"Bootblack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... clergy as French citizens? How far off are we from a revival of Danton's beautiful doctrine that, in order to consummate the regeneration of society, all conditions imposed upon the eligibility of citizens to act as judges ought to be immediately abolished, so that a tinker, or a butcher, or a bootblack, or a chiffonnier might be made a French magistrate just as well as a trained student of the laws? As you know, one of the first things Danton, as Minister of Justice, did was to carry through the Convention his famous decree making ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... orphan is commonly sent to an asylum, where by careful cultivation of its rudimentary sense of locality it is taught to know its place. It is then instructed in the arts of dependence and servitude and eventually turned loose to prey upon the world as a bootblack or scullery maid. ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... organgrinder, an unknown gentleman in the Gaiety Theatre, Benjamin Dollard, Simon Dedalus, Andrew (Pisser) Burke, Joseph Cuffe, Wisdom Hely, Alderman John Hooper, Dr Francis Brady, Father Sebastian of Mount Argus, a bootblack at the General Post Office, Hugh E. (Blazes) Boylan and so each and so on to ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... operation of the railroads, conservation of food and fuel, to the knitting of a pair of socks and the sale of a thrift stamp, what shall be said of the success or failure of our schools? Every man, woman, and child in this gigantic work, from President Wilson down to the colored bootblack who saved his nickels to buy a stamp, or to the little girl who voluntarily went without her sugar, has been a product of the schools. Thru the instruction, the discipline, and the training given in those schools, they became the men and women who could rise ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd
... given again. He had been, as he claimed, "a cruel uncle's ward" in his early orphan-hood, and while yet almost a child he had run away from home, to fulfil his heart's desire of becoming a clog-dancer in a troupe of negro minstrels. But it was first his fate to be cabin-boy and bootblack on a lake steamboat, and meet with many squalid adventures, scarcely to be matched outside of a Spanish picaresque novel. When he did become a dancer (and even a danseuse) of the sort he aspired to be, the ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... should have some sort of an occupation for a few hours a day during the long summer vacation. The child on the farm has no lack of opportunity, but for the boy of the city streets there is little that is practicable, outside of selling papers or serving as messenger boy or bootblack; for the girl there is little but housework or department-store service. Both need steady employment out of doors, and he who devises a method by which boys and girls can be taught such an occupation as gardening on ...
— Society - Its Origin and Development • Henry Kalloch Rowe
... Yet here in California, my own dear California, a newspaper had dared print my picture without my consent, had thrown its ugly light on the sweet story of my love serving it up in yellow paragraphs for the benefit of the bootblack, the butcher, the waiter in cheap restaurants. What ...
— Cupid's Understudy • Edward Salisbury Field
... future. It may seem that, for an American statesman, he had an unusual grasp of European politics. This is easily explained by the fact that he had been talking with the bootblack ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... cousin started out with a determination altogether different. He believed with Lord Brougham, that if he were a bootblack he would strive to be the best bootblack in England. He began in a store as a window-cleaner, and washed windows so well that they sparkled like diamonds under the sun. As a clerk, no customer was too insignificant to be greeted with a smile or pleasant word; no task was too great ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... along the street the other day I saw on the window of a bootblack's parlour the words, ...
— Fifty-Two Story Talks To Boys And Girls • Howard J. Chidley
... live in that half-civilized land of equality, where the future President may be buttoned up in the jacket of my bootblack. I am an out-and-out aristocrat and would rather be poor and be jostled by nobility than be rich and brush against Tom, Dick and Harry and have to bow ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... and growing so that a lock of it often falls down the middle of my forehead is a coincidence. The malicious and insinuating story that I used to go under another name arose, no doubt, from my having been a bootblack in my early days, and having let my customers shorten my name into Matt Black. But, as soon as I graduated from manual labor, I resumed my rightful name and have borne it—I think I may say without vanity—in honor ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... Tom the Bootblack. He was not at all ashamed of his humble calling, though always on the lookout to better himself. The lad started for Cincinnati to look up his heritage. Mr. Grey, the uncle, did not hesitate to employ a ruffian to kill the lad. The plan failed, and ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... draughts of water; he forgot all his niceties of conduct; he sat in holy rapture with the toy between his paws, took it to bed with him, ate it in the night, and searched for it so longingly next day that I had to go out and buy him the man with the scythe. After that we had everything of note, the bootblack boy, the toper with bottle, the woolly rabbit that squeaks when you hold it in your mouth; they all vanished as inexplicably as the lady, but I dared not tell him my suspicions, for he suspected also and his gentle heart would have mourned had I ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... young bootblack whose history was afterward given in a volume which is probably familiar to many of my readers. At this time he was only a bootblack, and had not yet begun to feel the spur of that ambition which led to ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... present moment, in Honolulu, there is a bootblack. He is an American negro. Mr. McVeigh told me about him. Long ago, before the bacteriological tests, he was sent to Molokai as a leper. As a ward of the state he developed a superlative degree of ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... I am not so sure of that; but his position in life is very humble. He is probably a bootblack; a singular person to select for the friend of a ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... men are finding ourselves in that we are finding true sympathy with our brother man. We have everything in common. We have the hardship of the trench, and the nearness of death. The man of title, the Bachelor of Arts, the bootblack, the lumberjack and the millionaire's son meet on common ground. We wear the same uniform, we think the same thoughts, we do not remember what we were, we only know what we are—soldiers fighting in ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... "Kid's" sponge, sponge-holder, pal, Mentor and Grand Vizier, drew him out to the bootblack stand at the saloon corner where all the official and important matters of the Small Hours Social Club were settled. As Tony polished the light tan shoes of the club's President and Secretary for the fifth time that day, Burke spake words ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... your money where you have your interest. That man who, in building a mission church in a rough, uncouth neighborhood, called on the hoodlums in the vicinity to make a contribution of a brick apiece for the new church, was a wise man. Every bootblack, every newsboy, every garbage gatherer in it who put a brick in that church had an interest in it. It was "Our Church," and at once the interest of the neighborhood was secured for this mission church, as it could have been done ...
— The American Missionary, Volume 42, No. 12, December, 1888 • Various
... and thronging to the shores of America in search of opportunity and fortune." Every year they send back handsome sums to the expectant family. Business is an instinct with the Greek, and he has almost monopolized the ice cream, confectionery, and retail fruit business, the small florist shops and bootblack stands in scores of towns, and in every large city he is running successful restaurants. As a factory operative he is found in the cotton mills of New England, but he prefers merchandizing ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... all right. But if yer didn't have no pull I would advise yer to go back home. A feller widout a pull in New York can't do nuthin' nohow," and the bootblack gave an extra dash with his brush to emphasize ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield |
