"Blacking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... get the students together and advise them on keeping their faces clean, and blacking their boots, &c.—Amherst Indicator, ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... Richard Frayne had taken a desperate plunge. "Why, a score of his chums had better have died than him! I didn't ought never to ha' left him last night, seeing what a state he was in. You might ha' saved his life, Jerry, and done more good than you'll ever do blacking boots and brushing clothes, if yer lives to a hundred ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... injure that kind of leather. Tell him you don't know how to black morocco; yes, that's morocco. He will get you something himself in Saumur to polish those boots with. I have heard that they put sugar into the blacking to ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... Peterkin; a small foot-rug in case the ground should be damp; some paint-boxes of the little boys'; a box of fish-hooks for Solomon John; an ink-bottle, carefully done up in a great deal of newspaper, which was fortunate, as the ink was oozing out; some old magazines, and a blacking-bottle; and at the bottom, a sun-dial. It was all very entertaining, and there seemed to be something for every occasion but the present. Old Mr. Bromwick did not wonder the basket was so heavy. It was all so interesting that nobody ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... entreated me to kindly excuse the waiting-maid for jumping with diffidence whenever I pop upon her unpremeditatedly on the stairs, being a nervous girl and unaccustomed to dark-complexioned gentlemen—though her own countenance, from superabundance of blacking and smuts, being of a far superior nigritude, it is I myself who should be more justified ...
— Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. • F. Anstey
... maid-of-all-work tells her mistress, after the guest departs, "I have read so much about him, never expecting to see him; little did I think I should have the honor of brushing his boots this morning." Happy girl in her work, knowing that all service is honorable. Even shoe-blacking, ...
— James Watt • Andrew Carnegie
... and that, too without plate, mirror, or bed. The cushioned seat of a ricketty old sofa in one corner bore the faint impress of a lean, reclining form. Rolled away under his desk, I found a blanket; under the empty grate, a blacking box and brush; on a chair, a tin basin, with soap and a ragged towel; in a newspaper a few crumbs of ginger-nuts and a morsel of cheese. Yes, thought I, it is evident enough that Bartleby has been making his home here, keeping bachelor's hall all by himself. Immediately then ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... sells; the bills are taken in payment, and signed by that respectable capitalist, Monsieur de Saint Bertrand. At Plate 81, we find him inditing a circular letter to all the world, running thus: "Sir,—I regret to say that your application for shares in the Consolidated European Incombustible Blacking Association cannot be complied with, as all the shares of the C. E. I. B. A. were disposed of on the day they were issued. I have, nevertheless, registered your name, and in case a second series should be put forth, I shall have the ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... too, were wearing these caps, but theirs were yet smaller and tipped over their noses, like the pork pie hat of our grandmothers. One closely veiled woman showed the silhouette sticking up through her veil just like a blacking tin. ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... was suddenly broken by the creaking and clanging of the front gate, heralding the tardy coming of Easton. Slyme went out into the scullery and, taking down the blacking brushes from the ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... who took an opportunity, while the others were engaged in conversation, to jog my elbow gently. As I turned towards him, he said nothing, but dropped his eyes significantly. The little rascal had the lid of a blacking-box, filled with salt, upon his knee, and was privately ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... carry her basket. This threw Willy's mind into a good deal of a flutter. Why could she not have met this handsomely dressed gentleman sometime when she was not going to the grocery store to buy such things as stove-blacking ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... kind, figures that were originally standing may be forced to sit; babies may be placed in arms which, on the cards they were stolen from, held only cakes of soap, perhaps, or boxes of blacking; heads may be ruthlessly torn from bodies to which they belong, and as ruthlessly clapped upon strange shoulders; and you will be surprised to see what amusing, and often excellent, illustrations present themselves as ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... almost all myself," said Jenny. "Henry wouldn't help me because he's so ugly, and Rose was afraid of blacking her fingers. But I don't care Mother says I'm a great,—great,—I've forgotten the word, but it means dirty and careless, and I guess I do look ...
— The English Orphans • Mary Jane Holmes
... Mr. Walters. (He called her Ellen, for he had been long intimate with the family.) "If you can't get on without the boy's earning something, why don't you do as white women and men do? Do you ever find them sending their boys out as servants? No; they rather give them a stock of matches, blacking, newspapers, or apples, and start them out to sell them. What is the result? The boy that learns to sell matches soon learns to sell other things; he learns to make bargains; he becomes a small trader, then a merchant, then a millionaire. Did you ever hear ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... Russians have elements in their writings quite notable in themselves at all times, but more notable now when letters everywhere else seem to run to waste and ruin,—elements without which all writing must become in due course of time so much blacking of paper, and all speech only so much empty sound; elements without which all writing is sent off, not weighted in one corner, that it may, like unto the toy, after never so much swaying to and fro, still find its upright equilibrium, but rather like unto the sky-rocket, sent up into empty ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... advertised to start every morning at five precisely!!!—a glaring impossibility. We know that in our enterprising country adventures are sometimes undertaken, in the spirit of competition, which are entirely out of the common course of things: thus, one man will sell a bottle of blacking for ninepence with the charitable intention of ruining his neighbour (so think the worthy public) who has the audacity to charge his at a shilling—the intrinsic value of the commodity being in either case, a fraction less than five farthings. Such a manoeuvre, however, is tolerable; but the attempt ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... in a low voice, suddenly bringing a blacking-brush, and beginning to polish his master's shoes,—thinking, while he did it, of how often Mars' John had interfered with the overseers to save him from a flogging,—(Lamar, in his lazy way, was kind to his slaves,)—thinking of little Mist' Floy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... long-tail coat. Everywhere they say a second grace at dinner—not at the end—but before the dessert, because two hundred years ago they dared not wait longer lest the parson be under the table: the grace is said to-day before dessert! I tried three months to persuade my "Boots" to leave off blacking the soles of my shoes under the instep. He simply couldn't do it. Every "Boots" in the Kingdom does it. A man of learning had an article in an afternoon paper a few weeks ago which began thus: "It is now universally conceded by the French and the Americans ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... office; well acquainted with the Crooks, Mrs. Marsden, and others. Had tea with the Masons, and had a good deal of talk about old matters in England. Servetus, a very respectable young man carrying on an extensive blacking trade; the sister a very steady girl had lived some time with Mr. Furness. The old man as eccentric as ever, his wife looking old ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... I finished blacking Ham's boots, and he put them on. He was going to a party at Crofton's, and had already dressed himself as sprucely as the resources of Torrentville would permit. He was seventeen years old, and somewhat inclined to be "fast." He was rather a good-looking fellow—an exceedingly good-looking ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... still his taper Burned, and not blue, as modest tapers use, Receiving sprites with sympathetic vapour; He rubbed his eyes, and they did not refuse Their office: he took up an old newspaper; The paper was right easy to peruse; He read an article the King attacking, And a long eulogy of "Patent Blacking." ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... spells of dyeing in the dye-beck already referred to, tolerably thick with black precipitate or mud, the application of black to the hat-forms begins, I fear, to assume at length a too close analogy to another blacking process closely associated with a pair of brushes and the time-honoured name of Day & Martin. With that logwood black fibre, anyone could argue as to a considerable proportion of the dye rubbing, wearing, or washing off. Thus, then, we have the second cause of the deterioration of the black, ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... narrow strip about fifty feet long, separated from the other little strips by iron hurdles. Mardon had tried to keep his garden in order, and had succeeded, but his neighbour was disorderly, and had allowed weeds to grow, blacking bottles and old tin cans to accumulate, so that whatever pleasure Mardon's labours might have afforded ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... study on Pack Monday night just before twelve. In stockinged feet he had crept downstairs, opened the creaking door without making any appreciable noise, and then waited in the boot-room, which was filled with the odour of blacking and damp decay. There was a small window at the end of it, through which it was just possible to squeeze out on to the Chief's front lawn. After that all was easy; anyone could clamber over the wall by ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... years old his family moved to London. There the father fell into debt, and by the brutal laws of the period was thrown into prison. The boy went to work in the cellar of a blacking factory, and there began that intimate acquaintance with lowly characters which he used later to such advantage. He has described his bitter experience so often (in David Copperfield for instance) that the biographer may well pass over it. We note only this significant ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... smell delicious here-like the taste of cherries when they've gone bad—[She sniffs again] and mushrooms; and boot blacking. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and shifts for himself by blacking boots, selling papers, and "swiping" fruit often appears much smarter than a boy of the same age who is going to school all the time and does not see so much of the world. A boy of twelve who has lived by his wits is often keener than a boy of the same age who has ...
— Jukes-Edwards - A Study in Education and Heredity • A. E. Winship
... and Hungerford Stairs have disappeared, beside which was the blacking factory, wherein the novelist's first bitter experiences of London life were felt,—amid a wretchedness only too apparent, when one reads of the miserable days which fell upon the lad at this time,—the market itself being replaced by ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... beam, and that blows of the same emphasis in other parts, of his room might knock the entire shanty into hell. Thenceforth, for from three to four hours, he is engaged darkly with an ink-bottle. Yet he is not blacking his boots, for the only pair that he possesses are innocent of lustre and wear the natural hue of the material turned up with caked and venerable slush. The youngest child of his landlady remarks several times a day, as this strange ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... tidy himself. The would-be duellists, forgetting their quarrel, stuck the revolvers in their belts and followed the general example. The Cripple hied him to the store, and after breaking down the door abstracted the only blacking-brush in the camp,—putting down a sovereign on the counter in exchange for it,—and set to polishing his high boots as if a fortune depended on their brightness. The Scholar bought Herr Gustav's white shirt for a ...
— Stories by English Authors: Africa • Various
... his lips at a thistle, sees but water for him to drink in Windermere a-glow with the golden lights of setting suns. The ostler or the boots at Lowood-inn takes a somewhat higher flight, and for a moment, pausing with curry-comb or blacking-brush in his suspended hand, calls on Sally Chambermaid for gracious sake to look at Pull-wyke. The waiter, who has cultivated his taste from conversation with Lakers, learns their phraseology, and declares ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... understand their "Good evening", to mean, "Don't run against me, Sir." From the wonders of the deep we go below to get deeper sleep. And then the absurdity of being waked up in the night by a man who wants the job of blacking your boots! It is more inevitable than seasickness, and may have something to do with it. It is like the ducking you get on crossing the line the first time. I trusted that these old customs were abolished. They might with the same propriety insist on ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... enjoying the holiday in their own way, we descried an old gentleman approaching up the winding street. As he drew nearer he presented rather a shabby, or, at least, rusty appearance. His felt hat was not so black as it had been; his coat was creased and soiled; his boots needed a blacking. He swung a cane as he stumped along, and there was a sort of faded smartness in his bearing and a knowingness in his grim old visage, indicating some incongruous familiarity with the manners of the great world. He came to a halt in front of the ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... one was called, "Tom the Bootblack"; the other, "Dan the Newsboy." My chief objection to these stories was the fact that neither of the heroes rejoiced in his work for the work's sake. Had Tom even invented a new kind of blacking, or if Dan had started a newspaper, it might have been encouraging for those among the listeners who were thinking of engaging in similar professions. It is true, both gentlemen amassed large fortunes, but ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... case, working all day in feverish ecstasy at unsaleable pictures, and quite possibly they would have killed or wounded anyone who suggested a compromise with the market. When materials and credit failed altogether, they stole newspapers and boot-blacking that they might continue to serve their masterful passion. They were superbly religious. All artists are religious. All uncompromising belief is religious. A man who so cares for truth that he will ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... the beginning of countless similar experiences, and the beginning of a love for Landmarks of a more important but hardly of a more delightful character. Hungerford Market and Hungerford Stairs, with the blacking-warehouse abutting on the water when the tide was in, and on the mud when the tide was out, still stood near Morley's in 1852; and very close to them stood then, and still stands to-day, the old house in Buckingham Street, Adelphi, where, with Mrs. Crupp, Trotwood Copperfield found his ...
— A Boy I Knew and Four Dogs • Laurence Hutton
... staring about him (a branch of the public service to which the pictorial cherub is much addicted), this domestic cherub discharged as many odd functions as his prototype; with the difference, say, that he performed with a blacking-brush on the family's boots, instead of performing on enormous wind instruments and double-basses, and that he conducted himself with cheerful alacrity to much useful purpose, instead of foreshortening himself in the air ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the wounded sergeant faintly, as we went to his side, and he smiled up at me. "I heard you blacking my character behind my back. Never mind about the past. What about ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... My Lady—save me!" cried daddy, appearing to be very much frightened, and dodging behind the stove. "Don't let the neighbors in until I have got rid of this blacking brush and got ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... I have lately got the ingenious Authors of Blacking for Shoes, Powder for colouring the Hair, Pomatum for the Hands, Cosmetick for the Face, to be your constant Customers; so that your Advertisements will as much adorn the outward Man, as your Paper ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... man for me," cried the Count, giving the man a thousand-franc note. "Take this, but, remember, I give it to you on condition of your spending it at the wineshop, of your getting drunk, fighting, beating your wife, blacking your friends' eyes. That will give work to the watch, the surgeon, the druggist—perhaps to the police, the public prosecutor, the judge, and the prison warders. Do not try to do anything else, or the devil will be revenged on ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... flowers on all occasions of festivity, and even in their sepulchral rites: he mentions also an oeconomical purpose to which the flowers are applied, little consistent with their elegance and beauty, that of blacking shoes, whence their name of Rosae calceolariae; the shoes, after the colour is imparted to them, are rubbed with the hand, to give them a gloss, and which thereby receives a blueish tinge, to discharge which they ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. V - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... small brunette minister asked if he was not entitled to some credit for blacking the farmer's eyes. Says he: "When he got over the fence and grabbed the near horse by the bits, and said he would have the whole gang in jail, I felt as though something had got to be done, and I jumped out on the other side of the ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... sell much boot blacking here. Most of the people grease their boots with fish oil," Katherine said, laughing in spite of herself, only now her amusement was because she knew Jervis Ferrars to be in her father's room, where he could hear every word which ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... Don Quixote and Rasselas (those four for some reason stand out in my mind from their fellows in the row), all bought for the modest ten-cent piece per volume—the price of two daily newspapers (for all newspapers in America then cost five cents) or one blacking of one's shoes. Much has, of course, been done of late years in England in popularising the "Classics" in the form of cheap libraries; but the facilities for buying the books—or rather the temptations ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... doubt, good looking, showered upon him during that winter. But Jarman, as I think I have explained, was no slave to female charms. He enjoyed his good time while it lasted, and eventually married the eldest daughter of a small blacking factory. She was a plain girl, but pleasant, and later brought to Jarman possession of the factory. When I meet him—he is now stout and rubicund—he gives me the idea of a man who ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... of ballads, and crying of news, With whitening of buckles, and blacking of shoes, Did Hartley set out, both shoeless and shirtless, And moneyless too, but not very dirtless; Two pence he had gotten by begging, that's all; One bought him a brush, and one a black ball; For clouts at a loss he could not be much, The clothes on his back as being ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... "Stunning blacking it is, too. He's in the Brigade, and I minded his box for him, and took sixpence while he went and had a game of marbles. That's why he give ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... holding them aloft tenderly, to show them the noose and the cross-beam. Fathers came with their sons, and explained very carefully to them the method of strangulation. Little girls, on their way to workshops, had turned aside to see the playful affair, and traders in fancy soap and shoe-blacking, pea-nuts and shrimps, Banbury cakes, and Chelsea buns, and Yarmouth bloaters, were making the morning hilarious with their odd cries and speeches. Along the chimney-pots of Green Arbour Court, where Goldsmith ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... are not signed but sealed—"chopped" it is called—and much importance is accordingly attached to the official seals or chops, which are large circular metal stamps, and the chop is affixed by oiling the stamps, blacking it over the flame of a candle and pressing it on the document to be sealed. The chop bears, in Arabic characters, the name, style and title of the Official using it. The Sultan's Chop is the Great Seal ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... banner and started out. It was a big piece of cardboard fixed onto a scout staff and on it was printed with shoe-blacking: ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... thin, so that the ting'd light, which is made by trajecting those ting'd bodies, does not receive so deep a tincture; but whitening a colour is onely an intermixing of many clear reflections of light among the same ting'd parts; deepning also, and darkning or blacking a colour, are very different; for deepning a colour, is to make the light pass through a greater quantity of the same tinging body; and darkning or blacking a colour, is onely interposing a multitude of dark or black spots among the same ting'd parts, or ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... is; come and find it for me. Everything here is in the vilest mess," cried Carne, growing reckless with wrath and hurry. "I want the despatch of this morning, and I find tailors' bills, way to make water-proof blacking, a list of old women, and a stump of old pipe! Come here, this instant, and show ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... Its Proportions. Square Top Stool. Folding Blacking Box. Convenient Easel. Hanging Book-rack. Sad Iron Holder. Bookcase. Wood-box. Parallel Bars for Boys' Use. Mission Writing Desk. Screen Frame. Mission Chair. Grandfather's Clock. Knockdown and Adjustable ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... reform was to become in the hands of the excitable French people. If, in the city where the tragedy was being enacted, the customary baking and brewing, the promenading under the trees, and the dog-dancing and the shoe-blacking on the Pont-Neuf could still continue, it is not strange that those who watched it from ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... a concertina: I've a tongue like a button-stick: I've a mouth like an old potato, and I'm more than a little sick, But I've had my fun o' the Corp'ral's Guard: I've made the cinders fly, And I'm here in the Clink for a thundering drink and blacking the Corporal's eye. With a second-hand overcoat under my head, And a beautiful view of the yard, O it's pack-drill for me and a fortnight's C.B. For "drunk and resisting the Guard!" Mad drunk and resisting the Guard— 'Strewth, but I socked it them hard! ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... man, but whisky did it. I have three little sisters younger than myself. We are very, very poor, and have no friends. We live in a dark and dingy room. I do the best I can to support my sisters by selling papers, blacking boots, and doing odd jobs; but Mr. Hoagland, we are very poor. Will you come and be with us when father's body is brought home? The governor says we may have his body ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... myself at the American Hotel to a Mr. McCoy to do the work of a porter, to black boots, &c, for which he was to pay me $12 per month. I soon found the landlord to be bad pay, and not only that, but he would not allow me to charge for blacking boots, although I had to black them after everybody had gone to bed at night, and set them in the bar-room, where the gentlemen could come and get them in the morning while I was at other work. I had nothing extra for this, neither would he pay ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... reason for blacking your face and hands is that, after you have entered the German trench at night, "white face" means Germans, "black face" English. Coming around a traverse you see a white face in front of you. With a prayer and wishing Fritz "the best o' luck," you introduce him to ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... "roundabout," scarcely reaching to his waist, but it abounded with pockets, as did the vest which it partly inclosed. His trousers were coarse, thick, and comfortable, and his large boots were never touched by blacking, Nick's father having no belief in such nonsense, but sticking ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... knew Mrs. Tippins had these letters. She brought one along to show me, to see if I could get her something special. Part of the letter has been blacked out, but of course I found it very easy to take that blacking out," he chuckled. "And what had been blacked out was as a matter of ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... you've got money enough to buy a stock of papers to start with. You'll be your own boss. Then there's boot- blacking; but that ain't genteel." ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... and chair and candlestick are fairies in disguise, meteors and constellations." The baseball, revolving as it flies, may suggest the orbs, or your girdle suggest the equator, or the wiping of your face on a towel suggest the absorption of the rain by the soil; but does the blacking of your shoes suggest anything celestial? Hinges and levers and fulcrums are significant, but one's old hat, or old boots, have not much poetic significance. An elm tree may suggest a cathedral, or a shell suggest the rainbow, or the sparkling frost suggest ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... was a thin, emaciated-looking dandy, but had all the bearing of the gentleman. He was haughty in the extreme, and very fond of dress; his boots were so well varnished that the polish now in use could not surpass Kelly's blacking in brilliancy; his pantaloons were made of the finest leather, and his coats were inimitable: in short, ...
— Reminiscences of Captain Gronow • Rees Howell Gronow
... was a roomy old cottage near the church, with a bow-window in which were displayed bottles of 'suckers,' and of Day & Martin's blacking, cotton stuffs, a bag of nuts and some mugs, cups and saucers. Inside were salt butter, washing-blue, drapery, treacle, starch, tea, tobacco and snuff, cheese, matches, bacon, and a few drugs, such as black draught, magnesia, pills, sulphur, dill- water, Dalby's Carminative, and steel-drops. ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... board in the front walk replaced. She borrowed buckets and cloths and impressed George Holt for the cleaning of the school building which she superintended. Before the week was over she had every child of school age who came to the building to see what was going on, scouring out desks, blacking stoves, raking the yard, even cleaning ...
— A Daughter of the Land • Gene Stratton-Porter
... clouds rose ponderously upon the hilltops, blacking out the twilight with an abruptness which must have held deep significance for men less occupied. But the dominant overcast of their minds was the coming of the sheriff. For many of them it was far more ominous ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... heels, with her blacking-brush in her hand, and laughed, without seeming the least ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... is a little difficult to please. I shall give up trying directly. What about blacking my face and calling on the ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... his motor-cycle, and approached Andy's stalled car, for Tom was some distance in advance of it, up the slope by this time. As he approached the auto, containing the three disconcerted cronies, something bounded out of Tom's pocket. It was the bottle of stove blacking he had purchased for Mrs. Baggert. The bottle fell in the soft dirt in front of his forward wheel, and a curious thing happened. Perhaps you have seen a bicycle or auto tire strike a stone at an angle, and throw it into the air with great force. That ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... couple of large-headed, circular-visaged males rose from their seats in the chimney-corner (for although it was a May evening their attachment to the wood fire appeared as cordial as if it were Christmas), and dived into some obscure recesses, from which they speedily produced a bottle of blacking, and some half-dozen brushes. ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... not," Bessie rejoined, tapping the floor impatiently with her boot, whose shabbiness French blacking could not wholly conceal, "I shall be civil to him, of course, as Neil's friend, but I would rather he did not come, spoiling everything. I see Neil so seldom that I want him all to myself when he is here. He is the only cousin I ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... could do for them equally well. To think of a physician whose consulting room was crowded with patients needing help which he alone, of all men living, could give, spending the precious morning hours in the minutiae of household arrangements, blacking his boots, or preparing his food! Let these things be left to those who cannot do the higher work to which ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... of pulleys. The external surface of the brush contains three channels in which the foot gear to be polished is successively placed. In the first of these the dust and mud are removed, in the second the blacking is spread on, and in the third ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 481, March 21, 1885 • Various
... began to prevail some seven years ago in Paris, had spread since we left the French capital. There it began, we remember, with certain members of the medical profession, who had learned to give calomel in English doses. The public next lauded Warren's blacking—Cirage national de Warren—and then proceeded to eat raw crumpets as an English article of luncheon. But things had gone farther since that time than we were prepared to expect. At the table d'hote of to-day, we found every body had something civil to say about English ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... except the oldest sister, who was at school, and Charles, went to live in the prison; and Charles was given work in a blacking-warehouse of which a relative of his mother's was manager. The sufferings which the boy endured at this time were intense. It was not only that the work was sordid, monotonous, uncongenial; it was not only that his pride was outraged; ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... inserted in a note,[29-*] to give the reader a notion of the barbarous manners of the 16th century, with the addition of the arts of the confectioner, the brewer, the baker, the distiller, the gardener, the clear-starcher, and the perfumer, and how to make pickles, puff paste, butter, blacking, &c. together with my Lady Bountiful's sovereign remedy for an inward bruise, and other ever-failing nostrums,—Dr. Killemquick's wonder-working essence, and fallible elixir, which cures all manner of incurable maladies directly minute, Mrs. Notable's ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... and a half, good measure, from the first tree on the Mill Dam Road, lies the little village (with no refreshments in it but five oranges and a bottle of blacking) of Newton Centre. Here Massachusetts Jemmy and The Gasper had established the turning-point. The road comprehended every variety of inconvenience to test the mettle of the men, and nearly the whole of it ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... work. I've got the strength, though I shan't have it long at this rate. I only want a job. This is the third night running that I've walked the streets all night; the only money I get is by minding blacking-boys' boxes while they go into Lockhart's for their dinner. I got a penny yesterday at it, and twopence for carrying a parcel, and to-day I've had a penny. Bought a ha'porth of bread and a ha'penny mug ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... Herbert, "I needn't starve. If I can't get anything better to do, I can buy a box of blacking and a brush, and set up in business ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... getting ready. All the good things are cooked, waiting till night, when Mac will be home. We have three splendid baked apples, and three eggs roasted in the ashes, but we have only two pies. We could only find two blacking-box lids, and as these are our pie-pans, we have only two pies. We washed and scoured the black all off, and they looked as nice as Sophia's tins, which she will never let us touch at home. Our biscuits are not as nice quite as hers, it was so hard to ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... appear to the naked eye as a single band of scintillating light. This and other magnified photographs were obtained by fastening the lens of a discarded bicycle lantern in a cone of paper blackened on the inside with shoe-blacking. With this crude apparatus placed in front of the lens of the camera, the evanescent beauties of these most delicate ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... patrol had a box of blacking and a brush, and two scouts were polishing their shoes. The Eagles had a needle and thread, and one scout, under the watchful eye of his patrol leader, ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... the Italians seemed to preempt was the boot-blacking business. It may seem odd to dignify so menial an employment as a business but there is many a head of such an establishment who could show a fatter bank account than two-thirds of his clients. The next time you go into a little nook containing say fifteen chairs, figure out for yourself ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... little soap and water; but, after all, he knew best; it might have given him cold: and besides, his hair was very thick and long behind, and might perhaps conceal anything that was unsightly. Then Mr. Titmouse drew from underneath the bed a bottle of "incomparable blacking," and a couple of brushes; with great labor and skill polishing his boots up to a wonderful degree of brilliancy. Having replaced his blacking implements under the bed and washed his hands, he devoted a few moments to boiling about three tea-spoonfuls of coffee, (as ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... of course, tastes differ," Miss Grace Mainwaring said. "I don't think a woman should have blacking-brushes instead of eyebrows. But it's ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... to the biped-machine who drives a motor-car best,—or to the fortunate soap-boiler who dines with a king! Poetry is understood to be the useful rhyme which announces the virtues of pills and boot- blacking! Mark you, Sergius!—my latest volume was 'graciously accepted by the King'! Do you ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... for a display of liquors, was a confused mingling of empty or half-filled decanters, cigar-boxes, lemons and lemon-peel, old newspapers, glasses, a broken pitcher, a hat, a soiled vest, and a pair of blacking brushes, with other incongruous things, not now remembered. The air of the room was loaded ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... understand ourselves, and not to the twentieth, which, though so insignificant in reality, is spread all over the other nineteen, making them appear quite different from what they really are, as the blacking does a boot, or the veneer a table. It is on the nineteen rough serviceable savage portions that we fall back on emergencies, not on the polished but unsubstantial twentieth. Civilization should wipe away our tears, and yet we weep and cannot be comforted. ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... in spite of the metaphorists, to avoid the breath of the deadly upas tree; one may, by great good fortune, succeed in blacking the eye of the basilisk; one might even dodge the attentions of Cerberus and Argus, but no man, alive or dead, can escape the gaze ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... him," said the Prince ruefully. "But," with a fine smile, "I don't think he'll go. He never does. See my sign up there?" He pointed to the rocks near the grotto. "I did it with Hugo's shoe blacking." ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... despondently. In that house there was no messenger to be procured. The landlady was elderly, and kept no servant—employing only a mysterious female of the charwoman species, who came at daybreak, dyed herself to the elbows with blacking or blacklead before breakfast, and so remained till the afternoon, when she departed to "do for" a husband and children—the husband and children passing all the earlier part of the day in a ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... plates, extending from the back of the head to the snout. The lower edges of these plates of whalebone are split into thousands of hairs like bristles, so that the inside roof of a whale's mouth resembles an enormous blacking brush! The object of this curious arrangement is to enable the whale to catch the little shrimps and small sea-blubbers, called "medusa;", on which it feeds. I have spoken before of these last as being the little creatures that gave out such a beautiful pale-blue ...
— Fighting the Whales • R. M. Ballantyne
... blasphemies in the shoemaker's book as there are lines. It smells of shoemaker's wax and filthy blacking. May this intolerable stench be ...
— Spiritual Reformers in the 16th & 17th Centuries • Rufus M. Jones
... sailors—they were the chaps, they did a lot of good in the Crimea. Soames shifted the ground of consolation. Winifred had heard from Val that there had been a 'rag' and a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day at Oxford, and that he had escaped detection by blacking his face. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... did. He offered me the chance of blacking his boots every day for a week, if I'd lend him the money; but I had to resign the glorious privilege, not havin' been to the bank this mornin' to ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... warbler. The most interesting and ugliest negro now in camp, is known as Simon Bolivar Buckner. He is an animal that has been worth in his day eighteen hundred dollars, an estray from the estate of General S. B. Buckner. He manages, by blacking boots and baking leather pies, to make money. He deluded me into buying a second pie from him one day, by assuring me, "on honah, sah, dat de las pie was better'n de fus', case he hab strawberries in him." True, the pie had "strawberries in him," but not enough to pay one for chewing ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... miscellaneous store, called a green-grocer's; although the stock comprised, besides a respectable skew of cabbages, carrots, lettuces, and other things in season, a barrel of small beer, a side of bacon, a few red herrings, a black looking can of 'new milk,' and those less perishable articles, Warren's blacking, and Flanders' bricks; while the window was graced with a few samples of common confectionary, celebrated under the sweet names of ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... will recall the dismal passage in the account given by Dickens to his friend, and his agonising experience when he was employed at the blacking factory. Many at the time thought that this painful episode might have been spared the reader, but the uncompromising biographer would not sacrifice it. On the whole, he was right, as the trial had an important influence on ...
— Pickwickian Studies • Percy Fitzgerald
... Brandon's serious look was now really genuine, as if he was afraid the experiment might be repeated on himself. "Johnnie, my boy, shake hands, I forgive you this once. And you may pass the bottle." Johnnie, who knew himself to be the real offender, made haste to obey. "It's not blacking, of course," continued John, looking at the ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... but this morning I was with him as he was dressing, and I let a bottle of blacking fall over his new dress, and he flew at me sword in hand, so that I was obliged to make my escape. That is the reason I could not ask him for a ticket. He wanted to ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... doll's house parlour. "Six foot two, if he's an inch!" I said to myself, longing to play David to his Goliath. "Big, rich, common brute!" I thought. "You snatch our mountain out of our mouths, and then you send for us as if we were servants—men whose boots you ought to be blacking!" I was vindictive. I stared him straight between the eyes—where a stone from David's sling would have fitted ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Aubrey, in contemptuous amusement. "Excellent young men who make innocent love in rose-gardens, never say 'damn.' And in those days, dear boy, we did not use shoe-blacking. Pray calm yourself, and sit down. You are upsetting the internal arrangements of your Infant. If you swing a baby violently about, it makes it sick. Any old Gamp ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... him? In those days he lived in the clerk's house, and was to have everything in the house, to be at free quarters, as the saying is; but he was still, so to speak, a fine young gentleman. He wanted to have his boots cleaned with patent blacking, and the clerk could only afford ordinary grease; and upon that point they split—one spoke of stinginess, the other of vanity, and the blacking became the black cause of enmity between them, and at last ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... counting out the proper number of shillings into Cyril's hand, 'not so very far down on the left from the Circus. There's big pillars outside, something like Carter's seed place in Holborn, as used to be Day and Martin's blacking when I was a gell. And something like Euston Station, ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... Fashion." Lord John Russell's "Don Carlos." Montgomery's "Satan" (very good as a devil). "Journal of Civilization." Any of F. Chorley's writings, Robins' advertisements, or poetry relating to Warren's Jet Blacking. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... recollect what you are saying. I would not, for the custom of his Majesty's Lord High Admiral, have any discouraging words be uttered in my house against the reputation of any virtuous and fair-dealing slavers! The Lord protect me from blacking the character of any ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... BLACKING for shoes is made of four ounces of ivory black, three ounces of the coarsest sugar, a table-spoonful of sweet oil, and a pint of small beer, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... some bombardment, but her eyes were steadfast. She never refused a duty, nor failed in a charge. Every ounce of her was devoted to the work of the moment and to her own improvement for the future. She gave herself to every duty as it arose—boot-blacking, scrubbing, or scullery work—as readily ...
— The Angel Adjutant of "Twice Born Men" • Minnie L. Carpenter
... offer, not so much because he thought the blacking would last, as for the opportunity of questioning the free and independent young citizen who was doing, what he hoped to do, that is, making a ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... awake that night I had serious thoughts of making off there and then. If I had only had my boots, I think I might have done so; but they were in the blacking-room; and my desperation drew the line at walking off in my ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed
... all duly prepared, I'd start my candidate, with a heavy bag filled with its usual contents of, let us say, a large box of cigars, a set of fire-irons, twenty pots of preserved meats, a case of stuffed birds, four cricket-balls, and a photograph machine, some blue-books, and a dozen of blacking. I'd start him with this, saying simply, "Vienna, calling at Stuttgart and Turin;" not a word more; and then I'd watch my man—how he'd cross the Channel—how he'd cajole Moossoo—and whether he'd make straight ...
— Cornelius O'Dowd Upon Men And Women And Other Things In General - Originally Published In Blackwood's Magazine - 1864 • Charles Lever
... reduced on some to the amount of one hundred per cent. The articles enumerated in the resolution were agates, or cornelians; ale and beer; almonds; amber (manufactures of); arrowroot; band-string twist; bailey, pearled; bast-ropes; twines, and strands; beads: coral; crystal; jet; beer or mum; blacking; brass manufactures; brass (powder of); brocade of gold or silver; bronze (manufactures of); bronze-powder; buck-wheat: butter; buttons; candles; canes; carriages of all sorts; casks; cassiva-powder; catlings; cheese; china or porcelain; cider; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... friends." In another part he mentions having heard of a bear of this species who delighted in cherry brandy, "and on one occasion, having been indulged with an entire bottle of this insinuating beverage, got so completely intoxicated that it stole a bottle of blacking, and drank off the contents under the impression that they were some more of its favourite liquor. The owner of the bear told me that he saw it suffering from this strange mixture, and evidently with, as may easily ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... cleaned his boots, putting them on hurriedly.) They're very good. (Wipes his brow, drawing hand across leaving mark of blacking.) ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... tired, shabby men all jumped up and ran forward to the hill-crest, so as to be ready for the attack; which, however, did not come. As soon as the sun rose the Spaniards again opened upon us with artillery. A shell burst between Dave Goodrich and myself, blacking us with powder, and killing and wounding several of the ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... his star. He wore it secretly at first, but was moved at length to display it to a few chosen friends; not wisely chosen, it would appear, for now there were mockers of Billy among the irreverent of the town. As he sat aloft on his boot-blacking throne, waiting for crime to be done among us, conning meantime one of those romances in which his heroes did rare deeds, he would be subjected to intrusion. Some coarse town humorist would leer upon him from the doorway—a leer of furtive, devilish ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... Droz and Lepany had taken a fresh turn, and attracted a little circle of listeners, among whom I observed an eccentric-looking young man with a club-foot, an enormously long neck, and a head of short, stiff, dusty hair, like the bristles of a blacking-brush. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... the side kitchen, singing loudly as she worked. Mary was on her knees, blacking the stove and scolding violently about the young man who was coming out from town that night. The young man had committed the fatal error of laughing at Mary's ceaseless babble and ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... one-half the big words addressed to him, but they had the desired effect, and he waited patiently until his turn came to be shaved. He was a dark-complexioned seafaring man, and had evidently just returned from a long sea voyage, as the beard on his chin was more like the bristles on a blacking-brush, and the operation of removing them more like mowing than shaving. When completed, the barber held out his hand for payment. The usual charge must have been a penny, for that was the coin he placed in the barber's hand. But it was now the barber's turn. Drawing himself ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... strong drink. Some years since, before I became a teetotaller I kept spirits about the house, and I had a servant who was much addicted to strong drink. He used to say that he could not make my boots shine, without mixing the blacking with whiskey. So to satisfy myself that the whiskey was put in the blacking, one morning I made him bring the dish in which he kept the blacking, and poured in the whiskey myself. And now, sir, what do you think?" "Why, I s'pose your boots shined better than before," replied the white hat. ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... and Browning were being educated for the life of literature, and shielded most tenderly from the hardships of the world, Dickens, a poor, obscure, and suffering child, was helping to support a shiftless family by pasting labels on blacking bottles, sleeping under a counter like a homeless cat, and once a week timidly approaching the big prison where his father was confined for debt. In 1836 his Pickwick was published, and life was changed as if a magician had waved his wand over him. While the two great poets ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... parent: "Have you said anything to mother about this? You know when you went into the patent wash-board concern with Niblo and grandpap, you never told mother and when you got took in with Uncle Thomas on the patent shoe blacking, you said you would never enter into anything outside your business without asking mother's advice. And now you're dickering with this man Palmer about a show, something you know nothing about. ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... Gardenia, with its strongly scented blossom and evergreen leaves, made a capital hedge. Great bushes of the Hybiscus, scarlet and buff, glowed in the sun—they were called shoe-flowers, for they were used instead of blacking to polish our shoes. The pink one-hundred-leaved rose grew freely, and blossomed all the year round. Shrubs of the golden Allamander were a great temptation to the cows, if they strayed into the garden. The Plumbago was one of ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... sketch of Colney's, in the which Hengist and Horsa, our fishy Saxon originals, in modern garb of liveryman and gaitered squire, flat-headed, paunchy, assiduously servile, are shown blacking Ben-Israel's boots and grooming the princely stud of the Jew, had come so near to Victor Radnor's apprehensions of a possible, if not an impending, consummation, that the ghastly vision of the Jew Dominant ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... new supply of clear rain water, in which we had a grand rinsing. It was surprising to see how much soap and fresh water did for the complexions of many of us; how much of what we supposed to be tan and sea-blacking we got rid of. The next day, the sun rising clear, the ship was covered, fore and aft, with clothes of all ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... urchins flattened their noses against the panes, fascinated by this monster of a boot, to see it again in dreams on the feet of horrid giants. This melancholy collection was flanked by odd bottles of polish and blacking, and cards of bootlaces of such unusual strength that elephants were shown vainly trying ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... himself in the chair reserved for paying clients—that is to say, one which did not have the two front legs sawed off an inch or so in order to make lingering uncomfortable. "A plain, unvarnished tale. Our client is one who makes an honest living by blacking shoes near the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. He is one of several hundred original ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... abolish *advertir, to warn alegar, to allege al reves, on the wrong side barnices, varnishes barrica, cask batista de algodon, cambric baul, trunk betunes, blacking bicicleta, bicycle botines, boots bramante, twine bufandas, mufflers buje, hub cerradura, lock chanclos, goloshes cintos de seda, silk sashes cinturones de cuero, leather belts colchas de plumon, ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... sleeves of an old brown jacket. He wore a grey flannel shirt and an old bit of black ribbon done up in a bow by way of a tie; his slouch hat, once black, was now green with age, and his boots were innocent of blacking. But my eyes were dazzled by a heavy gold watch chain across his waistcoat and I thought him the most ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... up a box with half a knifeboard for a lid, and my bottle o' blacking, my brushes, and a leather or two and the rouge for my plate, I daresay I ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... and the flatteries uttered. Eternity will estimate things at their proper value, and no other. She will not even seek for the newspaper praise of Walter Scott. She will not look for Byron's immortality in the company of Warren's blacking, Prince's kalydor, and Atkinson's bear's grease. She looks for it in his own merit, and her impartial judgment will be his ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... blacking your shoes the other day. She was making an awful mess of it and he tried to take them from her. She gave him a real vicious whack with the brush. What she said was actually comical: 'He's mine; if I want to take the dirt from his shoes, I can. He shan't walk ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... all right," he said. "What you took to be blood, ROPES, was blacking off your razor. You really ought not to strop them on your boot. I'll walk round to your shop with you. I want my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... exceedingly tall man, since he could not have measured less than six feet three inches, and was about 24 years of age. He was painted with red ochre, and his body shone as if he had been polished with Warren's best blacking. His companion was older and of shorter stature. We soon got on good terms with them, and I made a present of a knife to each. They told us, as intelligibly as it was possible for them to do, that we were going away ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... day's menus together. Though they began with propriety, Carol sitting by the kitchen table and Bea at the sink or blacking the stove, the conference was likely to end with both of them by the table, while Bea gurgled over the ice-man's attempt to kiss her, or Carol admitted, "Everybody knows that the doctor is lots more clever than Dr. McGanum." When Carol came in ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... and fish at dinner were excellent; we hardly knew which was best. A peasant boy brought us a bundle of sticks for our fire. The sun became exceedingly hot. Esmeralda and myself went and sat in some shade near our tents." "Noah stood in the shade blacking his boots, and observed to Esmeralda, 'I shall not help my wife as Mr. Petalengro does you.' 'Well,' said Esmeralda, 'what is a wife for?' 'For!' retorted Noah, sharply, giving his boot an extra brush, 'why, to ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... upstairs, and perceived a beam of light through the crevices of the door, and in a moment more the door opened and in came two loutish farming lads whom I had observed below, one of them bearing a rushlight stuck into an old blacking-bottle. Without saying a word they flung off part of their clothes, and one of them having blown out the rushlight, they both tumbled into bed, and in a moment were snoring most sonorously. "I am in a short bed," said ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... he had advertised himself as having "no incumbrance," was by no means an ease-taking man. He united in his august person the duties of coachman, butler, waiter, useful man, and body-servant to Mr. Manning. Seeing him at early dawn, blacking his employer's boots, or, later, attending to the lighter duties of the coachhouse (he had a stable-boy to help him), one could never imagine the grandeur of that same useful individual when dressed ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... and many other famous English books. This was in Chatham. The family next removed to London, where the father was thrown into prison for debt. The little boy, weakly and sensitive, was now sent to work in a blacking manufactory at six shillings a-week, his duty being to cover the blacking-pots with paper. "No words can express," he says, "the secret agony of my soul, as I compared these my everyday associates with those of my happier childhood, and felt my early hopes of growing up ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... had not forgotten Aunt Nancy, though I am sure Jessica had. Her cabin, however, while on the same deck as our own, was at the other end of the ship, and I had grave doubts of my ability to cover safely the distance between. Finally I attempted it, and, aside from the slight incidents of blacking one eye in an unexpected diversion to the rail, and subsequently being hurled violently against the back of an axe nailed to the wall, I made the passage in safety. Aunt Nancy was not in her cabin, but a hollow groan ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... piece of sponge and rub dry. The best thing to rub dry with is the palm of the hand. When the kid shows symptoms of cracking, rub in a few drops of sweet oil. The soles and heels should be polished with common blacking. ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... smart for hunting, or even hacking in the Row, the compromise I advocate will be found to answer all requirements. In ordering a pair of riding boots we should go to a good maker and have them of patent leather, which is smarter and cleaner than blacking leather. For wear in tropical countries, I found that boots which have the foot part of patent leather and the leg of morocco, with a thin leather lining to stiffen and keep the leg part in place, are cooler and more comfortable than any other kind. ...
— The Horsewoman - A Practical Guide to Side-Saddle Riding, 2nd. Ed. • Alice M. Hayes
... champagne bottles, and others into beer bottles, which made a little difference between them. In the world it often happens that a beer bottle may contain the most precious wine, and a champagne bottle be filled with blacking, but even in decay it may always be seen whether a man has been well born. Nobility remains noble, as a champagne bottle remains the same, even with blacking in its interior. When the bottles were packed ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... of a mechanical nature; he was an extraordinary arithmetician, he was a very skilful chemist, and kept a laboratory at his lodgings—he mended his own clothes and linen with incomparable neatness. Philip suspected him of blacking his own shoes, but that was prejudice. Once he found Morton sketching horses' heads—pour se desennuyer; and he made some short criticisms on the drawings, which showed him well acquainted with the art. Philip, surprised, sought to draw him ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... regiment of brothers and sisters from the same furnace, some of which, however, were blown into champagne bottles, others into ale bottles; and that made a difference, since out in the world an ale bottle may contain the costly LACRYMAE CHRISTI, and a champagne bottle may be filled with blacking; but what they were born to every one can see by their shape, so that noble remains noble even with blacking ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... pardon me, as I THOUGHT you did, when I fell down in a fit in your chambers"; and I qualified my words in a great flutter and tremble; I did not care to offend the man—I did not DARE to offend the man. I thought once or twice of jumping into a cab, and flying; of taking refuge in Day and Martin's Blacking Warehouse; of speaking to a policeman, but not one would come. I was this man's slave. I followed him like his dog. I COULD not get away from him. So, you see, I went on meanly conversing with him, and affecting a simpering confidence. I remember, when I was a little ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... myself. My hands were brown and smeared and bruised. My uniform, once white, was streaked and stained with tar. I wore shoes innocent of blacking and made after a pattern much admired among navvies. I had an individual ache in every bone of my body, and I was hungry and was compelled to look forward to a dinner of odorous salt-horse, hard bread, and "ennuied" coffee, but I was happy—I had to admit that. Perhaps it was ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... last night, to look for a piece of mine that had not been taken to my room, and I found the porter there, with his wrist bound up. He said he had strained it in handling a lady's Saratoga—he said a Saratoga was a large trunk—and I begged him to let me relieve him at the boots he was blacking. He refused at first, but I insisted upon trying my hand at a pair, and then he let me go on with the men's boots; he said he could varnish the ladies' without hurting his wrist. It needed less skill than I supposed, ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... Dodge replied distinctly. "I am of the opinion, sir, that it must have come from the blacking on one of my shoes as I put it on ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... benefit the race of man, And in particular that dark variety, Which some suppose inferior—as in vermin The sable is to ermine, As smut to flour, as coal to alabaster, As crows to swans, as soot to driven snow, As blacking, or as ink, to "milk below," Or yet a better simile to show, As ragman's dolls ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... are Miss Rosa and I—no, I am afraid of her, though I DO know the story about the French usher in 1830—but all the rest tremble before the woman, from the Doctor down to poor Francis the knife-boy, whom she bullies into his miserable blacking-hole. ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray
... imbibed your opinions with regard to the Dutch, for he began his military career by blacking the eyes of a gentleman of that nation, who, as ill-luck will have it, ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... shreds of skin flaking away much as a snake's skin sheds in August. Otherwise he was dressed, like a countless multitude of other men who walk the streets of every city in North America, in a conventional sack suit, and shoes that still bore traces of blacking. The paddlers were stripped to thin cotton shirts and worn overalls. The only concession their passenger had made to the heat was the removal of his laundered collar. Apparently his dignity did not permit him to lay aside his coat and vest. As ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... lavatory, complete in all its appointments, except, perhaps, that the long towel on the roller has been already this evening used by too many hands. The smell of blacking, too, indicates the wearer's pleasure in his cleaned and polished boots. In that little hall, which seats about three hundred, a lecture is being given to young men, on the care of the body, by Dr.——. This is one of six which are ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... things returned, and lent things sent after, and every tool and article belonging to the farm was returned to its own place at exactly such an hour every Saturday afternoon, and an hour before sundown every item of preparation, even to the blacking of his Sunday shoes and the brushing of his Sunday coat, was entirely concluded; and at the going down of the sun, the stillness of the Sabbath seemed to settle down over ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with the abundance of its stock; a perfectly voracious little shop, with a maw as accommodating and full as any shark's. Cheese, butter, firewood, soap, pickles, matches, bacon, table-beer, peg-tops, sweetmeats, boys' kites, bird-seed, cold ham, birch brooms, hearth- stones, salt, vinegar, blacking, red-herrings, stationery, lard, mushroom-ketchup, staylaces, loaves of bread, shuttlecocks, eggs, and slate pencil; everything was fish that came to the net of this greedy little shop, and all articles were in its net. How many other kinds of petty ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... temperament and which always continued to be the second moving force of his life. When he was ten years old his father was imprisoned for debt (like Micawber, in the Marshalsea prison), and he was put to work in the cellar of a London shoe-blacking factory. On his proud and sensitive disposition this humiliation, though it lasted only a few months, inflicted a wound which never thoroughly healed; years after he was famous he would cross the street to avoid the smell ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... remains of a meal, they had a fresh table-cloth and hot food. The buckets are all polished oak, with polished brass bands; the kitchen utensils are bright as rubbing can make them; and, more wonderful still, the girls black their boots. Blacking usually is an unused luxury, and frequently is not kept in houses. My boots have only been blacked once during the ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... had found the tie, Shirley had managed to upset the shoe blacking on her white shoes and had to be hastily refitted with tan socks and oxfords. Rosemary, flying down the hall with a new pair of shoelaces for her sister, brushed past Doctor Hugh on his way to the ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... Dick. I don't half the time make enough to live on. If it wasn't for the Newsboys' Lodgin' House, I don't know what I'd do. I need a new brush and box of blacking, but I aint got money ...
— Fame and Fortune - or, The Progress of Richard Hunter • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... writing German, and gained a great amount of general information. This change did not escape Mr. Ehrenthal, who mentioned it in his family circle much as a farmer would the promising points of a young bullock; and, at the end of the quarter, announced of his own accord to Veitel that the shoe-blacking and kitchen dinner were to cease, and that he was prepared to give him a place in his office, and a small salary besides. Veitel received the long-desired intelligence with great self-command, and returned his humble thanks, adding, "I have still one very, very great favor to ask. May I have ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... he bought a box, three brushes, and some blacking. He then went to the corner of the street, and said to every one whose boots did not look nice, "Black ...
— McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey |
