"Blacken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sun shines in Europe as well as in America, and however weak its action may be, it is sufficient to blacken ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... the machine (rifle) we are to operate. We must know what the sights are and how to use them. We should know how those men most successful in the science and art of shooting hold the rifle under different conditions, how they adjust their slings, how they prepare (blacken) their sights and care for their rifles, what practice and preparation they take, and what bits of advice they ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... as they are thrown into the list to blacken him, his intended match with his own niece Elizabeth, the penance of Jane Shore, and his ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... of this awful, most moving, yet most soothing thought, be a law of spiritual breadth and height, there is still a peril in it. Such an impression may inform the soul with a devout mingled sense of grandeur and nothingness, or it may blacken into cynicism and antinomian living for self and the day. It may be a solemn and holy refrain, sounding far off but clear in the dusty course of work and duty; or it may be the comforting chorus of a diabolic drama of selfishness and violence. As a reaction against religious theories which ...
— Critical Miscellanies, Vol. I - Essay 2: Carlyle • John Morley
... is fused with two parts of soda, and one part of borax, upon charcoal, the sulphide of sodium is formed. This salt, if moistened and applied to a polished silver surface, will blacken it. The borax serves no other purpose than to prevent the absorption of the formed sulphide of sodium by the charcoal. As selenium will blacken silver in the manner above indicated, the presence of this substance should be first ascertained, by heating the assay; when, if it be present, the characteristic ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... were Esmond's performances worse for the effect they were intended to produce (though no doubt they could not injure the Duke of Marlborough nearly so much in the public eyes as the malignant attacks of Swift did, which were carefully directed so as to blacken and degrade him), because they were writ openly and fairly by Mr. Esmond, who made no disguise of them, who was now out of the army, and who never attacked the prodigious courage and talents, only the selfishness and rapacity, of ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... day, she required me, too, to exert myself; and then all my heavy despair returned. I let her dye my fair hair and complexion with the decaying shells of the stored-up walnuts, I let her blacken my teeth, and even voluntarily broke a front tooth the better to effect my disguise. But through it all I had no hope of evading my terrible husband. The third night the funeral was over, the drinking ended, the guests gone; the miller put to bed by his men, being too drunk to ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... "I might be brave for myself, but how can I be brave for you? You will suffer more than you have any conception of, when you are held up to the scorn—the loathing—of the world. For you know she will not keep to the truth—she will spit her venom upon you—she will blacken your character in ways that you do ...
— Name and Fame - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... to try to blacken the character of your opponent as it invariably places one's own under the spotlight and they'll find spots you were ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... extraordinary proceeding for a Democrat, elected to the highest place in the Government, and fellow Democrats in another high place, where they have the right to speak and legislate generally, to join with the commune in traducing the Senate of the United States, to blacken the character of Senators who are as honorable as they are, who are as patriotic as they ever can be, who have done as much to serve their party as men who are now the beneficiaries of your labor and mine, to taunt and jeer us before the country as the advocates of trust ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... informed the magistrates. Of course the greatest excitement followed. Peggy was next examined, but she denied Mary Burton's story in toto—swore that she knew nothing of any conspiracy or of the burning of the stores; that if she should accuse any one it would be a lie, and blacken her own soul. ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... full grown, but not too hard; pour boiling salt and water on them; let them be covered with it nine days, changing it every third day; then take them out on dishes, and put them in the sun to blacken, turning them over; then put them in a jar and strew over them pepper, cloves, garlic, mustard seed and scraped horse-radish; cover them with cold strong vinegar and ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... The dead are scalped and he is considered the bravest person who bears the greatest number of scalps from the field. These are afterwards attached to his war dress and worn as proofs of his prowess. The victorious party during a certain time blacken their faces and every part of their dress in token of joy, and in that state they often come to the establishment, if near, to testify their delight by dancing and singing, bearing all the horrid insignia of war, to display ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... breath, Mr. Mortlake," snapped out the lieutenant, and his words came sharp as the crack of a whip; "this is the real Roy Prescott, and he has been the victim of as foul a plot to blacken an honest lad's name as ever came to my knowledge. The young ruffian who ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... had made proposals of marriage to her which she had rejected, and married Mr. Williamson." But when the case came on the grand jury, having heard the charge, declared themselves thoroughly persuaded that it was an artifice of Mr. Causton's designed "rather to blacken the character of Mr. Wesley, than to free the colony from religious tyranny, as he had been ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... and some nourishment escapes up the chimney with the steam. If you must broil meat, have your fire hot and clear, and your gridiron perfectly clean; and, unless it has a ledge to hold the drippings, tip it towards the back of the fire, so that the fat will burn there, and not blacken the meat as it would if the gridiron were laid flat, and the fat could burn under the meat. Never stick a fork into broiled meat to turn it; and do not cut it to see if it is done; for if you do either you will let ...
— Twenty-Five Cent Dinners for Families of Six • Juliet Corson
... passionately, the little Napoleon dropped a tear: but that, said the tutor, meant as much as the flood of tears from Joseph. Love of his relatives was a potent factor of his policy in later life; and slander has never been able wholly to blacken the character of a man who loved and honoured his mother, who asserted that her advice had often been of the highest service to him, and that her justice and firmness of spirit marked her out as a natural ruler of men. But ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... is singular how legends of this nature should attach themselves to certain localities and persons; but the occupants of Pengersick appear to have had differences with the clergy in old times, and the priests generally contrived to blacken the characters of those who became obnoxious to them. It was a terrible power, the making ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... but then Mr. Herndon's story must be looked upon as a pleasant piece of fiction. When it appeared, Mrs. Lincoln felt shocked that one who pretended to be the friend of her dead husband should deliberately seek to blacken his memory. Mr. Lincoln was far too honest a man to marry a woman that he did not love. He was a kind and an indulgent husband, and when he saw faults in his wife he excused them as he would excuse the impulsive acts of a child. ...
— Behind the Scenes - or, Thirty years a slave, and Four Years in the White House • Elizabeth Keckley
... this uprushing tide. The whalers went out into the Greenland seas full of strong, hopeful men; but the whalers never returned as they sailed forth. On land there are deaths among two or three hundred men to be mourned over in every half-year's space of time. Whose bones had been left to blacken on the gray and terrible icebergs? Who lay still until the sea should give up its dead? Who were those who should come back to Monkshaven ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. I • Elizabeth Gaskell
... you're right," said Captain Hardy. Willie made a wry face. The captain saw him. "The trench raiders blacken both their hands and faces when they steal out into No Man's Land at night," he said. "But we won't use real paint, Willie. We'll get some theatrical paint that comes off easily. I'll get ...
— The Secret Wireless - or, The Spy Hunt of the Camp Brady Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... depend either on the supineness of their adversaries, or the submission of the people. Money is distributed amongst the idle and indigent, and agents are nightly employed in the public houses to comment on newspapers, written for the purpose to blacken the King and exalt the patriotism of the party who have dethroned him. Much use has likewise been made of the advances of the Prussians towards Champagne, and the usual mummery of ceremony has not been wanting. Robespierre, in a burst of extemporary energy, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... was his face. She lit the lamp. But as the daylight came through the window only half was lit up by the lamp. And though he looked terrible and magnificent and would chuck the Forest, he said, and come to the Slade, and be a Turkish knight or a Roman emperor (and he let her blacken his lips and clenched his teeth and scowled in the glass), still—there ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... find another hamlet. "Not here, O Apollo!" will become his song. Thus Trouville and, the other day, St. Raphael were lost to the arts. Curious and not always edifying are the shifts that the French student uses to defend his lair; like the cuttlefish, he must sometimes blacken the waters of his chosen pool; but at such a time and for so practical a purpose Mrs. Grundy must allow him licence. Where his own purse and credit are not threatened, he will do the honours of his village generously. Any artist is made welcome, through ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... talk!" glowed young Dodge. "You will testify that Dick Prescott was talking with you, and that he told innumerable lies to blacken my name ...
— Dick Prescott's Third Year at West Point - Standing Firm for Flag and Honor • H. Irving Hancock
... and entreated him to come and live with him, saying that they should be far better neighbors and that their housekeeping expenses would be lessened. The Fuller replied, "The arrangement is impossible as far as I am concerned, for whatever I should whiten, you would immediately blacken again with your charcoal." ...
— Aesop's Fables • Aesop
... the Thorough Research into the state of Creation from remote ages to the present day," Pao-y went on to explain, "that, in the western quarter, there exists a stone, called Tai, (black,) which can be used, in lieu of ink, to blacken the eyebrows with. Besides the eyebrows of this cousin taper in a way, as if they were contracted, so that the selection of these two characters is ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... a favour, Doctor, an' don't talk to me about that there man. I'm that angry at him! That man hurt my feelin's too bad. The way we was—him an' me, for so long—an' then he goes and tries to blacken my character with all them people. [To JULIUS.] ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... Cross at the Front," was right when he described war as symbolized by the great black cloud of smoke that unrolled in the sky when a great Jack Johnson had exploded. Everything that war touches it makes ugly, except the soul, and it cannot blacken that. ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... These muttering shoalbrains leave the helm to me: God, let me not in their dull ooze be stranded: Let not this one frail bark, to hollow which I have dug out the pith and sinewy heart 270 Of my aspiring life's fair trunk, be so Cast up to warp and blacken in the sun, Just as the opposing wind 'gins whistle off His cheek-swollen pack, and from the leaning mast Fortune's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... awful to see. In their country all the men of a certain standing blacken their teeth, and I suppose the dye makes their teeth fall out, as they hadn't any apparently, and when they opened their mouths the black caverns one saw were terrifying. I had been warned, but notwithstanding it made ...
— My First Years As A Frenchwoman, 1876-1879 • Mary King Waddington
... understand. You say that she was beautiful, and I suppose you know what you mean by the word. How then is a beautiful person to be degraded by anything the likes of you, or your fellow-dog, do to her? The thing's absurd. You can't claw her soul or blacken the edges of that. You can't sell that into prostitution or worse. That is her own, and it's that which makes her beautiful,—in spite of the precious pair of you, bickering and mauling each other to possess her. ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... where rival proprietors of rows of little chowkees contend for the privilege of supplying me char-poy, dood, and chowel, and where thousands of cawing rooks blacken the trees and alight in the quadrangular serai in noisy crowds, and I enter upon the home-stretch ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... it; a' heard him wi' ma ain ears say twice, 'My father was an Amorite, and my mother a Hittite.' I'll take my aith on it. Noo, a' dinna ken Donald's forbears masel, for he's frae Tayside, but supposin' they were as bad as bad cud be, it's no for him to blacken his ain blood, and him ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... Rickett, and yearly sends the little Ricketts a box of presents and toys. It is the same everywhere. The men who do not take the trouble to conceal from you their opinion that you are an incompetent ass, and the women who blacken your character and misunderstand your wife's amusements, will work themselves to the bone in your behalf if you fall sick or ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... A characteristic of the South African people was their high sense of honour, and they would maintain their reputation for honourable dealing untarnished. (Cheers.) To forget their loyalty to the Empire in this hour of trial would be scandalous and shameful, and would blacken South Africa in the eyes of the whole world. Of this South Africans were ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... task patient observation, with a loving spirit, a desire to interpret faithfully and to see the best instead of the worst, may he not perchance find that the bird is not the monster he is pictured? And though the story be not so sensational, is it not better to clear up than to blacken the reputation of a fellow-creature, even a very ...
— Upon The Tree-Tops • Olive Thorne Miller
... of men, with spears Bristling, and in the midst, the open sand. And Rustum came upon the sand, and cast His eyes toward the Tartar tents, and saw Sohrab come forth, and eyed him as he came. As some rich woman, on a winter's morn, Eyes through her silken curtains the poor drudge Who with numb blacken'd fingers makes her fire— At cock-crow, on a starlit winter's morn, When the frost flowers the whiten'd window-panes— And wonders how she lives, and what the thoughts Of that poor drudge may be; so Rustum eyed The unknown adventurous youth, who from afar ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... that there should be no one to see her bright handiwork. Yet, sad to tell, there lay the broad sheet of crimson and gold day after day unnoticed and unheeded, till, in despair, it at length began to wither and blacken and die. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... flashes just began it. In a few days Dad and the Martians were communicating by a sort of television process. He would mark off a sheet of paper into squares, blacken some of the squares to make a picture or design, then have me send a flash for each black square, and miss an interval for each white one, taking them in regular order. The Martians seemed to catch on pretty soon; in a few days Dad was receiving ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... the experience and your record is far above the average, so we're going to issue the license; but if you'll take a bit of advice from an old sailor you'll be content to go as second mate for a year or two more, until your jowls blacken up a bit and you get a trifle thicker in ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... fight in ould Ireland, they say, Was all on account of Saint Pathrick's birthday, Some fought for the eighth—for the ninth more would die. And who wouldn't see right, sure they blacken'd his eye! At last, both the factions so positive grew, That each kept a birthday, so Pat then had two, Till Father Mulcahy, who showed them their sins, Said, "No one could have two birthdays but ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... permitted to make these observations without interruption. The savage—who had stood by me had a duty to perform; and during all this time he was busied in its performance. A singular and inexplicable operation it at first appeared to me. His initiatory act was to blacken my body from the waist upward, including my face, throat, and arms. The substance used appeared to be a paste of charcoal, which he rubbed rudely over my skin. A circle upon my breast—that traced out by the blade of the chief—was ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... November's win' did blow, Wi' hufflen storms along the plain, An' blacken'd leaves did lie below The neaeked tree, a-zoak'd wi' rain, I werden at a loss to vill The darkest hour o' rainy skies, If I did vind avore my eyes The feaeces ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... intimate knowledge of German treachery and duplicity, a still higher principle inspired the Negro; for to forget the loyalty to his own native country in this hour of trial and darkness would be scandalous and shameful and would blacken the Negro in the eyes of the whole world. Of this class of treachery, the Negro is absolutely incapable. They have endured some of the greatest sacrifices and humiliations that could be demanded of a people, but, they always ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... becase I still want to see my father's daughter an honest woman, though she may be soon a beggar; becase I don't want to see my sister crouching under a blackguard's foot; becase I don't want the worst disgrace that can happen a family to blacken the name ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... Rainbow turned slanderer? Impossible! Indeed, Mr. Bub, there must be some mistake here." "None, Sir," said the stranger; "I have it on the authority of my respectable landlord, that, ever since this gentleman's arrival, he has been incessant in his attempts to blacken my character with every person at the inn." "Nay, my friend"—But I put an end to Harman's further defence of me, by taking him aside, and frankly confessing the whole truth. It was with some difficulty I could get ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... Bastard of Angouleme, and their attendants, had reached the admiral's house. The wounded man was almost alone. Could there be any clearer proof of the rectitude of his purpose, of the utter falsity of the charges of conspiracy with which his enemies afterward attempted to blacken his memory?[983] Guerchy and other Protestant gentlemen had expressed the desire to spend the night with him; but his son-in-law, Teligny, full of confidence in Charles's good intentions, had declined ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... of Sir Robert. It is against the Minister, and not the man, that the hot-blooded Opposition dramatist directs his humour and his irony. Fielding's manly and generous nature here permitted no virulent personalities to blacken his ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... that could furnish the least ground for suspicion, or that afforded the slightest trace of the existence of a culpable intimacy. This calumny must be classed among those with which malice delights to blacken the characters of men more brilliant than their fellows, and which are so readily adopted by the light-minded and unreflecting. I freely declare that did I entertain the smallest doubt with regard to this odious charge, of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... original bundles longer than one or two days, for it will turn black. The material is usually separated into two parts, one to be dyed, the other to be bleached. That to be dyed is spread in the sun and thoroughly dried for one or two days, care being taken that rain does not fall upon it and blacken it. The other part is boiled in a solution of acetic acid for twenty minutes, after which it is thoroughly dried in the sun and ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... kick a sardine can of stove-blacking under the stove where it would not be seen. Some predecessor with domestic instincts had left behind him half a package of "Rising Sun," and Billy had found it and was intending to blacken the stove just as soon as he finished the dishes. That he had left it as a crowning embellishment, rather than making it the foundation of his house-cleaning, only proved his inexperience in that line. ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... charity and self-denial must more than ever be exercised, and that the discipline and perfection of our own characters is as ever our grand life-work. Then let the angry waves of tumult dash up and froth at our feet, let the skies blacken and the tempest roar, God is over all. This one thing we are to remember, and be cheerful. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... can never be safe. It is not enough that your designs, nay, that your actions, are intrinsically good; you must take care they shall appear so. If your inside be never so beautiful, you must preserve a fair outside also. This must be constantly looked to, or malice and envy will take care to blacken it so, that the sagacity and goodness of an Allworthy will not be able to see through it, and to discern the beauties within. Let this, my young readers, be your constant maxim, that no man can be good enough to enable him to neglect the rules of prudence; nor will Virtue ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... Barton was the victim. I can only ask my reader,—did you ever upset your ink-bottle, and watch, in helpless agony, the rapid spread of Stygian blackness over your fair manuscript or fairer table-cover? With a like inky swiftness did gossip now blacken the reputation of the Rev. Amos Barton, causing the unfriendly to scorn and even the friendly to stand aloof, at a time when difficulties of another kind ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... unscrupulous foes. "The world is the enemy of God," and therefore of His Church. If its votaries cannot destroy her, nor put an end to her charmed life, they hope, at least, to defame her character and to blacken her reputation. They seize every opportunity to misrepresent her doctrine, to travesty her history, and to denounce her as retrograde, old fashioned, and out of date. And, what makes matters worse, the falsest and most mischievous allegations are often ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... will try and blacken her character and have her sent out of the post, and so rob us of the last relic I have of my home and f-f-friends," and Mrs. Forrest began ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... will be satisfied that this Thorndyke's name is not to blacken yours in the mouths of the people of Market-Sinfield. I shall remain concealed in this house till I can speak to you alone. Remember—my love makes me desperate—one more harsh word from you may bring mischief to another. ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... Rosatch. The brilliance of the coloring was the landscape's most astounding feature. The lakes were planes of polished turquoise, the rocks pure grays and browns and reds, the meadows emerald green, while the shining white patches of snow on the highest mountain slopes helped to blacken by contrast the somber clumps of pines that gathered thick wherever man had not disputed with the trees the tenancy of each foot ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... all its pride, And well-calk'd galleys in the harbor ride. Then oaks for oars they fell'd; or, as they stood, Of its green arms despoil'd the growing wood, Studious of flight. The beach is cover'd o'er With Trojan bands, that blacken all the shore: On ev'ry side are seen, descending down, Thick swarms of soldiers, loaden from the town. Thus, in battalia, march embodied ants, Fearful of winter, and of future wants, T' invade the corn, and to their ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... who Man of baser Earth didst make And who with Eden didst devise the Snake; For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man Is blacken'd, ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... somewhat more home-like now, but it was very cold. Scrymgeour had no fire yet. He had been told that the smoke would blacken his moon. Besides, I question if he would have dared to remove the fan from the fireplace without consulting a Japanese authority. He did not even know whether the Japanese burned coal. I missed a number of the articles of furniture that had graced his former rooms. The easels ...
— My Lady Nicotine - A Study in Smoke • J. M. Barrie
... in the abstract, mother," said Miles; "but you and Frank have not seen the scoundrel in his beaten down state, and, as Archie says, it is hard to blacken the memory of either poor George Proudfoot or Tom Vivian, who have fathers ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... business, varied by horse-play considered "kind o' rough" by even the more boisterous among us. Sometimes it was given, minstrel-wise, in the time-honored panoply of burnt cork; again, poor weary souls! they lacked even the spirit to blacken themselves, and clinging to the same dialogue, played boldly in Caucasian fairness, with the pathetically futile disguise of a Teuton accent. And last of all, Mr. Wilde would appear before the curtain, and "in behalf of Mrs. Wilde, self and company" thank us movingly ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... and which he was persuaded that he found in him. "Since then, however," wrote Madame d'Houdetot, "he pities you more for your weakness than he reproaches you, and we are both of us far from joining the people who wish to blacken your character; we have and always shall have the courage to speak of you with esteem."[285] They saw one another a few times, and on one occasion the Count and Countess d'Houdetot, Saint Lambert, and Rousseau all sat ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... swooning heat of August Swims along the valley's bed. The tall reeds burn and blacken, While the gray elm droops its head, And the smoky sun above the hills ...
— England over Seas • Lloyd Roberts
... of free government developed here, and urging our people on with unexampled rapidity in the career of wealth and greatness, have always been subjects of alarm to monarchs and aristocracies—of pleasure and hope to the people. It has, of course, been the object of the former to blacken us in every conceivable way, and to make us detestable in the eyes of the world. There has been nothing since the revolution so well calculated to advance this end, as the exhibition which Mrs. ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... for the face of Dundee was beginning again to blacken. "I've no a word to say against her ladyship. I gather she has been doing what she can for the cause wi' them slippery rascals o' dragoons and their Laodicean commander, of whom I have my ain thoughts. I fear me, indeed, to say what I have found, ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... not. You have rejoiced my old heart. I can die; I shall have a successor. Ah! that Gevrol who betrayed you—for he did betray you, there's no doubt about it—that obtuse, obstinate 'General' is not worthy to blacken your shoes!" ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... seems to belong to all Africa, as a sign of grief the Dinka wear a cord round the neck."[85] Mourning New Zealanders tie a red cloth round the head or wear headdresses of dark feathers. New Caledonians cut off their hair and blacken and oil their faces[85]. Hawaiians cut their hair in various forms, knock out a front tooth, cut the ears and tattoo a spot on the tongue[86]. The Mineopies use three coloring substances for painting their bodies; and by the way they apply them they let it ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... silver box from his pocket, and extracted a match. "Do you mind?" he asked, and scarcely waiting for a token of reply, struck a flame upon the sole of his shoe, and applied it to the sheet of foolscap he still held in his hand. The two men watched it curl and blacken after it had been tossed in the grate, ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... weather leech of the topsail shivers, The bowlines strain and the lee shrouds slacken, The braces are taut, the lithe boom quivers, And the waves with the coming squall-cloud blacken. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... preserved. Mr. Hazlitt prints a letter to a Miss Frances Brown, wherein Lamb offers the verses, adding "I hope your sweetheart's name is WHITE. Else it would spoil all. May be 'tis BLACK. Then we must alter it. And may your fortunes BLACKEN with ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb (Vol. 6) - Letters 1821-1842 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... schists. The mixture of carbon, sulphuretted iron, and copper, appears to me to augment with the relative antiquity of the formations.) The strata of marl effervesce with acids, though silex and alumina predominate in them: they are strongly impregnated with carbon, and sometimes blacken the hands, like a real vitriolic schistus. The supposed gold mine of Cuchivano, which was the object of our examination, is nothing but an excavation cut into one of those black strata of marl, which contain pyrites ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... injustice with which all religions are pleased to blacken the Divinity, men can not consent to accuse Him of iniquity; they fear that He, like the tyrants of this world, will be offended by the truth, and redouble the weight of His malice and tyranny upon them. They listen, then, to their priests, who ...
— Superstition In All Ages (1732) - Common Sense • Jean Meslier
... ray of sunshine died away; the deep woods began to blacken; a cool air sighed in the high tops of the trees. It was very homeless and lonely. She took heart, however, remembering God's goodness to her, and placing her confidence ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... were the trees beginning to blacken in the heat, and the grass looking like a sea of fire along the plains; ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... the like of which the eye of man will never look upon again. At last, in some short respite of those fighting days, came back the conquerors themselves, to enjoy a fleeting period of rest and fame ere they should stiffen on Russian snows, or swell the streams which bathe the walls of Leipsic, or blacken, with countless dead, the plains stretching between the Rhine ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... through which a number of gold and silver or ivory arrows are placed, much in the manner of the peasant girls in some parts of Germany. The unmarried women have good eyebrows and beautiful teeth; but when they marry they blacken their teeth and shave off their eyebrows, to show their affection for their husbands, and that they no longer wish to win the admiration of others. The men have a curious way of saluting each other, passing ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... to snatch and crumple it; then his clenched fist dropped to his side. It seemed as if his eyes would blacken ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... afternoon. It was full spring-time now and Radstowe was gay and sweet with flowering trees. The delicate rose of the almond blossom had already faded to a fainting pink and fallen to the ground, and the laburnum was weeping golden tears which would soon drop to the pavements and blacken there; the red and white hawthorns were all out, and Henrietta's daily walks had been punctuated by ecstatic halts when she stood under a canopy of flower and leaf and drenched herself in scent and colour, or peeped over ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... Service, and I can live upon that—and of that Colonel Newcome cannot rob me; and when my darling love needs a mother's care no longer, I will leave her. I will shake the dust off my feet and leave that house. I will—And Mr. Newcome's friends may then sneer at me and abuse me, and blacken my darling child's heart towards me if they choose. And I thank you, Mrs. Pendennis, for all your kindness towards my daughter's family, and for the furniture which you have sent into the house, and for the trouble you have taken about our family arrangements. It was for this ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... conveyance cross each other's course in every possible direction. Twisting in and out by the wheels and under the horses' heads, working a devious way, men and women of all conditions wind a path over. They fill the interstices between the carriages and blacken the surface, till the vans almost float on human beings. Now the streams slacken, and now they rush amain, but never cease; dark waves are always rolling down the incline opposite, waves swell out from the side rivers, all London converges ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... ports besiege them, But that he would not disoblige them; And make the rascals pay him dearly For those affronts they give him yearly. 'Tis not denied, that, when we write, Our ink is black, our paper white: And, when we scrawl our paper o'er, We blacken what was white before: I think this practice only fit For dealers in satiric wit. But you some white-lead ink must get And write on paper black as jet; Your interest lies to learn the knack Of whitening what before was black. Thus your encomium, to be strong, Must be applied directly wrong. A tyrant ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... a cat, denotes ill luck, if you do not succeed in killing it or driving it from your sight. If the cat attacks you, you will have enemies who will go to any extreme to blacken your reputation and to cause you loss of property. But if you succeed in banishing it, you will overcome great obstacles and rise in ...
— 10,000 Dreams Interpreted • Gustavus Hindman Miller
... fifty-four men; while the Gamo measured six hundred tons, and had thirty-two guns, with a crew of three hundred and nineteen men. After a desperate action, Lord Cochrane laid the little Speedy on board his big antagonist. He had ordered his men to blacken their faces; and one party, led by his gallant Lieutenant Parker, boarded at the bow, and soon gained a footing on the enemy's deck. Their begrimed faces and the impetuosity of their onset struck dismay into the ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... it, and bid the many-isled vision, in all its greatest glory, farewell. Thence upwards prevails the spirit of the mountains. The lake is felt to belong to them—to be subjected to their will—and that is capricious; for sometimes they suddenly blacken it when at its brightest, and sometimes when its gloom is like that of the grave, as if at their biding, all is light. We cannot help attributing the "skyey influences" which occasion such wonderful effects on the water, to prodigious mountains; for we cannot look on ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... whilst That doubt is passing through your mind, the world Is conscious of a change. Darkness and Hell 40 Have swallowed up the vapour they sent forth To blacken the sweet light of life. My breath Comes, methinks, lighter, and the jellied blood Runs freely through my veins. Hark! [ENTER ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... out the editorial and thrust it in her gown, and threw the newspaper is the fire. She stood for a time after it had burned, watching the twisted remnants fade from flame colour to rose, and finally blacken. Then she went slowly up the stairs and put on her hat and coat and veil. Although a cloudless day, it was windy in the park, and cold, the ruffled waters an ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... surround Wigan, or the burnt-out and waste parts of the Black Country in South Staffordshire, though at Kimberley there is, happily, no coal-smoke or sulphurous fumes in the air, no cinder on the surface, no coal-dust to thicken the mud and blacken the roads. Some squalor one must have with that disturbance of nature which mining involves, but here the enlightened activity of the Company and the settlers has done its best to mitigate these evils ...
— Impressions of South Africa • James Bryce
... but most shameless and scurrilous, paper, John Bull, was started in Johnson's Court, at the close of 1820. Its specific and real object was to slander unfortunate Queen Caroline and to torment, stigmatise, and blacken "the Brandenburg House party," as her honest sympathisers were called. Theodore Hook was chosen editor, because he knew society, was quick, witty, satirical, and thoroughly unscrupulous. For his "splendid abuse"—as his biographer, the unreverend Mr. Barham, ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... its last all the people in the village unite in making grand lamentations. They cry, moan and howl worse than at the proverbial Irish funeral, they blacken their faces with charcoal and daub it with other colours to frighten away the bad spirit whilst the family crowd round the dead body and let their tears ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... had courage and strength enough to face the streets again. And as he waited, he gave himself up to visions of the future—to the day when, with his hand on Cressingham's lying throat, he would see his face blacken and hear the rattling agonies of his gasps for breath. He leaned back in his chair and laughed hoarsely. The unearthly, hideous sound startled him, and he glanced round nervously as if he feared to betray his secret. Then he drank another ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... I appreciate your feelings," she said. "You want to fight for the man you love. You'd even blacken your character for his sake. You'd face the sneers of the world for his sake. I admire you for it. It brings us nearer together. I admit that I had misjudged you a little. That was because I hadn't seen you and spoken to you. ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... that, even with the closest attention to the above directions, annoying failures will not occur. It often happens that some accidental circumstance—generally a projecting film or a little dust—will occasion the mercurial vapor to act with great energy on one part of the paper, and blacken it before the other portions are at all effected. Again, the mercury will sometimes accumulate along the lines made by the brush, and give a streaky appearance to the picture, although these lines are not at all evident before the mercurial vapor was applied. (A brush sufficiently ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... will strew the ground, And whirl with rustling ardor round, Or lie in heaps together, Their hues of red, of brown, of gold, Will blacken, as they change to mould By ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... as far as one could see from the battlements. At last the wind sprang up and a cloud appeared—in the right quarter, too, and just at nightfall. For a little while I watched that distant cloud spread and blacken, then I judged it was time for me to appear. I ordered the torch-baskets to be lit, and Merlin liberated and sent to me. A quarter of an hour later I ascended the parapet and there found the king and the court assembled and gazing off in the darkness toward Merlin's Tower. Already the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... primitive character has been preserved to which such modern altars and XVII century trappings as those of Aix and Frejus are fatal. Under the heavy dust there is visible an unhappy coating of whitewash, traces of a fire still blacken the walls, fragments of Roman sculpture are scattered about, and between the columns a pagan altar has been placed for safe-keeping. The columns themselves are of pagan construction, and as they differ somewhat in size and capitals, it is ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... writers, cannot be rejected by modern authorities simply because they are too harsh. They cannot be considered merely in the nature of accusations against the standing and position of our ancestors, made by advocates anxious to blacken the national character. Even scholars like Mr. Skene, Mr. Elton, and Sir John Rhys, though inclined to weigh these passages by the light of ethnographic research, throw something like doubt upon the exact extent ...
— Folklore as an Historical Science • George Laurence Gomme
... the sweat of his hands and his spittle: He finds out another profession as fit, And straight he becomes a retailer of wit. One day he cried—"Murders, and songs, and great news!" Another as loudly—"Here blacken your shoes!" At Domvile's[4] full often he fed upon bits, For winding of jacks up, and turning of spits; Lick'd all the plates round, had many a grubbing, And now and then got from the cook-maid a drubbing; Such bastings effect upon him could have none: The dog will be patient that's ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... should be judged chiefly from the intention of the speaker. Now backbiting by its very nature aims at blackening a man's good name. Wherefore, properly speaking, to backbite is to speak ill of an absent person in order to blacken his good name. Now it is a very grave matter to blacken a man's good name, because of all temporal things a man's good name seems the most precious, since for lack of it he is hindered from doing many things well. ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... mother as she vigorously scrubbed the small boy's face with soap and water, "didn't I tell you never to blacken your face again? Here I've been scrubbing for half an hour and ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... enemies laid to her charge, cannot think without a sigh upon a countenance expressive of anything rather than the foul crimes with which she was charged when living, and which still continue to shade, if not to blacken, her memory. That brow, so truly open and regal—those eyebrows, so regularly graceful, which yet were saved from the charge of regular insipidity by the beautiful effect of the hazel eyes which they overarched, and which seem to utter a thousand histories—the nose, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... strikers before they have a chance to blacken Luzerne County with the charred ruins of the breakers! They'll be sacking our homes next. Already their attitude is almost insufferable. People beyond these hills do not understand the reign of terror under which these foreign-born men hold ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... offered the slightest resistance. Within a few minutes four hundred citizens were murdered. The fate of the women, abandoned now to the outrage of a brutal soldiery, was worse than death. The capture of Rotterdam is infamous for the same crimes which blacken the record of every Spanish triumph in ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... unfortunate consort of a most unhappy monarch is without a flaw. Enmity, hatred, and every evil passion, have done their worst to palliate murder and to blacken innocence, but the ineradicable spot cannot be fixed to the fair fame of this true woman. Faultless she was not. We are under no obligation to vindicate her imprudent, wilful, and fatal interference with public questions in which ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... iodide of iron has also the same effect, and, if blotted off at once, it will not blacken by ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 203, September 17, 1853 • Various
... you tell Van Kuyp before he scored the work?" she demanded, her long gray eyes beginning to blacken. ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... forget about it, and the whole thing would blow over. Besides, he deserved the severest punishment for the way he had treated her; and as for anything he might say now (though as a gentleman he would hardly say anything and try to blacken a lady's character), of course nobody would listen to him for ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... defective," answered Richard, gloomily; "you forget that I was in court myself on that occasion. You did your very worst to blacken me before judge and jury, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... increased. Finding that they could neither answer nor controvert my principles, nor put me down, they have been base enough to resort to slander, and to the most wanton and barefaced falsehoods, which they have trumped up to blacken me. The separation from my wife was a subject that they never failed to urge against me, after having tortured it into a thousand aggravated shapes; not one of which was true. If, however, I would but have ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... expressed, though not in words so plain, and at length. But the Government would not take this view; he had represented virulent partisans as being supreme in the Queen's counsels, and his design was manifest "to blacken the Church party as men of a persecuting spirit, and to prepare the mob for what further service he had for them to do." Finding that they would not listen to him, Defoe surrendered himself, in order that others might not suffer for his offence. He was indicted on the 24th ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... society, it is by marriage with a man who is neither a dotard nor a fortune-seeker, and who remains constant and does not tempt her, by neglect, to forbode offense and to inflict anticipative reprisals—yet her purity goes uncredited, as her guilt would go unpunished; scandal makes haste to blacken her name to the prevailing hue; and whether she has sin or not, those with sin will cast, not the stone that breaks and kills, but the filth that sticks and stinks. The wife must continue the long social exile of her girlhood if she would not be the prey of scandal. ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... opportunity of doing some good work,—and I am aware that I have to justify his choice of me. But the consequence is, that the whole profession in Middlemarch have set themselves tooth and nail against the Hospital, and not only refuse to cooperate themselves, but try to blacken the whole ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... grand sight to witness the sea in a hurricane on a driftless, clear day. Crouched under a rock on Azimuth Hill, and looking across to the west along the curving brink of the cliffs, one could watch the water close inshore blacken under the lash of the wind, whiten into foam farther off, and then disappear into the hurrying clouds of spray and sea-smoke. Over the Mackellar Islets and the "Pianoforte Berg" columns of spray would shoot up like geysers, and fly away in the mad ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... built upon the foundation of an unsanctified heart. For a time the graces of the Spirit may seem to grow, but in some sad hour the surface will split open and the man will leap back aghast at the blue flames of Gehenna, which singe his brows and blacken his cheeks. ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... but the interference of the officer put an end to the disturbance. It was their parting words taken in connection with what followed, that made a deep impression upon me:—"If it wasn't that you are dying I would blacken your eyes for you," cried the mechanic. "How do you know I am dying? You look as like dying as anybody, you miserable cripple," retorted the other. "Ah! I'm tough stuff, you'll not see me die in a hurry." The cripple who uttered these words went shortly ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... account, Travels in Persia, vol i. 185:—"The women in Ghilan are fair, their eyes and hair black; but here, as in other places, they often use a drug with which they blacken their eyes. In this province their features are small: these, as well as their stature, partaking much of the delicate. But in general the Georgians are most esteemed for the charms of their persons. The females who do not labour in the field, are seldom seen abroad, except ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 390, September 19, 1829 • Various |
