salutes with marked favor, while she barely ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... at me?' And yet she laughed at the long-forgotten word. 'Forty years ago that might have been said, and not without truth. Ay. thirty years ago. But it is the fault of this gadding up and down Hind that a king's widow must jostle all the scum of the land, and be made ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... and mats of furzy hair; sleek Jews slithering in and out the groups, inciting to devil's work; figures of nobles and gentlemen of France or Espagne, dishonoured and merged in the depth of the lowest scum there present; great Saxon churls and Danes, standing stern and resolute, but barbarous, as lions in the ranks ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... Old World. Soon after the war the character of the immigration began to change, and during the eighties and nineties came to be almost entirely made up of the lowest, most wretched, and barbarous races of Europe—the very scum of the continent. Even to secure these wretched recruits the agents of the transatlantic steamers and the American land syndicates had to send their agents all over the worst districts of Europe ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... MISS MALLY—Trully, it may be said, that the croun of England is upon the downfal, and surely we are all seething in the pot of revolution, for the scum is mounting uppermost. Last week, no farther gone than on Mononday, we came to our new house heer in Baker Street, but it's nather to be bakit nor brewt what I hav sin syne suffert. You no my way, and that I like a ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... class furnished the inspiration for it, and called it "Scum o' the Earth," an impromptu immigration pageant. A boy who had memorized Schauffler's poem stood off stage and recited it, while group after group of "immigrants" in the motley of the steerage passed slowly through the improvised Ellis Island sifting ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... Francois left. Julien himself disappeared, and the tale ran that the master had given him a big bribe and had begged him to go, because he slept with the mistress. Every week there were new faces in the servants' hall. Never was there such a mess; the house was like a passage down which the scum of the registry offices galloped, destroying everything in their path. Zoe alone kept her place; she always looked clean, and her only anxiety was how to organize this riot until she had got enough together to set up on her own account ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... Me. Well, you scum of your respective nations, let there be no misunderstanding; I am going on just the same. Wherever you are, there shall I be also; worrying, jeering, singing ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... of the many aliases by which he is known. He has been one of the worst thieves and bad characters to be met with even in Colombo, where there is a pretty good assortment of the scum of slumdom. Adopted as an infant by a pious Mahomedan, he was trained up in that religion. But in spite of every effort that was made for his reformation, he rapidly went from bad to worse, till at length he found himself in the hands of ...
— Darkest India - A Supplement to General Booth's "In Darkest England, and the Way Out" • Commissioner Booth-Tucker
... girl conversed absorbedly, with their elbows on the table. Their glasses of beer were pushed to one side, scarcely touched, with the foam on them sunken to a thin white scum. Since the stroke of one the stale pleasures of Rooney's had become renovated and spiced; not by any addition to the list of distractions, but because from that moment the sweets became stolen ones. The flattest glass of beer acquired the tang of illegality; ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... roots or honey, where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tall; Over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flower'd cotton plant, over the rice in its low moist field, Over the sharp-peak'd farm house, with its scallop'd scum and slender shoots from the gutters, Over the western persimmon, over the long-leav'd corn, over the delicate blue-flower flax, Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with the rest, Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze; Scaling mountains, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... from now on you must realize that he is the very scum of the earth, a toping man, a worthless, immoral man that hates the wife of ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... In Kansas, before the war, I once had a walk of several miles under a burning sun, in a region where not a drop of water could be found. When I finally reached it, the only water to be found was in a small, stagnant pool, covered with a green scum nearly an inch in thickness. Warm, brackish, and fever-laden as that water was, I had never before tasted any thing half so sweet. Again, while crossing the Great Plains in 1860, I underwent a severe and prolonged thirst, only quenching it with ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... pointed out the "indirect alliance between the anti-suffragists and the vicious elements, opponents of all reform, fearful that if women vote good will prevail over evil." "The chief foes of woman suffrage," she said, "are the saloon keepers, scum of society, barred from fraternal organizations, social clubs and even from ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... of speech; "Jesus God!" he repeated, seeing himself, not without some apprehension, between two strange beings—the one red, the other black—both dripping with water, and their hair covered with the yellow scum of the waves! ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... everyone who desires to say something that is not quite orthodox, but which is their serious and considered contribution to a great and difficult problem. Let us greet them with respect, however much we may differ from them. Let us look forward without fear. Believe me, below all the froth and scum of which we make so much, ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... the contents into the kettles, stirring well. Hung over a slow fire, from a pole resting on two notched posts, the slight simmering sound soon began; and on the top of the heated fluid gathered a scum, which Zack removed. After some repetitions of this skimming, and when the molasses looked bright and clear, Mr. Bunting asked for a bit of ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... England, aye, and beyond sea too, and send abroad their circulators, and, in that manner, get into their hands all that is valuable. The rest of the trade are content to take their refuse, with which, and the fresh scum of the press, they furnish one side of a shop, which serves for the sign of a bookseller, rather than a real one; but, instead of selling, dealing as factors, and procure what the country divines and gentry send for; of whom each hath his book factor, and, when ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and flashing of passions, the thrill and sting of which he had never known. Saved as he was by his temperament alike from deep suffering and tense emotion, and from any vital mingling either with the scum and foam or with the stagnancy and mire of life, the books remain as a brilliant illusion, with much of the shifting hues and changing glimmer of his own ardent and restless mind rippling over the surface ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... be said to him, that he is not to deceive himself with a false, imaginary faith. Wherefore let those rude babblers go, who can say a great deal on the subject that is nothing after all but mere scum and vain prating. Of whom Paul also speaks, 1 Cor. iv., "I will come to you and will seek out not the speech of those that are puffed up, but the power; for the kingdom of God does not stand in word, but in power." Wherever this power ...
— The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained • Martin Luther
... swelling of a man who can boast that precious endowment himself, "you can't keep it down. There's no use talking to me about this equality between men at the hour of birth; it's all a poetic fiction. It would take forty generations of this European scum such as is beginning to drift across to us and taint our national atmosphere to produce one Joe Newbolt! And he's got blood on ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... magnate chose for the enforcement of this cruel order. A driving blizzard had raged throughout the night, and the snow had banked up in drifts in places many feet deep. The temperature was freezing, and the strong east wind cut like a knife. It was Ames's desire to teach these scum a needed lesson, and he had chosen to enlist the elements to aid ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... pieces one pound of beef or mutton or a part of both. Boil it gently in two quarts of water. Take off the scum and when reduced to a pint, strain it and season with a little salt. Give one ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... we will have some for high tea to-night, and some for breakfast in the morning, and give our landlady the rest. Nice woman that; full of stories about the prisoners, and Bony and his wretched scum. Ugh! The very name of the rascal raises my bile, and—There, I think I had better take you home and give you ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... undergo a peculiar change. No matter how clear it might be at starting, yet after a few hours, or at most a few days, if the temperature is high, this liquid begins to be turbid, and by-and-by bubbles make their appearance in it, and a sort of dirty-looking yellowish foam or scum collects at the surface; while at the same time, by degrees, a similar kind of matter, which we call the "lees," sinks to ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... ages! Before I was out, or knew Nevile, or anybody except you. It was ten years ago. I must have been eighteen. It was when I was at Gorston with Grace Mauleverer—trying to save water-lilies from drowning in green scum. He—Mr. Senhouse—came along in his cart, and saw me, and lent me his bed for a raft—and worked it himself. That was the first time I ever saw him—" she ended softly in a ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... eruption from the volcano was increasing. In a short time the sky became shrouded by a dense black cloud. Showers of fine cinders fell on our decks, covering also the hitherto blue ocean with a black scum. A red mass of lava bubbled up, as if from some mighty cauldron, above the edge of the crater, and fiery streams began to flow down the sides of the mountain, some taking a course towards the ocean, others making their way in the direction ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... silent, and then brought out a string of expletives. "I mistrusted the filthy pack from the first," he said. "See what they give us to work with, sir—the scum of Glasgow and London; and none of us to have a say in the matter. I'd sooner go to sea with Satan than scum like that," he said fiercely. "As soon as I set eyes on them I knew we were in for it—but not this," he added, "not this by ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... eyes, reverting from the south, dropped, to follow those slender windrows, Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... distant thunder hum, Maryland! The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum, Maryland! She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb— Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum; She breathes, she burns—she'll come! she'll come! Maryland, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... waters discharging by the Wahpooskow River, whose northern part, miscalled the Loon, falls into the Peace River below Fort Vermilion. The lake is an almost perfect circle, ten or twelve miles in diameter, the water full of fibrous growths, with patches of green scum afloat all over it. Nevertheless, it abounds in pike, dory, and tullabees, the latter a close congener of the whitefish, but finer in flavour and very fat. Indeed, the best fed dogs we had seen were those summering here. The lake, where we struck it, was literally covered with ...
— Through the Mackenzie Basin - A Narrative of the Athabasca and Peace River Treaty Expedition of 1899 • Charles Mair
... cocoa and sugar with the water and boil from 3 to 5 minutes. Stir into the hot milk and serve at once. If a scum forms, beat with a Dover egg-beater. Serves eight ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... patch-work counterpane atop of a clothes-prop for their flag, he'll ride along the front of his ridgement of cavaliers, and he'll shout to 'em in that big voice of his as I've followed many's the time; and 'Don't draw, gentlemen,' he'll say; 'ride the scum down, and make the rest run;' and then they'll all roar with laughing loud enough to drown the trumpet charge. My word, I'd a gi'n something to ha' been there to see the rebels fly like dead leaves before a wind in November. But it were a mean and a cruel thing, Master Roy. Look at that ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... spectral darkness of a candle that has guttered down until the whole length of its wick (still burning) has doubled over and left a tower of winding-sheet above it. His hair is ragged, mingling with his whiskers and his beard—the latter, ragged too, and grown, like the scum and mist around him, in neglect. Foul and filthy as the room is, foul and filthy as the air is, it is not easy to perceive what fumes those are which most oppress the senses in it; but through the general ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... and daughter worked as busily as father and son. The men cut the cane and fed it to the mill, while the womenfolk took turns tending the pans in which the syrup boiled, skimming off the greenish foam and scum that gathered on the top. They urged the young boys, who hung around on such occasions, to bring on more wood to keep the fire going under the pans. The owner of the portable sorghum mill sometimes took his pay for its use in sorghum, if there was no money to be had. He was paid too for the ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... to determine the origin of this race, I should have pronounced it to be a mixture of Naples lazzaroni with the scum of an Irish regiment. The ruddy complexions of some of the women, and the swarthy look of many of the men, might fairly warrant such a conclusion. They were so importunate and offensive as they pressed round me that I hurried over my sketch of the temple, and made my escape from ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... it up.' 'Corbet!' he replied contemptuously; 'he didn't give it up; he never even seen it. But don't I know it's hard, sir? For years I tried to paint it, and I never got nothing but the fog; when I put in more I lost that. They're pretty, those sketches—like watered silk or the scum in the docks with the sun on it; but, Lord, there ain't nothing into 'em, and that's the truth. At last, after fumbling around for years, I happened to walk into Vogler's gallery one day and saw my first Corot. Ther' it was—all I had been trying for. It was the kind ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather
... were being discussed below, we in a low tone had our debate on the question, and saw too how the men gathered in knots, and talked in whispers and watched the barque. And to us all one thing was evident, that could our lads only get a chance at the pigtailed, ruffianly scum of the east coast, it would go pretty ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... the operation. Christendom hasn't such a man as your cousin Con for feeling himself a pig-possessed all the blessed day, acting the part of somebody else, till it takes me a quarter of an hour of my enfranchisement and restoration of my natural man to know myself again. For the moment, I'm froth, scum, horrid boiling hissing dew of the agony of transformation; I am; I'm that pig disgorging the spirit of wickedness ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... striking Buckley Simmons where his hair and forehead joined. Gordon, in a species of shocked curiosity and surprise, clearly saw the stone hit the other. There was a sound like that made by a heel breaking a scum of ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... scum! left me to starve. Ha! one thing he's forgotten—the matches. At least I can ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... framework of his latest try, fully disheartened. He tried not to think of the unescapable fact that the water in the rain tank had sunk to only an inch or so of muddy scum. Last night he had dug in the heart of the interior valley where the rankness of the vegetation was a promise of moisture, to uncover damp clay and then a brackish ooze. Far too little to satisfy ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... through the wreckage thus made. Cotton bales, cotton-laden ships and steamers on fire, and working implements of every kind such as are used in ship-yards, were continually encountered. On the piers of the levees, where were huge piles of hogsheads of sugar and molasses, a mob, composed of the scum of the city, men and women, broke and smashed without restraint. Toward noon of the 25th, as the fleet drew round the bend where the Crescent City first appears in sight, the confusion and destruction were ...
— Admiral Farragut • A. T. Mahan
... traveler may be reduced to the extremity of using stagnant or even putrid water; but this should never be done without first boiling it. Some charred wood from the camp fire should be boiled with the water; then skim off the scum, strain, and set in water aside to cool. Boiling sterilizes, and ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... vast scattered empire, with many islands, a long frontier line in every continent, and a very tempting bit of plunder at the centre, by mere volunteer recruits, who mostly come from the worst class of the people—whom the Great Duke called the "scum of the earth"—who come in uncertain numbers year by year—who by some political accident may not come in adequate numbers, or at all, in the year we need them most. Our War Office attempts what foreign War Offices (perhaps rightly) would not try ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... dark patch of oil spread outwards from a miniature maelstrom where vast bubbles heaved themselves up and broke; the air was sickly with the smell of benzoline, and mingled with it were the acrid fumes of gas and burnt clothing. A dark scum gathered in widening circles, with here and there the white belly of a dead fish catching the sun: a few scraps of wreckage went by, but no sign of a man or what had once ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... and hard, shrill voices, jabbering of vulgar, trivial things. A wry, desperate, cursed world, as she had called it, a pot seething with bitterness and all dreadfulness, with its Rosalinds floating on the top like scum. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... Looks mean enough," said Yellin' Kid. The cattle men could say nothing too strong against this despised class of breeders and their innocent charges. Sheep herders were the scum of the earth to the ranchmen, and to say that a man has "gone in for sheep" was to utter the last word against him, though he might be a decent member of society for all that, and with as kind and human instincts ...
— The Boy Ranchers at Spur Creek - or Fighting the Sheep Herders • Willard F. Baker
... admiration, not without awe and fear, concerning the extraordinary knowledge and power of the conjurer, a character peculiar to all times and all ages made his appearance, and soon joined them. This was one of those circulating, unsettled vagabonds, whom, like scum, society, whether agitated or not, is always sure to throw on the surface. The comical miscreant no sooner made his appearance than, like Liston, when coming on the stage, he was greeted with ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... any more of the scum," Allen said, adding, that if she had not invited any of them no one would ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... canyon cost me half a day's wages," he thought as he saw the thin yellow scum floating on the ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart |
