"Scum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... came his two men in a queer snakelike procession of plopping buoys and wriggling bodies. Ahead of them the seaweed stretched, apparently all the way to the schooner. As they worked their way through the scum of many seas, the noon sun broiled their backs into thin water blisters, and stewed saline odors out of the clammy ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... "go to your homes while ye may. Ignorant, and greatly daring that ye are, the bandar-log, or such thievish scum among ye, drive ye with idle words and chatterings even to the brink of death. So far have ye come, but ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... who are here today are gone to-morrow, and their places in society filled up by others who ten years back had no prospect of ever being admitted. All is transition, the waves follow one another to the far west, the froth and scum, boiling ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... moon as white and thin As an abalone shell hung under the boughs Of an oak, that is mocked by the vastness of sky between His boughs and the moon in this sky of afternoon. ... We walk to the water's edge and here he shows me Green scum, or stalks, or sedges, grasses, shrubs, That yield to trees beyond the levels, where The beech and oak have triumph; for along This gradual growth from algae, reeds and grasses, That builds the soil against ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... fact that presaged poor luck for our hunting—and the washes and stream-beds were bleached white. We came to two water-holes, tanks the Arizonians called them, and they were vile mud-holes with green scum on the water. The horses drank, but I would have had to be far gone from thirst before I would have slaked mine there. We faced west with the hot sun beating on us and the dust rising in clouds. No wonder that ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... and a taste for botany, which I had begun to contract with Doctor d'Ivernois, making my rambling more amusing, I went through the country herbalising, without being affected by the clamors of this scum of the earth, whose fury was still augmented by my calmness. What affected me most was, seeing families of my friends, or of persons who gave themselves that name, openly join the league of my persecutors; ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... until it was no longer passable. Huge bowlders lay jammed and crowded in clefts of the mountain before them. Penn remembered the spot. He had been there in spring, when down over the rocks, now covered with lichens and dry scum, poured an impetuous torrent. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... the gentlemen something of a sight more interesting that this," the newcomer continued. "They don't want to sit down and drink with the scum ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... per cent. of scums should be used. If in too great quantity, the raw juices will yield inferior results. During operations that follow, experiments are not yet sufficiently advanced to determine with certainty within what limits the refuse scum utilization process is to be recommended. We have great doubts as to the wisdom of introducing foreign elements, eliminated from other juices in a previous operation, into a juice ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... brought to keep them boiling, and during the process the sap, or syrup, is strained; lime or salaeratus is added, to neutralize the free acid; and the white of egg, isinglass or milk, to cause foreign substances to rise in a scum to the surface. When it has been sufficiently boiled, the syrup is poured into moulds or casks to harden.' The sugar with which the most pains have been taken is very light-colored, and I have seen it ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... finished locking her bag as if she hadn't noticed scum of the earth like us, and then she deliberately picked up a bunch of long white flowers that lay by the bag—lilies, I think you call them—and stood up, and looked right past me, as if she was struck with the landscape, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... crowd gathered about the fighting men and a second later the slum saloon in front of which they were battling, emptied its filthy scum into the street, all anxious to enjoy the combat. Some of the plingers amongst this riff-raff must have recognized their mate, and thinking that the trouble was merely a case of a street beggar insulting a citizen, ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... find better hunting-ground. We quenched our thirst with water from the pool, which I was rather surprised to find quite pure. These pools are, of course, sometimes fouled for a time by the movements of alligators and other tenants in the fine mud which settles at the bottom, but I never observed a scum of confervae or traces of oil revealing animal decomposition on the surface of these waters, nor was there ever any foul smell perceptible. The whole of this level land, instead of being covered with unwholesome swamps emitting malaria, forms in the dry season (and in the wet ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... from which the loaf proceeds. In several cases the tax amounts to more than one half of what you pay for the article itself; these taxes go in part to support sinecure placemen and pensioners; and the ruffians of the hired press call you the scum of society, and deny that you have any right to show your faces at any public meeting to petition for a reform, or for the ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... which is their serious and considered contribution to a great and difficult problem. Let us greet them with respect, however much we may differ from them. Let us look forward without fear. Believe me, below all the froth and scum of which we make so much, human nature is ...
— Sex And Common-Sense • A. Maude Royden
... beggar-endearments at me?' And yet she laughed at the long-forgotten word. 'Forty years ago that might have been said, and not without truth. Ay. thirty years ago. But it is the fault of this gadding up and down Hind that a king's widow must jostle all the scum of the land, and be made a mock ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... the English, Spanish, or French pirates were much better," said the mate, laughing. "Pirates are generally the scum of the ports they sail from; reckless, murderous ruffians. But I should say that of all pirates out in the East, the gentle, placid, mild-looking Chinaman makes the worst; for he thinks nothing of human life, his own or ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... last week. They all spend their days at the tango classes, from early morning till dark—mothers and daughters, grandmothers and demi-mondaines, Russian Grand Duchesses, Austrian Princesses—clasped in the arms of incredible scum from the Argentine, half-castes from Mexico, and farceurs from New York—decadent male things they would not receive in their ante-chambers ...
— The Price of Things • Elinor Glyn
... did not stop there. He conjured up a tempting vista of long and honored life under an empire that was now supreme. Even the scum of rebellion yet left on the calm surface was that day swept away, and naught remained but to enjoy the favors ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... Kiruha and Vassya filled the cauldron and fixed it over the fire. Styopka, with the notched spoon in his hand, took his place in the smoke by the cauldron, gazing dreamily into the water for the scum to rise. Panteley and Emelyan were sitting side by side in silence, brooding over something. Dymov was lying on his stomach, with his head propped on his fists, looking into the fire. . . . Styopka's shadow was dancing over him, so that his handsome face was at one minute covered with ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... pints of water, and, having warmed it, add half a teacupful of wine. Put into this mixture a quantity of red-hot iron; allow it to stand for five or six days, when there will be a scum on the top of the mixture, which should then be poured into a small teacup and placed near a fire. When it is warm, powdered gallnuts and iron filings should be added to it, and the whole should be warmed again. The liquid is then ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... aside, Reade added, "I'll admit, Mr. Bootleg, that I've behaved in a rather high-handed fashion with you. But I'm justified in doing it. You have been breaking the law of the state, moving through this camp and selling liquor. You represent the scum of the otherwise decent population of Alabama. If you think you've any redress in the courts, my name is Reade and you can hire a lawyer and get after me as hard and as fast ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... strongest party. So we feel some concern for the poor citizens of Rome when they meet together to compare their wants and grievances, till Coriolanus comes in and with blows and big words drives this set of 'poor rats', this rascal scum, to their homes and beggary before him. There is nothing heroical in a multitude of miserable rogues not wishing to be starved, or complaining that they are like to be so: but when a single man comes forward to brave their cries and to make them submit to the last indignities, ...
— Characters of Shakespeare's Plays • William Hazlitt
... pardon," said the knight, "there are some births purer than others." "For the great doom all your carcases are the same," said the imp, "everyone of you is defiled by the sin that took its origin in Adam." But, sir," continued he, "if your blood is aught better than another, the less scum will there be when shortly it will be bubbling through your body, and if there be more, we must examine you, part by part, through fire and through water." Thereupon, a devil in the shape of a fiery chariot receives him, and the other mockingly lifts him thereinto, and away he goes ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... elevation, or the spiritual conversion of the boozy scum of a European nation may not be advanced at the cost of the well-being of our own people. We protest most earnestly against that at once. It does not matter whether he has fixed his eye upon Rhodesia or the ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... help,— That is, any in particular,— The old ferry wash-tubs of the West, With some new-fashioned hoops, for a little test, And a few old pounders from—Kingdom Come, And nothing for suds but the "Nawth'n scum," Made these "gen'l'men" turn as white As a head o' hair in a single night! Cleaned their army completely out, (We're going to give that another wipe!) On the double-quick, by the shortest route,— Wrung their ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... ever Ki Ki was certain that Kapchack was really dead, he returned, and he has gathered to himself a crew of the most terrible ruffians you ever beheld. He has got about him all the scum of the earth; all the blackguards, villains, vermin, cut-throat scoundrels have rallied to his standard; as the old proverb says: 'Birds of a feather flock together'. He has taken possession of ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... enough of the piece until you can see no more bubbles. Leave the piece to be plated in the solution for about one-half hour, then take the article out and with a tooth brush and some pumice, clean the yellowish scum off, rinse in clear water and dry in sawdust. When thoroughly dry, take a cotton flannel rag and some polishing powder and polish the article. The article must have a fine polish before plating if it is desired to have a finely polished ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... suffered, what cold he endured, what bread he begged, what police station cells he passed nights in, what human scum he associated with, what thirst he quenched, and with what incredibly bad whiskey, are particulars not for this unobjectionable narrative, for do they not belong to low life? And who nowadays can tolerate low life in print unless it be redeemed by a rustic environment and a laboured exposition ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... authority; and, on hearing that the result of all the disorders and revolutions had been the elevation of Bibars Bendocdar to the throne of Saladin, he remarked, in homely oriental phrase, 'when the pot boils, the scum rises to the top.' Above all, Musteazem was a miser, and covetous to the last degree; and when it was explained to him by his grand vizier, whom the Templar had already bribed with a purse of gold, that the King of France was liberal in money matters, and was ready to pay handsomely for the ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... yelled with withering scorn. "Sons of pigs who root in the dung of this Foreign Devil's land, or men of the Dragon's blood? Are ye the scum of the Yangtze River or honourable descendants of the Hairy Rebels? Would ye avenge your brothers who have choked to death in the breath of the stink-pots that have been flung among us? Will ye let escape this horde of Foreign Devil enemies who have ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... into Lombardy, the Duke of Ferrara assisted them to cross the Po, and the Duke of Urbino made no effort to bar the passes of the Apennines. Losing one leader after the other, these ruffians, calling themselves an Imperial army, but being in reality the scum and offscourings of all nations, without any aim but plunder and ignorant of policy, reached Rome upon the 6th of May. They took the city by assault, and for nine months Clement, leaning from the battlements of Hadrian's ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... mile broad, and the heat is so great that there is no standing within a hundred yards of it? All the soldiers are there, and the magistrates and the guards, and all the rest of them, but all that can be done is to prevent the scum of the city from sacking and plundering. Scores of men have been scourged and some beheaded, but it is no easy matter to keep down the mob. There are parties of guards in every street. The whole of the Praetorians are under arms, but the terror and confusion is so great and spread over so wide ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... stirred it round and round and round, And he sniffed at the foaming froth; When I ups with his heels, and smothers his squeals In the scum ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... all the blessed day, acting the part of somebody else, till it takes me a quarter of an hour of my enfranchisement and restoration of my natural man to know myself again. For the moment, I'm froth, scum, horrid boiling hissing dew of the agony of transformation; I am; I'm that pig disgorging the spirit of ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... cause; and hinted that if the Castilian sovereigns did not suffer any crying injury from the Moors, it would be improper to do anything which might draw great damage upon the Christians—as if, when once the sword of the faith was drawn, it ought ever to be sheathed until this scum of heathendom were utterly destroyed or driven from the land. But this monarch," he continues, "was more kindly disposed toward the infidels than was honest and lawful in a Christian prince, and was ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... my former follies, and ignorant where to fly for shelter, I covered myself with some few rags that had been cast to me, and sat down before the house of a rich young man, who, like myself, seemed to be squandering his wealth on the scum of the earth. ...
— Eastern Tales by Many Story Tellers • Various
... on thy course uncheck'd, heroic WOOD! Regardless what the player's son may prate, Saint Stephens' fool, the Zany of Debate— Who nothing generous ever understood. London's twice Praetor! scorn the fool-born jest— The stage's scum, and refuse of the players— Stale topics against Magistrates and Mayors— City and Country both thy worth attest. Bid him leave off his shallow Eton wit, More fit to sooth the superficial ear Of drunken PITT, and that pickpocket Peer, When at their sottish ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... you must realize that he is the very scum of the earth, a toping man, a worthless, immoral man that hates ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... downe my Officers, breake my Decrees; For now a time is come, to mocke at Forme. Henry the fift is Crown'd: Vp Vanity, Downe Royall State: All you sage Counsailors, hence: And to the English Court, assemble now From eu'ry Region, Apes of Idlenesse. Now neighbor-Confines, purge you of your Scum: Haue you a Ruffian that will sweare? drinke? dance? Reuell the night? Rob? Murder? and commit The oldest sinnes, the newest kinde of wayes? Be happy, he will trouble you no more: England, shall double gill'd, ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... sequence of cause and effect. Surely this ferment is nothing new. It has been at work for centuries, and we are more conscious of it only because in this age of publicity, where the newspapers offer a rostrum to whoever has a grievance, or fancies that he has, the bubbles and scum thrown up by it are more noticeable on the surface than in those dumb ages when there was a cover of silence and suppression on the cauldron. Bernardo Navagero, speaking of the Provinces of Lower Austria in 1546, tells us that "in them there are five sorts of persons, Clergy, Barons, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... "Scum of the desert were they, my Messala, and garbage-eaters from the Jacob's Temple in Jerusalem. What had I to ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... the rivers' sides, are in effect thorough-shining, and appear marvellous rich; which, being tried to be no marcasite, are the true signs of rich minerals, but are no other than El madre del oro, as the Spaniards term them, which is the mother of gold, or, as it is said by others, the scum of gold. Of divers sorts of these many of my company brought also into England, every one taking the fairest for the best, which is not general. For mine own part, I did not countermand any man's desire or opinion, and I could have afforded them little if I should have ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... Santander presented. He had come to the surface again, and, with some difficulty, owing to the encumbrance of his under-shirt, clambered out upon the bank. But not as when he went under. Instead, with what appeared a green cloak over his shoulders, the scum of the stagnant water long collecting undisturbed. The hackney-driver—there was but one now, the other taken off by Duperon, who had hired him, their doctor too—joined with Rock in his laughter, while ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... London streets ferment in full activity, While everything around was calm and still, Except the creak of wheels, which on their pivot he Heard,—and that bee-like, bubbling, busy hum Of cities, that boil over with their scum:— ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... to sleep in importance was the fortnightly bath. Sometimes we cleansed ourselves, as best we could, in muddy little duck ponds, populous with frogs and green with scum; but oh, the joy when our march ended at a military bathhouse! The Government had provided these whenever possible, and for several weeks we were within marching distance of one. There we received a fresh change of underclothing, and our uniforms were fumigated while we ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... of the ties of consanguinity when it is rumored that he has come into a large estate. Then came the Rebellion, and, presto! a flaw in our titles was discovered, the plate we were promised at the family table is flung at our head, and we were again the scum of creation, intolerably vulgar, at once cowardly and overbearing,—no relations of theirs, after all, but a dreggy hybrid of the basest bloods of Europe. Panurge was not quicker to call Friar John his former friend. I cannot help thinking ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... rear may be entirely empty in dry seasons; and after heavy rains may contain a depth of 2 feet. This water now has a greasy looking scum ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... thicker, but seemed to remain at a stand-still. In the early part of the morning it was almost strong enough to bear them; but during the day the sun melted it, until it was little better than a scum over the surface ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... flaws, and appeals, to protract the question from term to term, and from court to court. It would, as Mr. Tyrrel argued, be the disgrace of a civilized country, if a gentleman, when insolently attacked in law by the scum of the earth, could not convert the cause into a question of the longest purse, and stick in the skirts of his adversary till he had ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... alive, and how to prevent the water from growing cloudy and thick. The main rule is to secure sunlight,—hot enough to raise the water to a temperature above that of the outer air,— to remove all dirt and floating scum, and to furnish the tank on every cloudy day with a supply of air and with motion by means of a syringe. The creatures should never be fed in warm weather with any animal substance, its decay being certain to corrupt the water. A little meal or a few crumbs ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... half a dozen complaints. His policy has failed. It was the finest policy ever tried in Russia. He is the finest Czar they have ever had. He gave them trial by jury; he abolished corporal punishment. Fools! they are the scum of this ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... envoys who were attending the marriage ceremony, were somewhat out of countenance. 'Sire,' said one of the most distinguished guests, turning to the king, 'can you contemplate the breaking of your solemn pledge upon the word of a toad like that? This scum of the marshes has the audacity to come and lie to the entire Court, just for the gratification of ...
— Old-Time Stories • Charles Perrault
... horses or mules, or double that number of oxen. At times over 100 wagons, with double that number of teamsters, are in Cheyenne at once. A short time ago it was a perfect pandemonium, mainly inhabited by rowdies and desperadoes, the scum of advancing civilization; and murders, stabbings, shooting, and pistol affrays were at times events of almost hourly occurrence in its drinking dens. But in the West, when things reach their worst, a sharp and sure remedy is provided. Those settlers ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... that any person of rank, any that hath in him a spark of ingenuity, or doth at all pretend to good manners, should find in his heart, or deign to comply with so scurvy a fashion; a fashion much more befitting the scum of the people than the flower of the gentry; yea, rather much below any man endued with a scrap of reason, or a grain of goodness. Would we bethink ourselves, modest, sober, and pertinent discourse would appear far more generous and masculine than such mad hectoring the Almighty, such boisterous ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate
... filled up with water. To the liquor thus prepared, add two pounds of good, clean, rich low priced brown sugar, per gallon, stirring it in the tub till all the sugar be dissolved; let it remain in the tub, and in a day or two it will ferment, and the scum rise to the top, which must be carefully skimmed off—then put the wine into a clean nice barrel—do not bung it up tight. There is generally a fermentation in it the spring following, when the grape vines are in blossom, but racking it off just before that ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... Lowrie," I said gravely, more impressed than ever with the seriousness of the situation. "I heard of him two years ago—he killed a man in the Sixth North Carolina, and took to the hills. Since then he has developed into quite a leader for such scum, and has proven himself a merciless monster. You have no suggestion to offer as to how we had better attempt to ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... so,' exclaimed Netta. 'You are a kind, dear brother. They are all turned against him, even mother, who can take in the scum of the earth, and make much of a wretched Irish beggar, and will not ask Howel ...
— Gladys, the Reaper • Anne Beale
... regard as a delicacy. Sago and tapioca I still eat rather with amiable resignation than from choice. But any milk pudding, as I now know, has a most vicious habit of cleaving to the dish in which it was cooked. Rice is the least evil offender. The others are absolutely wicked. To clean oleaginous scum from a dinner-tin is not easy, but it is a mere bagatelle compared with cleaning the scorched high-tide-mark of tapioca or sago from the shores of a large metal pudding-basin. I have tried scraping with a knife blade, I have tried every reasonable form of friction, and ...
— Observations of an Orderly - Some Glimpses of Life and Work in an English War Hospital • Ward Muir
... that he'd despise her if she didn't stand by Mr. Bingle now that he needed her so much; and Stokes said that she was crying because she hated herself for even thinking of leaving and that the other girls were the scum of the earth, ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... apocryphal to remind one of the famous passage in the history of the barnacle, which traced the lineage of the bird to one of the pedunculated cirripedes, and the lineage of the cirripede to a log of wood. The puffin feeds its young, say the islanders, on an oily scum of the sea, which renders it such an unwieldy mass of fat, that about the time when it should be beginning to fly, it becomes unable to get out of its hole. The parent bird, not in the least puzzled, however, treats ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... lose I have to pay. By Jove, yes! Never didn't pay a shilling I lost in my life! It's deuced hard, when a fellow is on the square like that, to make two ends meet when he comes across defaulters. Those fellows should be hung. They're the very scum of the earth. Talk of welchers! They're worse than any welcher. Welcher is a thing you needn't have to do with if you're careful. But when a fellow turns round upon you as a defaulter at cards, there is no getting rid of him. Where the play is all straightforward and honorable, a ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... burning being very sickly, as if they did it under protest. A number of women were employed here, because much of the work was merely automatic, and just now men were scarce and women would work cheaper. The women were coarse and rough, rather the scum of the city—perhaps some might have fallen; but the place was noisome and grimy, with a sickening smell of oil everywhere, repulsive enough to be fit ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol. 6, No. 1, July, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... converted into Christians, when so convertible. Should they prove impressionable, Miss Macpherson then contemplates their emigration to Canada. Many had already been sent out; and her idea was to extend her operations in this respect: not, be it observed, to cast hundreds of the scum of the East End of London upon Canada—a proceeding to which the Canadians would very naturally object—but to form a Home on that side to be fed from the Homes on this, and so to remove from the old scenes of vice and temptation those who had been previously ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... class," the social scum, that passively rotting class thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed ...
— Manifesto of the Communist Party • Karl Marx
... before you add the fruit to it, it will be improved in clearness by passing it through a flannel bag. Skim off the brown scum, all ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... a hell! You've plotted and schemed to get me into your power!... There! Do you feel the life going out of you?... My sister, indeed! You!... You scum of the earth! ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... give the small minority of slave-owners all their power. You say we control the Union. We do, and we do it by the votes of these people, who are as far below our niggers as the niggers are below decent white men. Who that reflects that this country has been controlled for fifty years by such scum, would give a ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... even at the time of his deepest distress: "This will be the greatest acquisition Great Britain has ever made." All he asked was for reasonable help in the way of food and decent settlers who could work. All he got in answer to his requests was the further shipment of the scum of the gaols and the hulks—and some more spades and seeds. King believed in his chief and cordially worked with him—and King was ...
— The Beginning Of The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... and getting up, she carefully passed the spoon over the frothing sugar, and from time to time shook off the clinging jam from the spoon by knocking it on a plate that was covered with yellow-red scum and blood-colored syrup. "How they'll enjoy this at tea-time!" she thought of her children, remembering how she herself as a child had wondered how it was the grown-up people did not eat what was best of all—the scum ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... of this plant is first expressed by passing it between two cylinders of iron. It is then boiled with lime-water, which makes a thick scum rise to the surface. The clarified liquor is let off below and evaporated to a very small quantity, after which it is suffered to crystallise by standing in a vessel, the bottom of which is perforated ...
— Conversations on Chemistry, V. 1-2 • Jane Marcet
... there was truth in the rumour that his master had taken leave of his senses. For, under one pretext or another, he began to dismiss the old and tried hands, who had served the firm for years, and in their place he embarked the scum of the port—men whose reputations were so vile that the lowest crimp would have been ashamed to furnish them. There was Birthmark Sweetlocks, who was known to have been present at the killing of the logwood-cutters, so that his hideous scarlet ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as he curtly called him. He read the reports of the discussions of the Corps Legislatif, and laughed with glee over the slightest words that fell from Morny's lips. Ah, Morny was the man to sit upon your rascally republicans! And he would assert that only the scum detested the Emperor, for his Majesty desired that all respectable people should have ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... lightly and put them into a stewpan with a good beef gravy, seasoned with white pepper, salt, a couple of sliced onions (previously browned in a little oil), and a piece of whole ginger, let it simmer very slowly for two hours taking care to remove the scum or fat, have ready some rich forcemeat and spread it about an inch thick over three cold hard boiled eggs, fry these for a few moments and put them in the saucepan with the veal; before serving, these balls should be cut in ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... heard much of The Terror. And what plainsman of that day hadn't? He was the scourge of the table-lands, with his band of a hundred cutthroats, desperadoes recruited from the worst scum of the border. More than half of his hired killers, it was said, were Mexican outlaws from Sonora and Chihuahua. Some were half-breed Indians, and a few were white gunmen who killed for ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... you get the formula of Education: health and happiness through useful activity—animation, kindness, good-cheer, patience, persistency, willingness to give and take, seasoned with enough discontent to prevent smugness, which is the scum that grows over every ...
— Little Journeys To The Homes Of Great Teachers • Elbert Hubbard
... seventy-five pounds of juice. This juice passes, as a pale green cataract, into a trough, which conducts it into a vat, where it is dosed with quicklime to neutralize its acid, and is then run off into large heated metal vessels. At this stage the smell is abominable, and the turbid fluid, with a thick scum upon it, is simply disgusting. After a preliminary heating and skimming it is passed off into iron pans, several in a row, and boiled and skimmed, and ladled from one to the other till it reaches the last, which ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... blazed the Marquis, unable longer to contain himself. "Am I to have my ears offended by this braying? Miserable scum, you shall be taught what is ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... northeast, and we sailed east, for we were almost in the latitude of the south point of Shetland. We saw, several times, quantities of spermaceti drifting, a yellowish fat, which lies in the water, all together, but solid like the green scum which floats in ditches. We also saw rockweed floating; and a small land bird came on board the ship, from which we concluded we were approaching land. The wind was more free, and after running out and in it remained north-northeast. It blew so ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... craters were grown over with the grass and mustard flowers with which this country abounds at this time of year. Newer punctures showed as wounds in the yellow soil and contained pools of evil-smelling water, green with scum. ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... where all the little decorum and politeness we have are purely forced by art, and are so ready to lapse into barbarity. This, among the Romans, was the raillery of slaves, of which we have many instances in Plautus. It seemeth to have been introduced among us by Cromwell, who, by preferring the scum of the people, made it a court-entertainment, of which I have heard many particulars; and, considering all things were turned upside down, it was reasonable and judicious; although it was a piece of policy found out to ridicule a point of honour in the other extreme, ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... swagger of stocks and lucky speculations, in the world, than was formerly the case. Society is decidedly less graceful, more care-worn, and of a worse tone to-day, than it was previously to the revolution of 1830. I presume the elements are unchanged, but the ebullition of the times is throwing the scum to the surface; a natural but temporary consequence of the ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Harrington jumped at once to this conclusion, for he murmured: "She's telling him I'm the scum of the earth, and that it's up to him to get rid of me." He added, sententiously: "She'll find, I guess, that this is about the most difficult billet a fair lady ever intrusted to a gallant knight." Whereupon, inspired by his metaphor, he proceeded to ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... dreams, poor selfish fears, That scum-like float and dim Love's limpid tide. Shall I thus cage my bird from liberty, And let it beat its life out on the bars, Lest some dear bliss detain it in the heavens? Shall I spill rashly forth this wine of joy, Because for me within ...
— Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... the town, but all over England, ay, and beyond sea, too, and send abroad their circulators, and in this manner get into their hands all that is valuable. The rest of the trade are content to take their refuse, with which, and the fresh scum of the press, they furnish one side of the shop, which serves for the sign of a bookseller, rather than a real one; but instead of selling, deal as factors, and procure what the country divines and gentry send for; of whom each hath his book-factor, and, when wanting anything, ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... at the huge man and said coldly, "I wouldn't want the death of a piece of space scum to show on ...
— On the Trail of the Space Pirates • Carey Rockwell
... himself as he went on his way, while Tom was not quite so sure of the two chips on which he was to carry Eloise out if she tried to boss him. He'd wait and see. That city chap from Crompton Place had certainly been very friendly, and had not treated him as if he was scum; and after taking his seat and telling Ruby Ann, with quite an air when she asked why he was so late, that he had been detained by Mr. Harcourt, who wanted to talk with him, he took from his desk his slate and rubbed out ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... melting of hard hearts, the change of cold, damp material into its own ruddy likeness, are all set forth in this great symbol. John's water baptism was poor beside Messiah's immersion into that cleansing fire. Fire turns what it touches into kindred flame. The refiner's fire melts metal, and the scum carries away impurities. Water washes the surface, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... before I had been riding back the road from Green Springs, and in a dark, woody place had come across an Indian sore beset by three of the white scum which infested the river-side. What the quarrel was I know not, but I liked little the villainous look of the three, and I liked much the clean, lithe figure of their opponent. So I rode my horse among them, ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... the scum rises to the surface, and the first result of these disloyal murmurings and agitations was to bring into prominence the two brothers, Francisco and Diego de Porras, who, it will be remembered, owed their presence with the expedition ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... but the bond of love which Nature makes. Whence in the second circle have their nest Dissimulation, witchcraft, flatteries, Theft, falsehood, simony, all who seduce To lust, or set their honesty at pawn, With such vile scum as these. The other way Forgets both Nature's general love, and that Which thereto added afterwards gives birth To special faith. Whence in the lesser circle, Point of the universe, dread seat of Dis, The ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... porters, loafers, and the scum, Who have no sense for the diviner weeds, Who drink their muddy beer and muddier rum, Insatiate, like ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... the quality of a {tourist}. Often used as a pejorative, as in 'losing touristic scum'. Often spelled 'turistic' or 'turistik', so that phrase might be more properly rendered ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... twenty feet or so, with a fiendish levity in his bearing that Leclere could not mistake. He remembered the dog often breaking the scum of ice on the water hole by lifting up and throwing his weight upon it; and remembering, he understood what he now had in mind. Batard faced about and paused. He showed his white teeth in a grin, which Leclere answered; and ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... am thinking of. I haven't lived my years in Africa to have any feeling left for scum like that. But also I haven't lived my years in Africa without coming to know there's one thing above all others necessary for the white man to do, and that's to keep up the prestige of the white man. String Gorley up if you like, but ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... with rich dress and shining mail; black Africans with blubber lips and mats of furzy hair; sleek Jews slithering in and out the groups, inciting to devil's work; figures of nobles and gentlemen of France or Espagne, dishonoured and merged in the depth of the lowest scum there present; great Saxon churls and Danes, standing stern and resolute, but barbarous, as lions in the ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... convalescing from an attack of ardent spirits, was busily engaged, with a wet towel round his head, writing a leader upon the event. This production, which was very sonorous and effective, was peppered all over with such phrases as "protection of property," "outraged majesty of the law," and "scum of civilization"— expressions which had been used so continuously by Mr. O'Flaherty, that he had come to think that he had a copyright in them, and loudly accused the London papers of plagiarism if he happened to see ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the proud swelling of a man who can boast that precious endowment himself, "you can't keep it down. There's no use talking to me about this equality between men at the hour of birth; it's all a poetic fiction. It would take forty generations of this European scum such as is beginning to drift across to us and taint our national atmosphere to produce one Joe Newbolt! And he's got blood on only one ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... he could keep the students in order, watch his assistants draw beer, the Rhine wine, and the scum (dregs of the cask, muddy and strong), and eye the accumulating accounts on the slate. This slate was wiped out once the month; that is to say, when remittances came from home. The night following remittances was a glorious one both to Stuler and the students. There were new scars, new ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... is the great political gun of the magazine, and inquires: 'What of the the Confederacy—the Present and the Future?' It is of course full of hope, bluster, and self-praise. 'Our armies,' says Delony, 'are not like the miserable hirelings of Lincoln—the scum of infamy and degradation—hunted up from the dens, sewers, and filthy prisons of the North, with the low vandalism of foreign importations, picked up wherever they can be found. Yet such are the creatures our brave ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... from the old hive may be used, if you will only first destroy the virus. This, I have ascertained, may be done by scalding: add a half-pint of water to about ten lbs.; stir it well, and heat it to the boiling point, and carefully remove all the scum. ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... Cobblers are always philosophers. Not pretty men, but thinkers. In their little, dingy shops they sit all day with their eyes down, isolated from the "hum and scum" about them, to the tune of their "tap, tap, tap," their minds are detached to think ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... it was growing a little careless of itself and needed replanking. Was it a realization of this fact, I wonder, that caused it on a sudden to run violently down a steep place into the Bay, as if it were possessed of Devils? Well it might be, for the human scum of the town gathered about the base of the hill, and the ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... Experience! Froth and scum alone, Not with the mind of equal birth! Confess! what men have always known, As knowledge now is ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... over the tomatoes, in order to remove the skin; after which, weigh, and place in a stone jar, with as much sugar as tomatoes, and let them stand two days; then pour off the sirup, and boil and skim it till no scum rises; pour it over the tomatoes, and let them stand two days as before; then boil, and skim again. After the third time, they are fit to dry, if the weather is good; if not, let them stand in the sirup until drying weather. Then ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... brazil wood 1/2 lb. Infuse together for four days; then boil for half an hour, strain through a linen cloth, and place the liquid again over the fire. Having dissolved 1/4 lb. of alum in a pint of white wine vinegar, mix both liquids together and stir them well. Take the scum that arises on the surface, gradually dry and powder it, and ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... of butter is renovated, or process, butter. This is obtained by purifying butter that is dirty and rancid and that contains all sorts of foreign material and then rechurning it with fresh cream or milk. The purifying process consists in melting the butter, removing the scum from the top, as well as the buttermilk, brine, and foreign materials that settle, and then blowing air through the fat to remove any odors that it might contain. Butter that is thus purified is replaced on the market, ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... speech Roebuck asserted: "A divided America will be a benefit to England." He appealed to Palmerston to consider whether the time had not come to recognize the South. "The North will never be our friends. (Cheers.) Of the South you can make friends. They are Englishmen; they are not the scum and refuse of Europe. (The Mayor of Manchester: 'Don't say that; don't say that.') (Cheers and disapprobation.) I know what I am saying. They are Englishmen, and we must make them ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... as you say. But other things will follow, and the plains will no longer keep men at bay. The money grabbers will pour in, and all the scum of creation will flock toward the setting sun. Then, too, I shall hate to see the wild animals that have their own rights killed in unsportsmanlike manner, and annihilated, as they are wherever men can ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... we are most miserably dejected, the scum of the world. [3788]Vix habet in nobis jam nova plaga locum. We can get no relief, no comfort, no succour, [3789]Et nihil inveni quod mihi ferret opem. We have tried all means, yet find no remedy: no man living can express the anguish and bitterness of our souls, but we that endure ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... at the framework of his latest try, fully disheartened. He tried not to think of the unescapable fact that the water in the rain tank had sunk to only an inch or so of muddy scum. Last night he had dug in the heart of the interior valley where the rankness of the vegetation was a promise of moisture, to uncover damp clay and then a brackish ooze. Far too little to satisfy both him and ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... that London was terrible. An ugly clamour of strident noises and hard, shrill voices, jabbering of vulgar, trivial things. A wry, desperate, cursed world, as she had called it, a pot seething with bitterness and all dreadfulness, with its Rosalinds floating on the top like scum. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... the basin-holes, with the wood-ash under them, which I showed you in the back-kitchen. And they must have very little heat, not enough to simmer even; only just to make the bubbles rise, and the scum upon the top set thick; and after that, it clots as firm—oh, as firm ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... we tell? For some reason altogether beyond our conception—and man may have been a mere accident, a by-product evolved in the process. It is as if the scum upon the surface of the ocean imagined that the ocean was created in order to produce and sustain it or a mouse in a cathedral thought that the building was its ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Chase lay through twenty miles of glorious forest, filled with fallow deer and wild bulls. The house itself, dating from the time of the Plantagenets, was surrounded by a moat covered with broad lilies and floating green scum. Magnificent peacocks sunned themselves on the terraces, while from the surrounding shrubberies there rose the soft murmur of doves, ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... he loosed, and said, "Now direct the nerve of sight across the ancient scum, there yonder where ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... I've worked for him fifteen years steady. Then the Eastmans came in, and there was nothing but hurry and drive, grumbling about high wages, buying cheap wools, and if cloth was poor, blaming the men. Then wages went down and down, and, when the men stood out, the scum of all the places around was brought in. Yerbury improved, and beer-saloons multiplied. Houses were thrown together and sold; and now they're all falling apart, and standing empty, and half a dozen families are crowding ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... going to shoot you at all; shooting's too good for scum like you. But you are to die—make no mistake about that. And soon; but not to-night. That would not be fair on you, for reasons which I leave to your imagination. You will lie where you are to-night; and you will be watched and fed like your ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... on," said the young knight; "we would not give way, though the desert yielded twenty times such scum." ...
— The Rival Heirs being the Third and Last Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... violet three to five minutes. Filter as much aniline water on to the cover-slip as it will hold; then add the smallest quantity of alcoholic solution of gentian violet which suffices to saturate the aniline water and form a "bronze scum" upon its surface—if too much of the alcoholic gentian violet is added the alcohol present redissolves ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... rude, and purposeless, the unmeaning creations of an unconscious cause," born only to perish, which a relentless reviewer has imposed upon his theory—rightly enough upon the atheistic alternative—the theistic view rids him at once of this "scum of creation." For, as species do not now vary at all times and places and in all directions, nor produce crude, vague, imperfect, and useless forms, there is no reason for supposing that they ever did. Good-for-nothing monstrosities, failures of purpose ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... They stood for the scum of the streets. How they lived was a mystery, except to people who kept fowls, or forgot to lock their doors at night. A few were vicious idlers, sponging on their parents for a living at twenty years of ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... ordered the troops to fire over the heads of the people. Some on this began to move off, but others continued their task of plunder and destruction. No one thought of attacking the soldiery. It showed the class of people composing the rioters—the very scum of the populace. This last fire of course did not produce any effect, and the mob began to proceed to greater extremities, and set fire both to the out-houses and stables, as also to the mansion itself, when they had possessed themselves of everything they thought of value. Only after repeated ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... emphasis that the angel defines the sphere of salvation as being 'their sins.' The Messianic expectation had been degraded as it flowed through the generations, as some pure stream loses its early sparkle, and gathers scum on its surface from filth flung into it by men. Mere deliverance from the Roman yoke was all the salvation that the mass wanted or expected, and the tragedy of the Cross was foreshadowed in this prophecy which declares an inward ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... your delegates?" said he. "Not I. They are the scum of the county of Cecil, and you know it. I would as soon be governed by my slaves at the Braes as by such men as they are. I wish you joy of them." And bowing, he turned and left the room by a door that was ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... myself. For my part, I had thought it praiseworthy, but he says none of the rest of us care a rush for my mother, and so the only one of us good for anything has to be the victim. But don't plume yourself. You'll be the scum of the earth when he has you before him. Poor old boy, it is a sore business to him, and it doesn't improve his temper. I believe this place is a greater loss to him than to my ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... as is usual in the East, they make butter out of curdled milk; and for this reason the vessel is always covered with scum. ...
— Armenian Literature • Anonymous
... the heavy fog I thought, "Now, what business had I there? If my mother had seen that wretched servant girl brushing my hair the old lady would have died—I, the child of many prayers, the hope of a house, and stumping home on a foggy morning after sitting among the scum of earth all night. I mean to be a philosopher, but what a beastly, silly school to cultivate political philosophy in! What do I know more than I knew before?—that one vulgar girl maintains three vulgar criminals, and that all ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... are seen The dregs and scum of earth and seas, Her kindness counting all things clean That ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... impressive in all this; but when a greasy apostle in an alapaca duster, takes his place behind the elevated desk, and with bad grammar and slangy sentences, asks God in a businesslike way to bless this buzzing mass of unclean, low-browed, barbarous scum of all foreign countries, and the white trash and criminals of our own, you find no ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... lovers. She ruins her husband, not for any intrinsic and genuine love of splendour, luxury, or beauty, but because other women have things and she ought to have them. She has a taste for men, but none in them. Yet her creator has made her absolutely "real," and, scum of womanhood as she is, has actually evolved something very like tragedy out of her worthlessness, and has saved her from being detestable, because she is such a very woman. He has, indeed, subjected her to a kenosis, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... enough, that he does not sufficiently trust his own eyes, but by way of further assurance drags in architecture, ships, mythological or Scripture stories, not caring for them himself, but supposing the spectator cares, so that they remain unassimilated, a scum floating on the surface and obscuring the work. Here is the "want of faith" with which, if any, he is justly chargeable,—that beauty is not enough for him, but he must make it pleasing. Pleasingness implies a languid acceptance, in which the mind is spared the shock of fresh ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... gaps enough among the noblemen of the South, which they can fill up, in the place of the French scum who now riot over Wessex. And if that should not suffice, what higher honor for me, or for my daughter the Queen-Dowager, than to devote our lands to the heroes who have won ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... all too quick decease Made Pergamus an easier prey To wearied Greece. What if, as auburn Phyllis' mate, You graft yourself on regal stem? Oh yes! be sure her sires were great; She weeps for THEM. Believe me, from no rascal scum Your charmer sprang; so true a flame, Such hate of greed, could never come From vulgar dame. With honest fervour I commend Those lips, those eyes; you need not fear A rival, hurrying on to ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... debate on the question, and saw too how the men gathered in knots, and talked in whispers and watched the barque. And to us all one thing was evident, that could our lads only get a chance at the pigtailed, ruffianly scum of the east coast, it would go pretty hard ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... is your time or never: Shall your fears Or your cares Cast you down? Hang your wealth And your health, Get renown. We are all undone for ever, Now the King and the crown Are tumbling down, And the realm doth groan with disasters; And the scum of the land Are the men that command, And our slaves ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay |
