"Blacking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... its 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 have recourse ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. V - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... of this 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 the result of a little ingenuity ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... and intelligent efforts. John Jacob Astor was a poor butcher's son. Cornelius Vanderbilt was a boatman. Daniel Drew was a drover. The Harpers and Appletons were printers' apprentices. A. T. Stewart was an humble, struggling shopkeeper. A well-known financier began by blacking a pair of boots. Opportunities as good as these men ever had are occurring every day. Those who are competent to seize them may do so, and rise to fortune ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... 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. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... cigarette, and stood for a few minutes watching the blue smoke drifting and thinning away on the air. While he stood a man drove up with a horse and car. The car was laden with groceries—packets of somebody's tea, boxes of somebody's chocolate, bottles of beer and of mineral water, tins of boot blacking, and parcels of soap; confectionery, and tinned fish, ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... the holes, we let the soap-suds off the decks, and in a short time had a new supply of 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
... fellow," he whispered, "there's a Boston man down below, blacking my other pair of boots, who'd feel hurt if I should let anybody else ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... 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 living ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... pond at one end, an inn in the middle, a church at one side, a fashionable milliner from London, a merchant tailor from the same place, and a hardware shop or two where they also sold treacle, Dartford gunpowder, pocket-handkerchiefs, sheep-nets, patent medicines, cheese, blacking, marbles, mole-traps, men's hats, and other miscellaneous articles. It was quite enough of a town, however, to raise a presumption that there would be a map of the county ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... had drunk turtle soup and eaten Russian rye bread, ripe Turkish olives, caviar, smoked Frankfort black pudding, game with sauces that were the color of licorice and blacking, truffle gravy, chocolate cream, puddings, nectarines, grape preserves, mulberries and black-heart cherries; they had sipped, out of dark glasses, wines from Limagne, Roussillon, Tenedos, Val de Penas and Porto, and after the coffee and walnut brandy had partaken of ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... that Uncle Sim himself couldn't go to Athens tomorrow and order a cup of coffee and a hard-boiled egg! Or, if he did order them, he'd get a morning newspaper and toothpick. Last Spring I was in the boot-blacking emporium in the village one afternoon and Horace came in to ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... were blacking their faces for a dress-rehearsal; the turkey hung dead, with opened, speckled wings, in the dairy. The time was come to ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... coats; the lieutenant in a battered old sou'-wester, with a red woollen comforter round his throat; Nettleship had on an equally ancient-looking tarpaulin, and both wore high-boots, long unacquainted with blacking. They carried stout cudgels in their hands, their hangers and pistols being concealed under their coats. In about an hour and a half we reached Passage, when Nettleship and Larry and I got ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... being applicable to his present case, she sits gazing in resigned imbecility, till finally she desperately resolves to improvise him some gruel, and, after a laborious turn in the kitchen,—after burning her dress and blacking her fingers,—succeeds only in bringing ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... never worked so well as it should have done. These head boys were called Praepostors, a conscious echo of the two "Praepositors" of the first Statutes of 1592. Fagging was allowed but was not unduly practised. It consisted chiefly of running messages or blacking boots or boiling water. Perhaps the most unpleasant duty of the new boy was the compulsion that he was under to sing for the ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell
... BLACKING. For the ship's bends and yards. A good mixture is made of coal-tar, vegetable-tar, and salt-water, boiled together, and laid ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... 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
... demand silence in French that would strike terror to the soul of the bravest native. But when she saw that poor, dear, hard-worked garcon blacking boots by the light of the moon, her heart melted with pity; and, resolving to give him an extra fee, she silently retired to her stone-floored bower, and fell asleep in a stuffy little bed, whose orange curtains filled her dreams with volcanic eruptions ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... have to begin with the farmer, who feeds the animal that, after we have eaten a good dish from and think no more of, yet furnishes the hair which is made into brushes by the brushmaker; the carpenter has to make the box to hold them; the blacking-maker also comes to the service; and the tailor to give the uniform red coat worn by the Shoeblack Brigade—yet after all this, you can get your boots blacked, and that well done, for one penny. Out of their earnings, at some stations the boys—so I was told a short time ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... to haunts of fashion? Now I begin to understand why you have become so prodigal with the blacking; for some time I have had the intention of reproaching you with your shoes—our finances are not equal to ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... all very clever. There was a traveler's sewing kit, a small blacking kit, a wee laundry kit for motoring, a handy kit containing baggage tags, rubber bands, and the like, an emergency kit with safety pins and threaded needle for her handbag, a guest towel with a cross-stitch kitty on one end, a cream pitcher and sugar bowl with a kitten border, a quaint ...
— Entertaining Made Easy • Emily Rose Burt
... been working since half-past six at unaccustomed blacking of the kitchen stove and such-like tasks in order that the new maid should see how things ought to be kept and maintain the same high standard, and she was too utterly weary and disappointed now, ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... and hair cut, and chins shaved, until we feared our Christmas guests would look like convicts. Then the Dandy producing blacking brushes, boots that had never seen blacking before, shone like ebony. After that a mighty washing of hands took place, to remove the blacking stain; and then the Quarters settled down to a general "titivation," Tam "cleaning his ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... scarcely covering his crown; so much the thicker the long pigtail, with the slender neck crammed into a very narrow horsehair stock; the felt put under the white spatterdashes, smirched by traces of shoe-blacking, giving to the legs a bigger diameter than the thighs, squeezed into their tight-fitting breeches, could boast of. Hardly, or not at all, able to bend his knees, the whole man moved ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... put before him by a committee, of which Lem and Gimpy and Stretch were the talking members, he readily consented to a reopening of business for a scrutiny of the various accounts which represented the boys' earnings at selling papers and blacking boots, minus the cost of their keep and of sundry surreptitious flings at "craps" in secret corners. The inquiry developed an available surplus of three dollars and fifty cents. Savoy alone had no account; the run of craps had recently gone heavily against him. But in consideration ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... my! Hoo! hoo!" exclaimed the blacking boy, as soon as Lavinia had disappeared up the stairs, dancing about with his hands on his hips. "Look here, Tom,"—to a boy with a pail, who had just come in—"here be an Owlet's just flown in out of the mud. Hoo! hoo! Where did you get that 'ere ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Brown, 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 seasoning his onions and radishes. I blushed at the thought of my hypocrisy, but the onions were so much better that I couldn't help dipping ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... drops, in rude phrase, a brief judicial remark, and again falls sturdily to work. Again, the shoemaker may be deemed, in the merely mechanical character of his profession, near of kin to the tailor. But such is not the case. He has to work amid paste, wax, oil, and blacking, and contracts a smell of leather. He cannot keep himself particularly clean; and although a nicely-finished shoe be all well enough in its way, there is not much about it on which conceit can build. No man can set up as a beau on the ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... savage portions of our nature, if we would really 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 ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... "blacking." What does Paley say on this subject? Do you, or do you not, approve of Paley's arguments, and why? Do you think that Paley knew anything at all ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... the angle of his jaw, "and he's always admiring himself in the mirror, Racey is. He pats his hair down, after partin' it and usin' enough goose-grease on it to keep forty guns from rusting for ten years, and he shines his boots with blacking, my stove-blacking, the rustling scoundrel. Scrouge southwest a li'l more, Racey, and look at yore chin. They's a li'l speck of dust on it. Oh, me, oh, my! Li'l sweetheart will have to wash his ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... buttons, of tape, feathers, and other elements of ornament or trimmings may be regarded as subsidiary. In the same way the manufacture of wall-papers or house paint may be considered subsidiary to the building trades, that of blacking to the shoe manufacture. These subsidiary trades are related to the primary one more or less closely, and are affected by the condition of the latter more or less powerfully in proportion as the subsidiary elements they furnish ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... 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 ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... adjudged 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 know what ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... I first 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 fact ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... cried for what he must be thinking of her. She wanted to go on seeing his faults, but in her changing mood she could see only her own. "He is one of the noblest gentlemen in the world," something inside her said. "You aren't worthy to black his boots!" Then the picture of herself blacking them—the shiny ones that were too tight—rose before her eyes, and she was afraid that she was going to laugh—or else to sob. Anyhow, he was gone, and there was ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... would. I've a great mind to throw it up—a great mind to throw it up. It is hardly the work for a gentleman born, and the grandson of a rear-admiral. Tinkers' and tailors' sons get the luck now; and a man of good blood is put on the back shelf, behind the blacking-bottles. A man who has battled ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... need this, Grandma—can I throw this away?" the girl said over and over, displaying a nearly empty box of blacking, a moist bag tightly rolled over perhaps a pound of sugar, a broken egg beater, a stopped alarm clock, a bottle of toothache drops, a dog's old collar, a cracked saucer with a cake of brown soap tightly adhering to ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... television reception was blacking out for hours at a time, with no explanation available. The Civil Aeronautics Administration and the Air Force banned all plane movements under instrument flight conditions, because radar navigational equipment had become so unreliable as ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... (his name is Dorrit) had incurred a responsibility to us, ages before the fairy came out of the Bank and gave him his fortune, under a bond he had signed for the performance of a contract which was not at all performed. He was a partner in a house in some large way—spirits, or buttons, or wine, or blacking, or oatmeal, or woollen, or pork, or hooks and eyes, or iron, or treacle, or shoes, or something or other that was wanted for troops, or seamen, or somebody—and the house burst, and we being among the creditors, detainees were lodged on the part of the Crown in a scientific manner, and all the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... still be studied whenever a young lieutenant of the line sits down to breakfast in a tavern, and the waiter slaves for his penny fee. Yet, depend upon it, the cringer has balanced to a nicety the sweets and sours of boot-blacking against the buona mano; the rest is pure commerce. So now, the deliberate insolence of the flushed Borgia towards his host was a thing to be dumb at; yet ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... That of the Courier, to propitiate the favour of the critic of the day, and get the editors of the metropolis into a good humour,—above all, to have the name of the person to be puffed perpetually before the public. Artists cannot be advertised like Macassar oil or blacking, and they want it to the full as much; hence endless ingenuity must be practised in order to keep the popular attention awake. Suppose a great actor moves from London to Windsor, the Brentford Champion must state that "Yesterday ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... wanted to be very neat. She washed her face carefully. She brushed her black hair until it was as smooth as satin. She tied her shoelaces carefully, having first sewed up two runs in her one pair of good stockings. She would have liked to black her shoes, but she could not find any blacking. Finally, she slipped away from the manse, down through Rainbow Valley, up through the whispering woods, and out to the road that ran past the house on the hill. It was quite a long walk and Una was tired and warm when she ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... there, the incombustible materials among the debris showed the lading of particular cars. The remains of fruit cans, tin plates, blacking boxes and glassware, told of sutlers who had disposed of their wares at less than the usual exorbitant prices. Heaps of spikes and handleless hammers, and iron bars, reminded us of disconcerted plans in railroad extension, while numberless solid shot, bullets and fragments of shells, showed where ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... should have told you yesterday that all my boys were got up for their work in moustaches and side-whiskers of some sort of blacking—I suppose wood-ash. It was a sight of joy to see them return at night, axe on shoulder, feigning to march like soldiers, a choragus with a loud voice singing out, "March—step! March—step!" in ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... 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 ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... same house made an application to the porochial committee for them to send the porochial surgeon to see a woman as was very bad. He had gone out to dinner; but his 'prentice (which is a very clever lad) sent 'em some medicine in a blacking-bottle, offhand.' ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... to answer her questions in the savage, distrustful manner of his class. They went into a cheap eating-house and saloon, through the "Ladies' Entrance," and while they sat at a table there, she learned by means of resolute and patient questions that the boy earned his living by blacking shoes now and then, and that he did not know who his parents were, as he had been "put" with a family whose ill-usage he had fled from to live in the street. He began to melt under her manifestations of interest ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... washing in 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 ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... kerosene was getting low, was smoking and smelling. A stray cockroach was running about the table in alarm near Nevyrazimov's writing hand. Two rooms away from the office Paramon the porter was for the third time cleaning his best boots, and with such energy that the sound of the blacking-brush and of his expectorations was audible in ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... ... a bum for a few weeks, hanging around soldiers' barracks, blacking shoes for free meals ... till Provost Marshal General Bell, in an effort to clear the islands of boys who were vags and mascots of regiments, gave me and several other rovers and stowaways free transportation ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... later used the recording of his voice together with an affidavit sworn to by a technician that our receiver was operating perfectly, as evidence in my hearing. They proved, in their own way, that Lynds had suffered continual delirium after blacking out. The speed, they said, was the cause. It became known as Danger V. Nobody ever bothered to explain why I never encountered the phenomenon of Danger V. It became official record, and my experience was the deviant. It was ...
— What Need of Man? • Harold Calin
... to make the scoring of points more vivid and visible to the audience, it was decided, after some hesitation, that the gloves should be coated with shoe-blacking. ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... taught how to ride, how to handle a sabre or a gun, or how to balance himself in the goose-step—matters which he had taken the pains to master long ago—there were still certain things to learn, and the button stick, and the flat and chain burnish, and the pots of chrome yellow, and blacking, and pipeclay, were just as strange to him as they would have been to any other raw recruit; so that he was teaching his business at one end and learning it at the other for a matter of some four or ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... 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
... idiot Durkin," chuckled the latter. "'Got just what you fellows need. Shoe-blacking stand, two brushes, all complete. Cheap. Come and see it. ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... waited for him to present himself in some shape that he could grapple with morally, he made an involuntary study of his personal appearance. That morning, before starting from home by the milk-train that left Willoughby Pastures at 4.5, Barker had given his Sunday boots a coat of blacking, which he had eked out with stove-polish, and he had put on his best pantaloons, which he had outgrown, and which, having been made very tight a season after tight pantaloons had gone out of fashion ...
— The Minister's Charge • William D. Howells
... 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 were slowly struggling ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... runs errands for us in town, at five cents an errand. Yesterday he brought me some shoe-strings and a jar of cold cream (I sunburned all the skin off my nose before I got my new hat) and a blue Windsor tie and a bottle of blacking all for ten cents. That was an unusual bargain, owing to the ...
— Daddy-Long-Legs • Jean Webster
... greatly opposed to Jackson; has some little municipal 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 ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... 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 will tell ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... of impulse; but I have trained myself not to be a creature of impulse, at least not in matters of importance. Without that patient and painful schooling, I shouldn't have got where I now am; probably I'd still be blacking boots, or sheet-writing for some bookmaker, or clerking it for some broker. Before I got to my rooms, the night air and my habit of the "sober second thought" had cooled me back ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... he could tell them what to do. When he was an artilleryman in France, and writing a series of articles on the Reformation at the same time, he mixed an excellent substitute for ink out of the ashes of his pipe and claret. There were countless things that could be utilised, including blacking, seethed mushrooms, boiled ash-buds, and the juice of the pickled walnut. With such resources as these we intended to go on writing and drawing diagrams long after Mr. RUNCIMAN was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, March 8, 1916 • Various
... had solved everything now, and gave herself up to a rapturous consideration of what use she would make of the precious solution. All regrets for the impossibility of ruining the character of Captain Puffin with regard to intoxicants were gone, for she had an even deadlier blacking to hand. No faintest hesitation at ruining the reputation of Major Benjy as well crossed her mind; she gloried in it, for he had not only caused her to deceive herself about the early hours on alternate nights, but by his infamous ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... 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 ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... gobble up the 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
... where the gas flickers and the boots stand in racks, Richards, amid his blacking-brushes, held forth to Oke of the Common-room, Gumbly of the dining-halls, and fair Lena of ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... and street bands everywhere, and carriages rattling up and down, and where there was a little blind boot-black in front of the cathedral who could play any tune you asked for by dropping the lids of blacking-boxes on the stone steps. When everything is done and over for one at twenty-three, it is pleasant to let the mind wander forth and follow a young adventurer who has life before him. "And if it had not been for me," she thought, "Frank might still be free like that, and ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... those soldiers whom nature had not supplied with such an ornament were obliged to put on a false one, fastened with pitch, which was liable to cause abcesses on the lip. Sometimes a fine, uniform color was produced in the moustaches of a whole regiment by means of boot-blacking. Broad white belts were crossed upon the breast. The linen gaiters, white on parade, black for the march, came well above the knee, and a superfluous number of garters impeded the step. It was a tedious matter to put these things on; and if a pebble got in through a button-hole, ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... your wheel and go like blazes. Tell 'em to rush answer. This guy here thinks a colored boy is only an animated shoe-blacking outfit; it's up to us to remedy that defect in his education, see!" Thus sang the wires as Durmont ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... shall 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 ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... the family 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 ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the feeble light of the match he could see that he was in a sort of a scullery, which bore traces of recent occupation. A bit of yellow soap, some blacking and a couple of brooms in one corner, a pail and a wooden chair in another, ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... his taper Burnt, and not blue, as modest tapers use, Receiving sprites with sympathetic vapour; He rubb'd 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.' ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... When there, I found your parcel, containing the two vollumes of a new book; which, as I have been away from the literary world, and emplied solely in athlatic exorcises, have been laying neglected in my pantry, among my knife-cloaths, and dekanters, and blacking-bottles, ...
— Memoirs of Mr. Charles J. Yellowplush - The Yellowplush Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... for a while, some of the party enquired the stranger's name. "Can't possibly tell," was the Beau's answer. "But he is evidently a gentleman—his perfumes are good." He objected to country gentlemen being introduced into Watier's, on the ground "that their boots always smelt of horse-dung and bad blacking." ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 344, June, 1844 • Various
... there is no record of his ever having sunk a cent of it. Of habits strictly pure, he had never seen a card or a drop of liquor that he had touched, and he had never seen a dollar that he had not touched. He had organized every industry along his path, from paper-selling, boot-blacking, and so upward to his organized lobby at Washington, through which he had caused a heavy tariff to be put upon every commodity necessary to the American people. It was he who had advised his brother organizers to keep Religion on the ...
— How Doth the Simple Spelling Bee • Owen Wister
... 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, ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... *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 ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... method of his work I quickly discerned, and the discovery threw some light upon the size of the heap in front of my trunk. A dress-hat and its case, when their natural relationship is dissolved, occupy nearly twice as much space as before, even if the former contains a blacking-box not usually kept in it, and the latter contains a few cigars soaking in bay rum. The same might be said of a portable dressing-case and its contents, bought for me in Vienna by a brother ex-soldier, ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... gleaming bright, Shone "Gargling Oil," in black and white, Once "Bixby's Blacking" stood alone, He straight beside it ...
— Excelsior • Bret Harte
... children; 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 surely the school age is not to be limited to such dreams ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... houses on the other side. There is an immense development of electricity all over America, and in tram-cars, railway-cars, hotels, houses, everything and everywhere, is the electric light prominent. Many of the streets are unevenly paved. Blacking boots is a profession in America—in many hotels a special charge is made for it, or else the visitors are left to their own devices thereon—and boot-blacks have shops and nooks fitted with high, huge easy chairs, elevated like ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... last. Rather! The "Umbrella-tree" magnificent! Spreads out in wet weather, and folds up when it's fine. Splendid specimen of the "Boot-tree" (Arbor tegumenpedis), and the quaint "Blacking-Brush Plant," which is its invariable companion. No time to spare, however—off again to the Grantully Castle, with pockets full of fruits of all kinds. Must take care not to sit on them in boat. Lemon squash all very well, but a mixed fruit squash in your tail-coat ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... commodity as the most knowing down-easter, or tricky horse dealer. William's occupation on board the steamer, as they steamed south, was to prepare the stock for the market, by shaving off whiskers and blacking the grey hairs with a ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... her discomfiture by requesting to be allowed to walk with her, and by offering to 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 and borax? ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton
... 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 ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... 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 ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... licking 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 the sunset ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... 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 was spoken ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... unless after the manner practised in her laundry. By her own account she was the slave of every servant within her door, for her life seemed to be one unceasing labour to get everything done in her own way, to the very blacking of Mr. Pullens's shoes, and the brushing of Mr. Pullens's coat. But then these heroic acts of duty were more than repaid by the noble consciousness of a life well spent. In her own estimation she was one of the greatest characters that had ever lived; for, to use her own words, she passed nothing ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... 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 ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... 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
... S. I got it all wrong. It wasn't the children, it was Marie. She wanted a box of blacking for the children's shoes. Jean reproved her and said, "Why, Marie, you mustn't ask for things now. The machine ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... talk as if I made a habit of blacking up! You talk as if you expected me to come to the altar smothered in ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... wrestle with the rigours of 'the Horn' sent them to their preparations when we had scarce crossed the Line. Old Martin was the fore hand. Now, his oilskins hung out over the head, stretched on hoops and broomsticks, glistening in a brave new coat of oil and blacking. Then Vootgert and Dutch John took the notion, and set to work by turns at a canvas wheel-coat that was to defy the worst gale that ever blew. Young Houston—canny Shetlander—put aside his melodeon, and clicked and clicked his needles at a famous pair of north-country ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... Dickens was nine 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 fact: that wherever Dickens ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... into a mouthpiece. "Surveillance? Give us a monitor on—" he spoke a string of incomprehensible numbers, while I lounged at ease on the couch. Forth waited for an answer, then touched another button and steel louvers closed noiselessly over the windows, blacking them out. I rose in sudden panic, then relaxed as the room went dark. The darkness felt oddly more normal than the light, and I leaned back and watched the flickers clear as one wall of the office became a large visionscreen. Forth came and sat beside me on the leather couch, but in the ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... 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
... rare accomplishment, state documents 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 of State and is distinguished ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... 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 than any storm ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... inflation of the margins of the upper lobes. In transecting the upper lobe of the left lung, it was found considerably hollowed out, (to the degree of holding a large orange,) and containing a small quantity of semi-fluid carbon, resembling thick blacking, with the superior divisions of the left bronchus opening abruptly into it. Many large blood-vessels crossed from one side of the cavity to the other, to which shreds of parenchymatous substance were attached. The inferior lobe was fully saturated with the thick black fluid, and it ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... expressed their admiration. "What a capital idea the Prince had had! How well the thing had been managed! This was much better than flying the country, by Dieppe, like D'Haussez; or by Membrolle, like Guernon-Ranville; or being captured, disguised as a footboy, and blacking the boots of Madame de Saint Fargeau, like poor Polignac!" "Guizot was no cleverer than Polignac," exclaimed Persigny. Fleury turned to Morny: "Your theorists would not have succeeded in a coup d'etat." "That is true, they were not particularly ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... a year for washing! Three clean shirts a day, three cravats! Boots blacked, soles and all, and with such varnish! But then he has such exquisite taste! why, he blackballed a friend of his who wanted to enter his club, because the candidate's boots were polished with bad blacking. I wonder whether the king will do anything for him? It is Mr. Brummell's dressing hour, and ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... 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, ...
— McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the most miserable time of his life. The poor, sickly little chap was set to work in a blacking factory. His work was to cover the pots of paste-blacking, tie them down neatly and paste on the labels. Along with two or three others boys he worked all day long for six or seven shillings a week. Oh, how the ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... at the sudden change from bright light to half twilight, and Charming Billy took the opportunity to kick a sardine can of stove-blacking under the stove where it would not be seen. Some predecessor with domestic instincts had left behind him half a package of "Rising Sun," and Billy had found it and was intending to blacken the stove just as soon as he finished the dishes. That he ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... under the Chief's 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 ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... been Peter,—for I regret to say that my memory is rather misty upon that important point. That personage was absent from home; but we were hospitably received by his father, who also appeared to be his butler, as he was engaged in bottling off some root-beer into stone blacking-jars, when we entered. I suppose the chief's father must once have been a chief himself, and that his menial position arose from the fact of his appearance being rather disreputable. He was a decrepit and very dirty old man, in a tight blue frock-coat, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various
... 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 ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... bridge, L11; the timber trees, L25; a fire engine with carriage, &c., L6 15s. (possibly some sort of steam engine, then called fire engines); the total produce, including counting-house, warehouse, casting, tinning, burnishing, blacking, and blacksmiths' shops, a horse mill, scouring mill, and a quantity of wood sheds and palisading, amounted to nearly L1,150. The prosaic minds of the Commissioners evidently did not lead them to value "the apartments ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... like little May," remarked Charlie, with a quiet laugh; "she'd say that a mess o' tar an' shoe-blacking was nice if you made it. But I say, Shank, let's see you swim. I'd give anything if I could swim. Do, like a brick as you are. There's a fine deep ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... on, and rehearsals were in order. Without blacking his face, which could be done when the play was actually filmed, Mr. Bunn gingerly rode the mule. He made as much of a success of it as was possible. And certainly Hee-haw showed ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... head, and went on blacking the big boots. But when the young convict drew nearer, and tried to take his hand, he drew back, and struck at him viciously with ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 23, October, 1891 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... apropos of useless questions, once told of a man who stood before a mirror in his room, his face lathered and an open razor in his hand. His wife came in. She looked at him and said, "Are you shaving?" The man, a foe to surplusage, replied fiercely, "No; I am blacking the kitchen range. Where are you—out driving ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... "rather rich than gaudy," (as Miss Byron said of Sir Charles Grandison,) except in the grand article of the waistcoat, a brocade brode of resplendent lustre, which combined both qualities. His shoes were bright with the new French blacking, and his jewellery, rings, studs, brooches, and chains (for he wore two, that belonging to his watch, and one from which depended a pair of spectacles, folded so as to resemble an eye-glass,) were of the finest material and ...
— The London Visitor • Mary Russell Mitford
... were settled that negroes, regardless of personal capacity, could do nothing for a living but black boots, and that red-haired men were allowed to engage in no avocation except horse-currying; who does not perceive that, though boot-blacking and horse-currying might be well and cheaply done, black-skinned and also red-haired men would have but a sorry chance for making a living? Who does not see that their wages, social standing, and means of securing independence, would be far inferior to those ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... in the street how to spell certain words and the meaning of them. In this way he soon learned to read. The first and most important book owned by him was called the "Columbian Orator." He bought it with money secretly earned by blacking boots on the street. It contained selected passages from such great orators as Lord Chatham, William Pitt Fox, and Sheridan. These speeches were steeped in the sentiments of liberty, and were full of references ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... said Ferguson, "that pill-tenders and blacking manufacturers are most liberal to the editorial profession. I only wish jewellers and piano manufacturers were as free with their manufactures. I would like a good gold watch, and I shall soon want ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... I faint!" he exclaimed, turning up the whites of his eyes like a dying duck in a thunder-storm, and flinging himself so suddenly backwards into the arms of Harvey that the latter went down stern foremost, landing on the deck with one hand in the beef-kid and the other in the blacking-box, while Markham rolled on the top of him, kicking spasmodically, and simulating the feeble struggles ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... Giglio returned to his room, where the first thing he saw was the fairy bag lying on the table, which seemed to give a little hop as he came in. 'I hope it has some breakfast in it,' says Giglio, 'for I have only a very little money left.' But on opening the bag, what do you think was there? A blacking-brush and a pot of Warren's jet, and on ...
— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray
... leisurely walk, for he had no scruple in stopping wherever he saw anything in the streets or in the shop windows that seemed to him worthy of attention. About the corner of Canal Street he was very much surprised at a boy who was on his knees, blacking the boots of an elderly gentleman—a boy whom he recognized at once as the son of a man who had for years been in his father's employ as gardener ...
— Hector's Inheritance - or The Boys of Smith Institute • Horatio Alger
... become an institution in Galician hotels. The main street is pervaded by small boys selling Russian newspapers or making a good thing out of cleaning the high Russian military 'sapogee' (top boots). They get five cents for a penny paper and ninepence or a shilling for boot-blacking, but considering the mud of Galicia (I have been up to my boot tops—that is, up to my knees—in it), the charge is not too heavy, especially if the unusual dearness of living be taken ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... up and let in a frightfully ugly-looking spaniel called Bibbs, which had been scratching at the door. This dog also seemed to take a fancy to my boots, and I discovered afterwards that it had licked off every bit of blacking from them. I was positively ashamed of being seen in them. Mrs. Finsworth, who, I must say, is not much of a Job's comforter, said: "Oh! we are used to Bibbs doing ...
— The Diary of a Nobody • George Grossmith and Weedon Grossmith
... 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 wagon and walked around to him and put up my ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... and from sodium carbonate glass, soap, saleratus, baking- powders, and most alkalies are made directly or indirectly. H2SO4 is employed in bleaching, dyeing, printing, telegraphy, electroplating, galvanizing iron and wire, cleaning metals, refining Au and Ag, making alum, blacking, vitriols, glucose, mineral waters, ether, indigo, madder, nitroglycerine, gun- cotton, parchment, ...
— An Introduction to Chemical Science • R.P. Williams
... name was Minerva Anderson. She was three-fourths Indian, hair way down to her waist. I was in Hot Springs blacking boots when my mother died. I was only about eight or ten years old then. I always regretted I wasn't able to do anything for my mother before she died. I don't know to what tribe ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... you a bottle of blacking, Giglamps," said little Mr. Bouncer, as he directed our hero's attention to the stranger, "that this respected party is an intending Freshman. Look at his customary suits of solemn black, as Othello, ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... recollections of the 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 ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... the remark. The success of 'Leonidas' was probably one cause of the swarm of epics which appeared in the close of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century.—Cottle himself being, according to De Quincey, 'the author of four epic poems, and a new kind of blacking.' Their day seems now for ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... things, and a pretty place to bring a lady," he muttered, glancing ruefully around the room and enumerating the different articles he knew were out of place. "Fish worms, fishhooks, fishlines, bootjack, boot-blacking, and rifle, to say nothing ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... baby paws and tails that wagged unceasingly. At sight of the visitors, they deserted the now nearly empty bowl of food and galloped unsteadily towards them, squirming ecstatically over their feet and sampling the blacking on their boots with ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... 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 from ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... this business when, in an evil moment, I was induced to merge it in the Cur-Spattering—a somewhat analogous, but, by no means, so respectable a profession. My location, to be sure, was an excellent one, being central, and I had capital blacking and brushes. My little dog, too, was quite fat and up to all varieties of snuff. He had been in the trade a long time, and, I may say, understood it. Our general routine was this:—Pompey, having rolled himself well in the mud, sat upon end at the shop door, until he observed a dandy ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... mud, dust, leather, and blacking, we will now reascend to the higher localities of the human person, and will fasten ourselves round the reader's neck. Do not be alarmed, we only want to catch your attention; we will not extend the word to any ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... blacking!" cried the eccentric man as he heard the beating of drums, and the shouts of ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... you and that man plotting about?" he asked, abusing him as an idle young dog. "I'll give you work to do;" and Harry was sent to assist Bass in blacking ...
— The Voyage of the "Steadfast" - The Young Missionaries in the Pacific • W.H.G. Kingston
... Bates hasn't a soft heart at all; he's as unkind as can be; but he's as much above you, with all your softness, as light is above boot blacking." ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... 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 from the upper berth betrayed the fact that ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... 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
... he was confused, he said something about marriage and stopped. The room was filled with that subtle odour that brought his other life back to him in a torrent. He was bathed in it, overwhelmed by it—roast-beef, mutton, blacking, oil-cloth, decayed flowers, geraniums, damp stone, bread being toasted—all these ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... "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 me ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... sound of stumping steps coming 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 I, "and have snorers close by ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... 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 ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... decks, and in a short time had a 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 sorts, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the door. Everything was in wretched condition. Buttons and hooks were lacking; a heap of darning lay untouched; Lena's veil, with which she attempted to hide the ruin of her hat, was crumpled into the semblance of a rain-soaked cobweb; and her shoes had gone long without the reassurance of a good blacking. ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... was close, and for some reason smelled strongly of shoe blacking. Two gendarmes and the village police commissioner, Ryskin, their heavy tread resounding on the floor, removed the books from the shelves and put them on the table before the officer. Two others rapped on the walls with their fists, and looked under the chairs. One man ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky |
