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More "Blotch" Quotes from Famous Books



... relief and its long radiating spikes of dull red, bead-like flowers attract the brilliant sun-bird, and big blue and green and red butterflies. Even when the sea is lustrous the cavern, with all the artfulness and grace of the decorations of its portals, is a black blotch—the entrance to something unknowable and unknown—at least to the blacks. None had ever ventured near it and they never will. They tell you how it came to be made. How a long, long time ago, a big man, "all a same debil-debil," ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... snow there was a slippery crust, through which he broke. Where it ran past tall crags and between the trees, the snow was dry and loose as dust. They made something over two miles in the first hour and soon afterwards came to the mouth of a snowshed. The opening made a dark blotch on the glittering slope, for the roof was pitched at a very small angle to the declivity and the snow passed down hill over ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... grog-shop fight. His lip swollen with evil indulgences. Look out what you say to him. For a trifle he will take your life. Lower down and lower down, until, outcast of God and man, he lies in the alms-house, a blotch of loathsomeness and pain. Sometimes he calls out for God; and then for more drink. Now he prays; now curses. Now laughs as fiends laugh. Then bites his nails to the quick. Then runs both hands through the shock of hair that hangs about his head—like the ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... hiding there?" she said, stepping up and inspecting my bare arm. She found an ugly blotch. "Woe is me! A lamentation upon me!" she said, looking aghast. "Who ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... all around being white and the inner black. His general color is hoary ash, paler, almost white, below, giving out a slight iridescence in the sunshine; his wings are blackish, with white trimmings; his flanks are stained with salmon-red, and when his wings are spread, there appears a large blotch of scarlet at the inner angle of the intersection with the body. One individual that I afterwards saw wore a scarlet epaulet, which was almost concealed by the other plumes when the wing was closed, but was clearly seen when it was extended. An ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... white, are they * All worthy love I see: Black girls wear dark-brown lips;[FN364] * Whites, blotch of leprosy.' ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... squares are finished, but the fabric is rugged at the edges, where, with miraculous precision, the design is being followed, each tiny stitch the counterpart of its fellow. Unless this gross and formless blotch of sage green interferes or this disc of royal blue expands, the whole under surface of the stone may be covered with an orange coloured quilt as dainty as ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... beyond any that you would dream possible—See! Your sight reaches to that dim cloud of smoke in the south? And beneath it you can make out, perhaps, a vague blotch of shadow, or a tiny flash of brightness where the sun strikes it? New York! But I can see the great buildings, the domes, the spires, the crowded wharves, the tides of people whirling through the streets—and beyond that, the sea, with the ships coming and going! I can ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... producing a picture. The capability of putting in these last vital touches is acquired only by the labour of a life; and the probability is, that the artist who has not carefully trained himself beforehand, in attempting to produce a brilliant effect at a dash, will only produce a blotch. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... he thought of it the more ridiculous such a conclusion appeared, for it did not in the least explain the pony tethered without, which he plainly could see from where he stood within the shop, nor did it satisfactorily account for the blotch of blood upon his shoulder from a wound so fresh that the stain still was damp; nor for the sword which Joseph had buckled about his waist within Blentz's forbidding walls; nor for the arms and ammunition ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Cranceford knew that he must be in love; so did the Major, but he could not conjecture the object of so fervid a passion. But his wife had settled upon the object and was worried, though of her distress she had not spoken to Tom, so recent had been the discovery of the tell-tale blotch of ink. But she would as ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read

... inside the fence until the retreating sheep lost their individuality as blatting animals, ambling erratically here and there, while they moved toward the brow of the hill, and merged into a great, gray blotch against the faint green of the new grass—a blotch from which rose again that vibrant, sing-song humming of many voices mingled. Then they rode back down the coulee to their own work, taking it for granted that the trespassing was an incident which would not be repeated—by those particular ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower

... and thorough analysis by Governor Altgeld of that blotch on the American escutcheon verified the brutal frankness of Judge Gary. It was this that induced Altgeld to pardon the three Anarchists, thereby earning the lasting esteem of every liberty loving man ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... honest man; that should prejudge every question, traduce every opponent; that should give no quarter to fair inquiry or liberal sentiment; that should be "ugly all over with hypocrisy", and present one foul blotch of servility, intolerance, falsehood, spite, and ill-manners. The Quarterly Review ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... scars of wanton wars are vanished; And what blue bruises grappling Sense had left And sad remains of redder stains are banished, And the dim blotch of ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier

... slipped from his stool to the floor. His hands were at his head which rolled from side to side as if he were trying to quiet some agony. Dane stripped down the Medic's under tunic. There was no need to make a careful examination, in the hollow of Craig Tau's throat was the tell-tale red blotch. ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... the beach, where a tiny black blotch on the sand marked the dozen or more racing cars held ready for the start. Then when every one was waiting tense and silent—boom! came the muffled echo of the starting gun. —They're off! cried the crowd, and far, far down the beach the scouts could see the tiniest black speck coming ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump

... glanced back involuntarily over their shoulders into the dense blackness of the forest. At one point a single broad shaft of light slid down between two pines and cast a golden blotch upon their track. Save for this one vivid spot all was sombre ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle

... gazed at the prostrate body—the horrid red blotch like a gay ribbon in the white hair—he thought the small, insistent sound which seemed to fill the room was the beating of her heart. Then, as he listened, his ears attuned with fear, he knew it was the ticking of the watch in the hand of the ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele

... screen still glowed dimly and we could watch our green dot trying to make progress. The viewport was dead black at first, then there came the faintest sort of bronze blotch that very slowly shifted forward and down. The Old Moon, of course, going ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber

... time, he reappeared upon his original track, it was as a dark blotch, indistinguishable from a dozen other dark blots of moon-shadow, creeping forward belly-flat in the snow. This belly-creep, hugging always every available inch of cover, he kept up till he came to a big clearing, and—there were the reindeer. At least, there was one ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... rapid decline of the mercury, which was quickly succeeded by a subtle veiling of the sky, the clear, rich blue of which gradually changed to a uniform tint of dirty white, in the midst of which the sun hung a mere shapeless blotch. The light breeze that during the earlier part of the day had been fanning us along at a scant three knots, died away, leaving the surface of the sea oil-smooth and colourless, while the stagnant air grew so hot that we literally felt the heat of it in our ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood

... middle of the night, David became aware that Hamoud had entered the room without a sound, to watch him from the deepest mass of shadows. One could make out only the pale blotch that was his white skullcap, and the long pale streak that was the uncovered portion of his white under robe. The eyes, the expression of the face, were lost ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... about a hundred paces, keeping the cliff on our left, turned a shoulder, and saw, a few paces in front of us, a slight hollow, a black blotch in the grey duskiness of the cliff-side. The prisoner stopped, and, raising his bound hands, pointed ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman

... was a sure reward for you. Presently, a quarter of a mile away you would see a blinding splash or explosion of light on the water—a flash so sudden and so astonishingly brilliant that it would make you catch your breath; then that blotch of light would instantly extend itself and take the corkscrew shape and imposing length of the fabled sea-serpent, with every curve of its body and the "break" spreading away from its head, and the wake following behind its tail clothed in a fierce splendor ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... giving it a puffy or tumid appearance, like that caused by a blow from a large or blunt instrument. The parts soon became hot and tender to the touch; and this tenderness extended over the greater part of the scalp. A blotch, similar to those upon the exterior surface, was likewise observed within the mouth, covering the whole extent of the palate bones. The child experienced great difficulty in swallowing after the third day; ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various

... burrows between upper and under surface of leaf tissue, when made by larvae: they are linear, when they are narrow and only a little winding; serpentine, when they are curved or coiled, becoming gradually larger to a head-like end: trumpet-mines, when they start small and enlarge rapidly at tip; blotch mines, when they are irregular blotches tentiform, when the blotch mines throw the leaf into ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... and the bakers were shut up; and yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners, and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker's oven; where the pavement smoked as if its ...
— A Christmas Carol • Charles Dickens

... too, there was a moon, but only a pale silver one that peered weakly here and there through the scudding gray clouds. The air grew more thick and sultry day by day, the heat was sticky, the weather dripping, with the sun only an irregular whitish blotch in the sky. Through the open windows the heavy, damp night came miasmically floating in, the very cigarettes mildewed in my pockets. Earth and air seemed heavy and toil-bowed by comparison with other days. The jungle still hummed ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck

... lying upon his side; and a blotch of crimson colour conspicuous behind his cheek, marked the place where his ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... are the stalls of the itinerant batter-sellers. At these the tiny purchaser enjoys the evidently much appreciated privilege of himself arranging his little measure of batter in fantastic forms, and drying them upon a hot metal plate. A turtle is a favorite design, as the first blotch of batter makes its body, and six judiciously arranged smaller dabs soon suggest ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton

... tumbled down into the hole. His face showed a great gray blotch, and starting blood. Gale felt a sickening assurance of desperate injury to the ranger. He ran to him calling: ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey

... impossible for her to hurry, she drew the sheet from the crumpled envelope and smoothed it out. As she did so, she half turned away. But not so far that he could not see the dark, disfiguring blood stain her neck and blotch her cheek—even her ear grew crimson. She read deliberately, lingering over each word, but the instant she had finished, she crushed the paper to a ball, and threw it to the ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... her fingers loosened their grasp. He saw nothing save the dull flash of swirling waters and the amorphous blotch of hull. Slowly her hand tightened again; and then, as he looked he caught above the deck an impression of something moving. It seemed to be something that was revealing itself to the instinct rather than to ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... was seated on the lower step, touching his guitar, and facing Ida, who sat on the step above leaning back against a pillar. A blotch of moonlight fell upon her dreamy, upturned face. One hand lay in her lap, and the fingers of the other were idly playing with a tress of hair that had fallen over her bosom. How well Miss Ludington remembered ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy

... wagging his scrap of a tail was a small grey-brown dog. His coat was plastered with filth, upon one of his ears was a blotch of dried blood, his muzzle and paws might have been steeped in liquid soot. He ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates

... Medicine, a Decoction of the Bark, with two Drachms of the confectio cordiaca to each Half Pint, which he took by Spoonfuls. Next Day he complained of a Pain in his Leg; and, on examining it more particularly, I found a large livid Blotch, yellow all round the Edges, on the fore Part, and a Tension all over that Leg. As he was so extremely low, as to be in Danger of fainting whenever he sat up, I was afraid lest a Mortification should ensue; and therefore ordered his Leg to be bathed Morning and Evening ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro

... the wild indignation of a child in his eye. "D'ye think I'm a thafe to stale me own word? Hut! I'll break ye in two, ye wisp o' straw, if ye doubt me word to a lady. There's me note av hand, and ye shall have me fist on it, in writin', at Freddy Tarlton's office, wid a blotch av red an' the Queen's head at the bottom. McGuire!" he said again, and paused, puffing his lips through ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... fellow, with a red waistcoat, knee-breeches, and a round jacket of green cloth. His face was covered with carbuncles, some of them so large that his small pug-nose was nothing more in appearance than a larger blotch than the others. His eyes were small and keen, and his whiskers of a deep red. As soon as he entered the cabin, he very deliberately locked the ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... that he was in a forest with Denisov's guerrilla band, less than a mile from the road, sitting on a wagon captured from the French beside which horses were tethered, that under it Likhachev was sitting sharpening a saber for him, that the big dark blotch to the right was the watchman's hut, and the red blotch below to the left was the dying embers of a campfire, that the man who had come for the cup was an hussar who wanted a drink; but he neither knew nor waited to know anything of ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... not intend to return to civilization, and he never even looked back at that blotch on the face of ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey

... a one as though I had got my sap in the Maine forests. A plague of monarchs, say I. They are a blotch upon modern civilization. And I have here," he continued, tapping his pocket, "some letters writ to the Virginia printers, signed Demosthenes, which Mr. Randolph and Mr. Henry have commended. To speak truth, Richard, I am off to Congress with a portmanteau full of recommendations. And ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... tug waited until the blotch was centered in the crosshairs of his peeper and then punched the timer. When it came around again, he would be able to compute the angular ...
— Thin Edge • Gordon Randall Garrett

... ponies. The animals did not seem so tired now, but trotted on over the prairie. They drew nearer to the dark blotch Teddy had noticed. ...
— The Curlytops at Uncle Frank's Ranch • Howard R. Garis

... interloper she was seeking. She knew that she held in her fingers the secret of Francisco's sudden banishment. She felt instinctively that this yellowish envelope, with its red string and its blotch of red seal, was his sentence and her own. The little mestizo, had not been brought up to respect the integrity of either locks or seals, both being unknown in the patriarchal life of the hacienda. Yet with a certain ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... bravely when it rose to the surface, and, before its young master came up, it had regained the bank. But, alas! what a change! It went into the stream a fat, round, comfortable ball of eider-down. It came out—a scraggy blotch of white paint, with its black eyes glaring like two great glass beads! No sooner did it crawl out of the water than Bob Croaker seized it, and whirled it round his head, amid suppressed cries of "Shame!" intending to throw it ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... absorbed that they are oblivious of a group of Indians stalking down from right. The Indians draw near to Lincoln, and stand motionless, watching the dance, their beads and headgear glittering in the sun, their blankets a brilliant blotch of color against the green. When the dance ends, Lincoln and his companions are aware of the Indians. But the Indians, although their desire is to trade the skins and furs they are carrying, cross to left, feigning entire indifference, and seat themselves in ...
— Patriotic Plays and Pageants for Young People • Constance D'Arcy Mackay

... from his head. A glance showed him that it was disfigured by a great blotch of black grease. He had held his hat in his hand while talking to the girl, and it must have touched her car at a point where the axle of the dray had rubbed. So this was his one memento ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin

... afflicted city, prone from mark to mark In shameful occultation, seems A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting, With wavering gulfs and antic heights and shifting Rent in the stuff of a material dark Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale, Shows like the leper's living blotch of bale: Uncoiling monstrous into street on street Paven with perils, teeming with mischance, Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread, Working with oaths and threats and faltering feet Somewhither ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley

... D'Estang's lookout. Anne and Sara leaned forward and saw that a blundering sailing vessel—her dark sails a blotch against the sky, her hull invisible—was careening just ahead. She had no lights, and curses on the heads of coastwise skippers who take risks and place other vessels in jeopardy merely to save oil, swept through ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry

... house, as soon as any one in his house complaineth, either of blotch or purple, or swelling in any part of his body, or falleth otherwise dangerously sick, without apparent cause of some other disease, shall give knowledge thereof to the examiner of health within two hours after the ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe

... with a long shrill howl the man tore open the door, dashed from the house, and fled, a black blotch upon the whiteness of ...
— The Gathering of Brother Hilarius • Michael Fairless

... is seen, when I look directly eastward; but by an oblique glance southward (always from my library-window) the checkered farm-land is repeated in long perspective: here and there is a farm-house with its clustered out-buildings; here and there a blotch of wood, or of orcharding; here and there a bright sheen of winter-grain; and the level ends only where a slight fringe of tree-tops, and the iron cordon of a railway that leaps over a marshy creek upon trestle-work, separate it ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... strenuous times. Times that not alone tested the dignity and honor of men, but rocked them to their very foundations. Only the admittedly honest and honorable men survived the experiences of those days without blotch upon their escutcheons. It is naturally to be presumed that the minds of those who passed through those days of reconstruction recall many deeds of heroism, of sacrifices made upon the altar of duty. Each has the surmounting of his individual ...
— The Spirit of 1906 • George W. Brooks

... cracks and crevices of that fine edifice, and proved the power of the soul over the body; for the fair and dainty man, the cavalier, the young blood, died when hope deserted him. Until then the nose of the chevalier was ever delicate and nice; never had a damp black blotch, nor an amber drop fall from it; but now that nose, smeared with tobacco around the nostrils, degraded by the driblets which took advantage of the natural gutter placed between itself and the upper lip,—that nose, which no longer cared ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... Bloat sxveli. Block (pulley) rulbloko. Block (log) sxtipo. Blockade blokado. Blockhead malsagxulo. Blond blonda. Blood sango. Bloodshed sangversxo—ado. Bloodvessel sangvejno. Bloom flori. Blossom flori. Blot makulo. Blotch skabio. Blotting paper sorba papero. Blow (stroke) bato. Blow blovi. Blouse kitelo. Blow (of flowers) ekflori. Bludgeon bastonego. Blue blua. Bluish dubeblua. Blunder erarego. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... trace of the dogs, save a blotch or two of blood upon the rough bark of the log, and that was not visible from the shore. Unless there were other dogs to guide them to the spot, the men might not in the darkness so easily discover these marks. We might yet ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... in a short-legged reed chair, with a grip-sack open on his knees. His coat and vest were off, and the light from the oil lamp at his side made his linen shirt a blotch ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer

... between the rafters, the wild indignation of a child in his eye. "D'ye think I'm a thafe to stale me own word? Hut! I'll break ye in two, ye wisp o' straw, if ye doubt me word to a lady. There's me note av hand, and ye shall have me fist on it, in writin', at Freddy Tarlton's office, wid a blotch av red an' the Queen's head at the bottom. McGuire!" he said again, and paused, puffing his lips ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... almost to a level with the prairie. He crossed this opening like a snake, and then arose to his knees beyond, where the gully deepened. He remained poised, motionless, scarcely daring to breathe. Surely that was something else—that shapeless blotch of shadow, barely topping the line of bank! Was it ten feet away? Or five? He could not tell. He stared; there was no movement, and yet his eyes began to discern dimly the outlines—the head and shoulders of a man! The Sergeant crept forward—an inch, two inches, a foot. The figure did not ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish

... in the middle of the night, David became aware that Hamoud had entered the room without a sound, to watch him from the deepest mass of shadows. One could make out only the pale blotch that was his white skullcap, and the long pale streak that was the uncovered portion of his white under robe. The eyes, the expression of the ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman

... his front for a moment, flung muzzle over the parapet and butt to shoulder, and snapped a quick shot at one of the darker blotches that lay prone beyond the outer tangles of wire. The blotch jerked and sprawled, and the look-out shouted, slipped out the catch of his magazine cut-off, and pumped out the rounds as fast as fingers could work bolt and trigger, the stabbing flashes of the discharge lighting with sharp vivid glares his tense features, set teeth, and scowling eyes. There was ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable

... the D'Estang's lookout. Anne and Sara leaned forward and saw that a blundering sailing vessel—her dark sails a blotch against the sky, her hull invisible—was careening just ahead. She had no lights, and curses on the heads of coastwise skippers who take risks and place other vessels in jeopardy merely to save oil, swept through the ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry

... and dark spots, are made plain, the observer is deeply impressed with the strangeness of the spectacle, and the more so as he reflects upon the enormous real magnitude of that which is spread before his eye. The whole earth flattened out would be but a small blotch ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss

... Scotland Yard for teaching idiot policemen Egyptology! Do I know them? When I have carried them about my body, in the desert, for three months; and lay awake night after night to watch them! When I have looked them over with a magnifying-glass, hour after hour, till my eyes ached; till every tiny blotch, and chip, and dinge became as familiar to me as his chart to a captain; as familiar as they doubtless have been all the time to every thick-headed area-prowler within the bounds of mortality. See here, young man, look at these!" He ranged the lamps in a row on the top of the ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... ground, The Kid saw, when he urged his horse closer, was the body of a man, face down and arms flung out. A blotch of red on the blue of the shirt told the significant story—a bullet had got in its deadly work. Dismounting, the Texan found that the man was dead and had met with his wound probably twenty-four hours before. There was nothing with which ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... So far as I am concerned, I am willing to take my chance. Look! What is that cloud?" and he pointed to a dark blotch upon the starry sky, some miles astern ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard

... insignificant between them. A slight tobacco stain in one corner of his mouth did not increase his attractions to Edith, and she positively shrank from the expression of his small, cunning black eyes. He was dressed both showily and shabbily, and a great breastpin was like a blotch upon his rumpled shirt-bosom. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... soul over the body; for the fair and dainty man, the cavalier, the young blood, died when hope deserted him. Until then the nose of the chevalier was ever delicate and nice; never had a damp black blotch, nor an amber drop fall from it; but now that nose, smeared with tobacco around the nostrils, degraded by the driblets which took advantage of the natural gutter placed between itself and the upper lip,—that nose, which no longer cared to seem agreeable, revealed the ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac

... uneasiness; one stepped outside to cough, another suddenly attacked the fire and poked it savagely, Buffle impolitely turned his back to the company, while the fourth man lost himself in the contemplation of the king of spades, which card ever afterward showed in its centre a blotch which seemed the result of a drop of water. Finally Buffle broke ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners, and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker's oven, where the pavement smoked as if its stones were ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various

... Tower of Babel in the near distance; to guard against any too-imposing effect which the outline of the Houses of Parliament might have by covering them with minute ornament, sure to be blackened and corroded into one vast blotch by smoke; to collect the art wonders of Pigtail Place; to make the lions in Trafalgar Square lie like cats on a hearth-rug, instead of supporting themselves on a slope by muscular action, like the lions at Genoa; to perch a colossal equestrian statue ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... there is a little matter which may have escaped the police, may even have escaped you. To that I would now call your attention since through it I have been enabled, after a little necessary groping, to reach the open. You remember the one large blotch on the upper floor where the man dropped the wallet? That blotch, more or less commingled with a fainter one, possessed great significance for me from the first moment I saw it. How came his foot to bleed so much more profusely at that one spot than at any other? There could ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green

... it all feasting and merrymaking. A heroic band it was that battled with the wilderness, riding the range with heat and cold, starvation and death, and making small pin-pricks in that empty blotch of the United States map that is marked "Great Alkali Desert" blossom into settlements. When the last word has been said about the pioneers of these United States, let the cow-boy be remembered in the universal toast, that bronzed son of the saddle who lived his ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning

... wide-awake enough all through to profit by suggestions. I let her see a blotch of ink on my finger, and she said that I was a writer.... Except the guess about my sister Helen, who is alive, there was not a single guess which was nearly right. Mrs. Piper is not anaesthetic during the so-called trance, and if you ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang

... heart took up its halting labors, then began to race, faster and faster, until he felt himself smothering; his frame was swept with tremors. Then the raucous voices grew louder and louder, mounting into a roar, as if he were coming out from a swoon, and all the time that red blotch grew until he could see no other color; it blurred the room and the quarreling gamblers; it steeped the very air. He was still deathly sick, as only those men are whose blood sours, whose bones and muscles disintegrate at the touch ...
— The Net • Rex Beach

... made so invisible by his wonderful colour that, when he crouches in the bright sunlight amid the tall brown grass, it is almost impossible to see him. But the zebra and the giraffe are the kings of all camouflagers! So deceptive are the large blotch-spots of the giraffe and his weird head and horns, like scrubby limbs, that his concealment is perfect. Even the cleverest natives often mistake a herd of giraffes for a clump of trees. The camouflage of zebras is equally deceptive. Drummond says that he once found himself in a forest, ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... effort of will, he aroused himself and looked. To his eyesight, twisted and fixed to a shorter focus by the drug he had taken, the steamship was little more than a blotch on the moon-whitened fog; yet he thought he could see men clambering and working on the upper davits, and the nearest boat—No. 24—seemed to be swinging by the tackles. Then the fog shut her out, though her position was still indicated by the roaring of ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... made by larvae: they are linear, when they are narrow and only a little winding; serpentine, when they are curved or coiled, becoming gradually larger to a head-like end: trumpet-mines, when they start small and enlarge rapidly at tip; blotch mines, when they are irregular blotches tentiform, when the blotch mines throw the leaf into a fold on ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... this was the ancient corridor by which the men-at-arms passed from the guardhouse to the other rampart. Sixty-two steps down he counted, and then he reached a level, where he paused a moment to look at the vague blotch of gray which was the starlight. Even with eyes that had now grown accustomed to the darkness he could see nothing, and so deeming himself safe from observation, he struck a match, which struggled a moment against the foul air and then went out. But in the brief moment of partial ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... the darkness a little while, there was a sure reward for you. Presently, a quarter of a mile away you would see a blinding splash or explosion of light on the water—a flash so sudden and so astonishingly brilliant that it would make you catch your breath; then that blotch of light would instantly extend itself and take the corkscrew shape and imposing length of the fabled sea-serpent, with every curve of its body and the "break" spreading away from its head, and the wake following behind its tail ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... however, almost immediately saw a tremendous disturbance of the water just below the spot where Roger had disappeared; and presently a broad blotch of red stained the blue water of the inlet, while a deep groan went up from the assembled crowd on deck. But the groan quickly changed to a mighty cheer as they saw Roger's form appear again at some considerable distance nearer ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... concluded rotation on an axis in a period of 24 hours 4 minutes. The first determination of the kind rewarded twenty years of unceasing vigilance. It received ostensible confirmation from the successive appearances of a dusky streak and blotch in May and June, 1801.[814] These, however, were inferred to be no permanent markings on the body of the planet, but atmospheric formations, the streak at times drifting forwards (it was thought) under the fluctuating influence of Mercurian breezes. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... short and broad, with a great width of shoulders, and very long arms. He was clad in a peajacket, blue serge trousers, and jack-boots. He had a big, round, brutal head, covered with a tangled mass of yellow hair, but where his face ought to have been there was only a blotch, underlying which Mrs. Gordon detected the semblance to something fiendishly vindictive and immeasurably nasty. But, in spite of the horror his appearance produced, her curiosity was aroused with ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell

... and misty, and by the time breakfast was over a north wind was raging—a furnace-like blast that bore off the sandy deserts of the interior. The sun was a yellow blotch in a copper sky; the thermometer had leapt to a hundred and ten in the shade. Blinding clouds of coarse, gritty dust swept house-high through the streets: half-suffocated, Mahony fought his way along, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... for them. They saw him in glimpses as he fled from one grassy patch to another, or burst out of a leafy thicket, the great beard streaming over his shoulders like studding-sails, the red turban of calico a vivid blotch of color. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine

... general reckoning, they were mid-way between island and continent. They were all wide awake, too weary and miserable to sleep. Suddenly a fog-horn smote the oppressive gloom. It drew near. A huge blotch crossed their bows. They could feel it rather than see it. They heard some order given in a foreign language, and ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... a blotch of ugly guise On some poor artist's naked floor Becomes a picture in his eyes, And he forgets that he is poor,— So I look out upon the night, That ushers in the dawning year, And in a vacant blur of light I ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley

... Steve had gone back up the hill before Garry Devereau reached out a hand in the darkness and touched, experimentally, what had seemed to be only a shapeless black blotch at the edge of light, a rod or two from the door. And instantly at his touch the shadow was galvanized into life. It reared and plunged and enveloped the slighter man in a crushing embrace and bore him over backward. With the muzzle of a revolver ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans

... according to the wise provision of Rule 10, defied by the late jailer for an obvious reason. Thus in an hour after the body of Hawes had passed through that gate a firm and adroit hand was wiping his gloomy soul out of the cells as we wipe a blotch of ink off a ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade

... windy: presently it blew so strong, that he could hardly keep his legs. But, he got to an arched window in the tower, breast high, and holding tight, looked down upon the house-tops, on the smoking chimneys, on the blur and blotch of lights (towards the place where Meg was wondering where he was and calling to him perhaps), all kneaded up together in a ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens

... surmised—the lights of the boats had been sighted by the eager look-outs aboard her. Then her mast-head light came into view, followed, a little later, by her port and starboard side lights; and at length the dark, scarcely discernible blotch that represented her hull lengthened out suddenly, revealing a long triple tier of brightly gleaming ports; and a few seconds later the roar of steam escaping as her engines stopped, reached the ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... gurgling mountain brook, I soon caught sight of the little triller, and found that, so far as I could distinguish them with my field-glass, his markings were just like those of his eastern relative—the same mottled breast, with the large dusky blotch in the centre. ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... a high-walled coulee where the evening shadows were mustering for their stealthy raid on the gilded uplands, we circled a grove of rustling poplars and jerked our horses up short at sight of a scarlet blotch among ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... his thumb, as if she was afraid of losing him there in the blackness that lay about them like a great ink-blotch. And she crept closer to him, saying nothing, and all the power in his soul fought in Jolly Roger to keep him from putting his arms about her slim little body and crying out the worship ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... and he reached the Major a folded paper, sealed with a blotch of wax as red as blood. He opened ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... Day; and, by Way of Medicine, a Decoction of the Bark, with two Drachms of the confectio cordiaca to each Half Pint, which he took by Spoonfuls. Next Day he complained of a Pain in his Leg; and, on examining it more particularly, I found a large livid Blotch, yellow all round the Edges, on the fore Part, and a Tension all over that Leg. As he was so extremely low, as to be in Danger of fainting whenever he sat up, I was afraid lest a Mortification should ensue; and therefore ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro

... approached, Paul was seated on the lower step, touching his guitar, and facing Ida, who sat on the step above leaning back against a pillar. A blotch of moonlight fell upon her dreamy, upturned face. One hand lay in her lap, and the fingers of the other were idly playing with a tress of hair that had fallen over her bosom. How well Miss Ludington remembered that attitude, and ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy

... perhaps a minute there was no sight nor sound but the lapping water of the lagoon. Then he became aware of a whiteness drifting close, and heard a familiar voice whispering his name. "Jeremy—Jeremy—it's Job!" said the white blotch. It bumped softly along the side, and at last the boy could see the homely features of his old friend, pale through the gloom. There was a loose rope-end dragging over the side, and Job's hand feeling along the woodwork came in contact ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader

... a canyon where alders, cottonwoods and quaking aspens may not be found. In 1913 either the lack of water, some adverse climatic condition, or some fungus blight caused the aspen leaves to blotch and fall from the trees as early as the beginning of September. As a rule they remain until late in October, changing to autumnal tints of every richness and hue and reminding one of the glorious hues of the eastern ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... surrounded by rusted railings, or flowed down triple layers with a ceaseless murmur. Water everywhere,—in the air, in the ground, whispering, icy, adding to the cold impression of the landscape, where the sun seemed a red blotch ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... hump-backed blotch, that was sprawling blackly beside a misshapen block, was either wriggling on the floor as if trying to stand upright . . . or else there was something wrong with ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce

... rather tender shrub, growing in favourable situations to about 4 feet in height. It has lanceolate leaves that are glutinous above, and thickly covered with a whitish tomentum on the under sides, and large and showy vhite flowers with a conspicuous purple blotch at the base of each petal. Unless in southern and western England, but particularly on the sea-coast, this handsome Portuguese shrub is not to be depended on, in so far as hardihood ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster

... it was neither the sight of the man lying there, apparently dead, nor the agonized expression of his face, which caused both the Ambassador and Duvall to start back with exclamations of surprise. Across the man's lips was a great, dull-red blotch, which at first appeared to be a clot of blood, but which seemed, from its circular form and regular contour, more like a huge seal. And seal it was. Duvall, dropping on one knee beside the body, felt for the man's heart, at the same time looking closely at the mark upon his lips. He was quite ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks

... Why you maul-headed, misshapen blotch on the face o' nature, what do you mean by callin' this dog a cur! I never saw this dog before to-day; but I'll bet ten to one that I can find out who his great-great-grandfather's great-great-grandfather was; an' I doubt if you know who your ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason

... of the class Gynandria, or masculine ladies. The pistil, or female part of the flower, rises like a club, is covered above or clothed, as it were, by the anthers or males; and some of the species have a large scarlet blotch in the middle ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin

... band is bordered on both sides with black, and has a sinus about the middle; cilia fulvous; posterior wing with a black spot near the outer angle: below, the wings are white, except the cilia of the anterior, and a large blotch, red anteriorly, black posteriorly, near the outer angle; head rufous; antennae fuscous; thorax and abdomen white, the former with the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... seen, when I look directly eastward; but by an oblique glance southward (always from my library-window) the checkered farm-land is repeated in long perspective: here and there is a farm-house with its clustered out-buildings; here and there a blotch of wood, or of orcharding; here and there a bright sheen of winter-grain; and the level ends only where a slight fringe of tree-tops, and the iron cordon of a railway that leaps over a marshy creek upon trestle-work, separate it from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... scurrying to cover, looks up and sees a thunderstorm impending; immediately he is struck by lightning and knocked down in the street; but he finds he can rise and walk home, and seems to have suffered no harm except for a black blotch around one eye. Now, any man who could take lightning that way would be proud to wear the scar. So the dream was wish-fulfilling, and the wish involved was, as ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... rock or with hard incrustations of lime, but at this particular point there had been a drip from the distant roof, which had left a patch of soft mud. In the very centre of this there was a huge mark—an ill-defined blotch, deep, broad and irregular, as if a great boulder had fallen upon it. No loose stone lay near, however, nor was there anything to account for the impression. It was far too large to be caused by any possible animal, and besides, there was ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... come." Furlong opened his eyes. "I have come to wash the stain!" said she, tapping her fingers in a theatrical manner on the table, and, as it happened, she pointed to a large blotch of ink on the table- cover. Furlong opened his eyes wider than ever, and thought this the queerest bit of madness he ever heard of; however, thinking it best to humour her, he answered, "Yes, it was a little awkwa'dness of mine—I upset ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover

... row of icicles hung from the roof of the corner store, irregular and stained from the shingles above, like an ugly set of ill-kept teeth, dripping disconsolately on the sidewalk below, and making there a bumpy blotch of unsightly ice! ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... "So was Nicholas Weaver, who managed the Brooklyn business for Holland & Mack. Who John Stumpy can be I do not know. Perhaps I would if I saw him face to face. There was another man— he was quite bald, with a red blotch on the front of his hand— who was brought forward by Woodward to prove that he had nothing to do with the presentation of the forged checks and notes, but what his name was ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer

... In brief I tell thee, that all these were clerks, Men of great learning and no less renown, By one same sin polluted in the world. With them is Priscian, and Accorso's son Francesco herds among that wretched throng: And, if the wish of so impure a blotch Possess'd thee, him thou also might'st have seen, Who by the servants' servant was transferr'd From Arno's seat to Bacchiglione, where His ill-strain'd nerves he left. I more would add, But must from farther speech and onward way Alike desist, for yonder I behold A mist new-risen on the sandy ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri

... the pure overflowing of la belle passion, all about Venus, Cupids, bows and arrows, hearts, darts, and them things, which, having copied neatly over on a handsome sheet of foolscap, turned up with gilt, (for, though I say it myself, I scribble a smart fist,) I made a blotch of red wax on the back as large as a dollar, that thereon I might the more indelibly impress a seal, with a couple of pigeons cooing upon it, and 'toujours wotre' for the motto. This I popped into the post-office, and waited patiently—may I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various

... Once he pulled up as if he would go back, but he thought better of it. It was out of the question to turn those cattle loose. He could not kill them and dispose of the bodies—not when there were seven of them. He might go down and blotch the brands so that they would not read anything at all. He had thought of that before and decided against it. That would put those three on their guard and would probably not benefit him in the long run. They could work the brands on ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower

... kitten was no ordinary animal. Its little heart beat bravely when it rose to the surface, and, before its young master came up, it had regained the bank. But, alas! what a change! It went into the stream a fat, round, comfortable ball of eider-down. It came out—a scraggy blotch of white paint, with its black eyes glaring like two great glass beads! No sooner did it crawl out of the water than Bob Croaker seized it, and whirled it round his head, amid suppressed cries of "Shame!" intending to throw it in again; but at that ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... their clothing was rent into tatters from cuts and slashes apart from the wash of the water, which had, of course, swept away most of the blood that had probably flowed from the wounds, although there was a large dark blotch on the deck close to the after hatch, testifying that some gory pool had ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... in defaming every honest man; that should prejudge every question, traduce every opponent; that should give no quarter to fair inquiry or liberal sentiment; that should be "ugly all over with hypocrisy", and present one foul blotch of servility, intolerance, falsehood, spite, and ill-manners. The Quarterly ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... flash-light of our camping ground. It was a little blurry, but some of the objects were quite clear. Our tent was a white blotch except for the outlines; the wagons showed plainly. I didn't think much of it as a picture, so I paid scant attention. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy gave it close scrutiny; presently she said, "Oh, yis, I see what it is. It's a puzzle picture and ye find the man. Here he is, hidin' beyont the pine ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... masses, on which the effect of the whole more immediately depends; or he may give the latter, viz. the proportions and arrangement of the larger parts and the general masses of light and shade, and leave all the minuter parts of which those parts are composed a mere blotch, one general smear, like the first crude and hasty getting in of the groundwork of a picture: he may do either of these, or he may combine both, that is, finish the parts, but put them in their right places, and keep them in due subordination to the general effect and massing of the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... absently. The fire was smoking over a low, red glow of coals, the chimney-place yawned black before him, the hearth was all strewn with pots and kettles, and the shelf above it was piled high with a vague household litter. It had leaked around the chimney, and there was a great discolored blotch on the wall above the shelf, and the ceiling. Two or three hens came pecking around the ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... up and went to the door, and stood looking down the dusk-muffled hill to the white blotch which was the camp; listened to the jumble of voices still upraised in fruitless argument, and ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower

... no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment. More than once as we sat around the table, my eyes opened in wonder whether the whole of the past days had not been a dream. It was only when I caught sight of the red blotch on Mrs. Harker's forehead that I was brought back to reality. Even now, when I am gravely revolving the matter, it is almost impossible to realize that the cause of all our trouble is still existent. Even Mrs. Harker seems to lose sight of her trouble for whole spells. It ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... down the beach. He saw through the rain and mist a crowd of yellow-suited figures approaching, dragging something along the sand. He looked out to sea and beheld the blotch that represented the doomed vessel. All thought of the man at the hut was, for the time, ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis

... a small leather pouch stained with a blotch of reddish brown. His big, clumsy fingers could hardly undo the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs

... form the relief and its long radiating spikes of dull red, bead-like flowers attract the brilliant sun-bird, and big blue and green and red butterflies. Even when the sea is lustrous the cavern, with all the artfulness and grace of the decorations of its portals, is a black blotch—the entrance to something unknowable and unknown—at least to the blacks. None had ever ventured near it and they never will. They tell you how it came to be made. How a long, long time ago, a big man, "all a same debil-debil," took out with his mighty fingers a plug of rock and put it ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... respects, than the common Dwarf variety of Tropaeolum majus; the stem rarely measuring more than two feet in length, or rising above a foot in height. The flowers are yellow; the lower petals with a blotch of scarlet at their base, and the upper ones delicately striped ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... her, clumsy as a playful bear. His eyes followed the direction of hers to where a cloud shadow lay across the slope, heavy, palpable, untransparent, like a blotch of ink. ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... are such dreary liars. Our one idea is to lie to ourselves. We have an ideal of a perfect world, clean and straight and sufficient. So we cover the earth with foulness; life is a blotch of labour, like insects scurrying in filth, so that your collier can have a pianoforte in his parlour, and you can have a butler and a motor-car in your up-to-date house, and as a nation we can sport the Ritz, or the Empire, Gaby Deslys and ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence

... man's executioner for his sentence on himself. I could not fight you now." His eye fell by chance upon the blotch in Law's bloodstained tunic. "And here," he said; "see! You ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... more hops brought it opposite to my post of observation. Here it halted as though it seemed to see me. At any rate it sat up in the alert fashion that hares have, its forepaws hanging absurdly in front of it, with one ear, on which there was a grey blotch, cocked and one dragging, and sniffed with its funny little nostrils. Then it began to talk to me. I do not mean that it really talked, but the thoughts which were in its mind were flashed on to my mind so that I understood perfectly, yes, and could answer them in ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard

... the right fore-hoof," he whispered again presently; "nothing but that," pointing to another dark red blotch, which the boys would ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook

... where there's a kind of blotch, is the twins; they must be fighting. Don, the dog, 's mixed up ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson

... watched him go. From a street corner, where he stopped in the shadow of a tree, Sam could see them there, the wind swinging the lantern in Freedom's hand and the slender little old wife making a white blotch against ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson

... by Governor Altgeld of that blotch on the American escutcheon verified the brutal frankness of Judge Gary. It was this that induced Altgeld to pardon the three Anarchists, thereby earning the lasting esteem of every liberty loving man and ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman

... Vecchio: this time he had not betrayed himself by look or movement, and he said inwardly that he should not be taken by surprise again; he should be prepared to see this face rise up continually like the intermittent blotch that comes in diseased vision. But this reappearance of Baldassarre so much more in his own likeness tightened the pressure of dread the idea of his madness lost its likelihood now he was shaven and clad like a decent ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... reining often to look toward Clark's. Midway of the eastern ridge was a long, buff blotch—the crossing of the coulee road. Would a horse and rider pass across that spot to-day? Probably not. A wave of loneliness and of undeserved injury swept her, welling ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates

... I wish I could convey to the reader the associations that attach to these soil'd and creas'd livraisons, each composed of a sheet or two of paper, folded small to carry in the pocket, and fasten'd with a pin. I leave them just as I threw them by after the war, blotch'd here and there with more than one blood-stain, hurriedly written, sometimes at the clinique, not seldom amid the excitement of uncertainty, or defeat, or of action, or getting ready for it, or a march. Most of the pages from 20 to 75 are verbatim ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... was April, and the day was blithe, with no blotch in the sky. The country was rough, the road was pebbly in the bottoms and flinty on the hills, but there was a leaping joy everywhere; in the woods where the blue-jays were shouting, down the branch where the woodpecker tapped in an oak tree's sounding board. It must have been ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read

... his arm, which he held stretched out. Several fingers were wrapped up, the others, which were not injured, were covered with a crust of dirt and blood. But on his coat, on the back, there was a large brown blotch of blood, a very large one, covering almost half of his back and in the midst of the soft cloth it bulged stiffly as if starched. And this horrible spot told the simple story of the battle and the wound. But it was not the stain that made him so peculiarly conspicuous—other ...
— The Shield • Various

... the itinerant batter-sellers. At these the tiny purchaser enjoys the evidently much appreciated privilege of himself arranging his little measure of batter in fantastic forms, and drying them upon a hot metal plate. A turtle is a favorite design, as the first blotch of batter makes its body, and six judiciously arranged smaller dabs soon suggest its head, ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton

... seen the effect of Olaf's shot, and following the Swede's instructions aimed for his man in the nearest group behind the main line. He did not instantly see the result, as a puff of smoke shut out his vision, but a moment later, aiming again, he saw a dark blotch left in the snow. From his end of the crevice Olaf had seen the man go down, and he grunted his approbation. There were five of the groups bearing tree trunks for battering-rams, and on one of these Philip concentrated the six shots in his rifle. Four of the tree-bearers ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood

... were to keep a proper Distance between their Lines and hatched Works, so as to produce a clean Impression ... I saw the Almanack in a horrid Condition before I left Paris, the Signs of the Zodiack wore like a Blotch, notwithstanding the utmost Care and Diligence the Printer used to take up very little ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen

... breasts. Once, however, he took careful aim at a white face which lay against the breech of a rifle leveled at him. He aimed for the white space between the eyes quite as coolly as though he were facing a target. Yet he jumped a little in surprise as, following his report, he saw a blotch of red appear where he had aimed—saw it for just a second before the man reeled forward heavily and sunk as ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... of you! And what is that enormous blotch right in the middle of the country, which looks like London and ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler

... wild-eyed, almost out of control. Cookie jumped for its bridle as Hahn slumped sidewise in the saddle, clutched for the horn, missed it and was falling when Plimsoll caught him and helped him to the wall of the cabin where he leaned weakly. A blotch of blood showed ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn

... blotches of various forms. A representation of this eruption is given in Colored Plate III, Fig. 17. It is appropriately named nettle-rash, from its resemblance to the irritation caused by the sting of a nettle. There is the same sharp, tingling sensation and a similar white wheal or blotch, caused by the muscular spasm of the corium, a layer of ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce

... pointing to a spot in the icy wall which was nearest to the vessel. Instantly every eye was turned that way. They saw a very distinct, irregular blotch, surrounded by almost ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton

... liquid always possess when they fall from a considerable height. Besides I had heard and seen it fall. I put the book down on the table and looked upward at the ceiling. There was nothing visible there save the grey dirt of years. I looked closely at the hideous blotch, and saw it rapidly soaking and widening its way into the paper, already softened with age. As, of course, after this incident I was not inclined to continue my studies of Addison and Steele, I shut the volume and replaced it on ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford

... smooth lawn stretched like a fine green carpet, its shadowed patches yet bright with dew. There were the tall elms and the copper beech and all the proud company of spreading giants—what were five years to them? There was the clump of rhododendrons, a ragged blotch of crimson, seemingly spilled upon the green turf, and there the close box hedge that walled away the rose-garden. Beyond the sunk fence a gap showed an acre or so of Bull's Mead—a great deep meadow, ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates

... a rainbow flash. It could not be he from whom the ball had rebounded, and with sickening dread I realized that Lloyd Inwood had come upon the scene. To make sure, I looked for his shadow, and there it was, a shapeless blotch the girth of his body, (the sun was overhead), moving along the ground. I remembered his threat, and felt sure that all the long years of rivalry were about to ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... that time of night to make anything but a black blotch out of the Abbie Rose. Of course I could see that she was pot-bellied, like the rest of the coastwise sisterhood. And that McCord had not stowed his topsails. I could make them out, pursed at the mastheads and hanging down as far as the cross-trees, like huge, over-ripe pears. Then I recollected ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various

... and was speaking of manifesting himself to his disciples, when he was interrupted by another question. This time it was Judas who spoke. "Not Iscariot," St. John is careful to say, for the name of Iscariot was now blotted with the blotch of treason. He had gone out into the night, and was of the disciple family no more. Judas could not understand in what special and exclusive manner Jesus would manifest himself to his own. Perhaps he expected some setting apart ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... she gasped. "I remember now! I saw it—a blotch of red—lying on the floor beside my father's chair! How did it get there, Mr. Lester? Had he been there? Did he follow us?" She stopped again, as she saw the look in Goldberger's eyes, and then the look in mine. With a long, indrawn breath of horror, she ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson

... shall be finished in perfection; in the perfection of perfections!" cried mademoiselle; and to confirm her promise, she deposited a rosy blotch in the ...
— The American • Henry James

... but all the time it was shelling the open boats, three of them, loaded to the gunwales with survivors. Fortunately the small boats presented a rather poor target, which, combined with the bad marksmanship of the Germans preserved their occupants from harm; and after a few minutes a blotch of smoke appeared upon the eastern horizon and the ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... start with; and about noon the sky, which had been clear during the earlier part of the day, had gradually become veiled by a thick haze through which the sun revealed himself with ever-increasing difficulty merely as a shapeless blotch of whiteness in the midst of the haze before vanishing altogether. Then the wind fell, the atmosphere became so oppressively close that the mere act of breathing became difficult, and a great silence fell upon the scene, for the insects and birds, warned by instinct of what was impending, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... scalding to death, and instead of taking care of himself, turned about to save her. But before he could reach her, she had darted through the bar-room door and disappeared—without so much as a blotch of tallow ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May

... the lights were on the ground and at least ten miles away. Gradually I got control of myself and tried to find the aerodrome we had just left; it was nowhere to be seen. There was a network of white threads on a black background, an occasional winding silver ribbon with here and there a silver blotch and queer-shaped blacker blacknesses on the general blackness; these were roads, rivers, lakes, and woods as they looked from the ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece

... the horseman to be Irish, Weary drove in his spurs and galloped forward. Ten leaps perhaps he made, when a rifle shot came sharply ahead. He glanced down and saw horse and rider lying, a blotch of indefinable shape, in the trail. Weary drew his own gun and went on, his teeth set tight together. Now, when it was too late, he understood thoroughly ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... being white and the inner black. His general color is hoary ash, paler, almost white, below, giving out a slight iridescence in the sunshine; his wings are blackish, with white trimmings; his flanks are stained with salmon-red, and when his wings are spread, there appears a large blotch of scarlet at the inner angle of the intersection with the body. One individual that I afterwards saw wore a scarlet epaulet, which was almost concealed by the other plumes when the wing was closed, but was clearly seen when it was extended. An orange or scarlet gem adorns the crown, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... edifice, and proved the power of the soul over the body; for the fair and dainty man, the cavalier, the young blood, died when hope deserted him. Until then the nose of the chevalier was ever delicate and nice; never had a damp black blotch, nor an amber drop fall from it; but now that nose, smeared with tobacco around the nostrils, degraded by the driblets which took advantage of the natural gutter placed between itself and the upper lip,—that nose, which no longer cared to seem agreeable, revealed the infinite ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac

... his isle, it seemed Death's Gates indeed burst open. The night yawned Like a foul wound. Black shapes of the outer dark Poured out of forests older than the world; And, just as reptiles that take form and hue, Speckle and blotch, in strange assimilation From thorn and scrub and stone and the waste earth Through which they crawl, so that almost they seem The incarnate spirits of their wilderness, Were these most horrible kindred of the night. Aeonian glooms unfathomable, grim aisles, Grotesque, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes

... any that you would dream possible—See! Your sight reaches to that dim cloud of smoke in the south? And beneath it you can make out, perhaps, a vague blotch of shadow, or a tiny flash of brightness where the sun strikes it? New York! But I can see the great buildings, the domes, the spires, the crowded wharves, the tides of people whirling through the streets—and beyond that, the ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke

... getting the barrels of pork and oil and flour into the store, and by the time they had emptied the wagon the room was dark, so dark that the white face of the awed woman could be seen only as a blotch of ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland

... Babel in the near distance; to guard against any too-imposing effect which the outline of the Houses of Parliament might have by covering them with minute ornament, sure to be blackened and corroded into one vast blotch by smoke; to collect the art wonders of Pigtail Place; to make the lions in Trafalgar Square lie like cats on a hearth-rug, instead of supporting themselves on a slope by muscular action, like the lions at Genoa; to perch a colossal equestrian statue of the Duke ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith

... Ethiop, black; buck, nigger [U.S.]; coon [U.S.], sambo. [Pigments] lampblack, ivory black, blueblack; writing ink, printing ink, printer's ink, Indian ink, India ink. V. be black &c adj.; render black &c adj.. blacken, infuscate^, denigrate; blot, blotch; smutch^; smirch; darken &c 421. black, sable, swarthy, somber, dark, inky, ebony, ebon, atramentous^, jetty; coal-black, jet-black; fuliginous^, pitchy, sooty, swart, dusky, dingy, murky, Ethiopic; low-toned, low in tone; of the deepest dye. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... the cabin, was a short, punchy little fellow, with a red waistcoat, knee-breeches, and a round jacket of green cloth. His face was covered with carbuncles, some of them so large that his small pug-nose was nothing more in appearance than a larger blotch than the others. His eyes were small and keen, and his whiskers of a deep red. As soon as he entered the cabin, he very deliberately locked ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat

... brown; face livid, side of mouth and chin white; a long thick black beard mixed with white hairs from throat to breast, reaching to the knees; legs below knees and feet white; belly white, a blotch on the flanks; outside of legs and a lateral line blackish. The horns of the male are sub-triangular, much compressed laterally and posteriorly; in fact one may say concave at the sides, that is, from the base ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale

... had not betrayed himself by look or movement, and he said inwardly that he should not be taken by surprise again; he should be prepared to see this face rise up continually like the intermittent blotch that comes in diseased vision. But this reappearance of Baldassarre so much more in his own likeness tightened the pressure of dread the idea of his madness lost its likelihood now he was shaven and clad like a decent though ...
— Romola • George Eliot

... slight tobacco stain in one corner of his mouth did not increase his attractions to Edith, and she positively shrank from the expression of his small, cunning black eyes. He was dressed both showily and shabbily, and a great breastpin was like a blotch upon his ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe

... his straw hat from his head. A glance showed him that it was disfigured by a great blotch of black grease. He had held his hat in his hand while talking to the girl, and it must have touched her car at a point where the axle of the dray had rubbed. So this was his one memento ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin

... machinery; for through some cause or other no soul inside it could think of a word to say. The lady symbolized her feelings, whatever they were, by urging the machine faster and faster until scattered woodlands went by them in one black blotch and heavy hills and valleys seemed to ripple under the wheels like mere waves. A little while afterwards this mood seemed to slacken and she fell into a more ordinary pace; but still she did not speak. Turnbull, who kept a more common and ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton

... fairy glades of those wooded hills for rugged mountains scantily clad with ragged grass, slate-quarries tried their ugly best to blotch and spoil the scene, but owing to some strange charm of atmosphere, like a gauze veil on the stage, they could not quite succeed. By and by the gauze veil turned to rain, but rain suited the wild landscape—far better, by the way, than it suited Mrs. Senter, ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson

... out into the straight descent toward the river. No elephants were in sight, but a blotch of colour showed on ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost

... fire came the odor of roasting meat, and the black night came down outside, making of the small circle where the pirates sprawled a blotch of infernal light, peopled with infernal shapes. But a sprinkling of faces a shade less evil leavened the mass; for to the feast came trooping the women of the camp: of a kidney with the men—yet women, ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle

... removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment. More than once as we sat around the table, my eyes opened in wonder whether the whole of the past days had not been a dream. It was only when I caught sight of the red blotch on Mrs. Harker's forehead that I was brought back to reality. Even now, when I am gravely revolving the matter, it is almost impossible to realize that the cause of all our trouble is still existent. Even Mrs. Harker seems to lose sight of her ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... had come out less brilliant than the sun. Still another variation is that the sun and moon came out equally bright, but this not seeming good to the gods, one of them took a rabbit by the heels and slung it into the face of the moon, dimming its luster with a blotch whose mark may be seen to ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly

... shameful occultation, seems A nightmare labyrinthine, dim and drifting, With wavering gulfs and antic heights and shifting Rent in the stuff of a material dark Wherein the lamplight, scattered and sick and pale, Shows like the leper's living blotch of bale: Uncoiling monstrous into street on street Paven with perils, teeming with mischance, Where man and beast go blindfold and in dread, Working with oaths and threats and faltering feet Somewhither in the hideousness ahead; Working through ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley

... extinction beneath an iron heel. A nation was destroyed. The Crime against Belgium being completed to its fullest, the Prussian stalked onwards with his twin comrades, Frightfulness and Horror. A new blotch of infamy—the Lusitania—was added to the Black Name ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds

... Blake's arm. For the voice had ceased altogether. A silent moment; then they saw the pillar of light become a crumpled blotch on the floor, heard a sudden shuffle of feet, heard Annette's ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin

... the dogs, save a blotch or two of blood upon the rough bark of the log, and that was not visible from the shore. Unless there were other dogs to guide them to the spot, the men might not in the darkness so easily discover these marks. We ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid

... girl sat down and began to rub her injured ankle. The rowboat was now merely a dark blotch out on the bay. The blotch neared the sailboat and was lost in the shadow that surrounded the larger craft. A few moments later Harriet heard the anchor being hauled in, then the creak of the rings on ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge

... just as her fingers loosened their grasp. He saw nothing save the dull flash of swirling waters and the amorphous blotch of hull. Slowly her hand tightened again; and then, as he looked he caught above the deck an impression of something moving. It seemed to be something that was revealing itself to the instinct rather than to ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... and sweets are the stalls of the itinerant batter-sellers. At these the tiny purchaser enjoys the evidently much appreciated privilege of himself arranging his little measure of batter in fantastic forms, and drying them upon a hot metal plate. A turtle is a favorite design, as the first blotch of batter makes its body, and six judiciously arranged smaller dabs soon suggest its head, tail, ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton

... question of days—the swelling buds displace millions of leaf-sheaves, pale green and fragile, which fall and, curling in on themselves, redden, and again the yellow sand is littered, while overhead fresh foliage, changing rapidly from golden, glistening brown to rich dark green, makes one compact blotch. And when the wind torments sea and forest, and branches bend and sway, and creepers drift before it, the white blooms of the orchids, so light and delicate that a sigh agitates them, might be "foam flakes torn from the fringe ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield

... closing my eyes and ears to everything, as I have no redress, I am compelled to warn thousands who may come after me, of their fate, should they take up convent life, which is a hell upon earth and a blotch as black as the shadows ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... feel quite windy: presently it blew so strong, that he could hardly keep his legs. But, he got to an arched window in the tower, breast high, and holding tight, looked down upon the house-tops, on the smoking chimneys, on the blur and blotch of lights (towards the place where Meg was wondering where he was and calling to him perhaps), all kneaded up together in a leaven of ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens

... the slope, in the depths of a high-walled coulee where the evening shadows were mustering for their stealthy raid on the gilded uplands, we circled a grove of rustling poplars and jerked our horses up short at sight of a scarlet blotch among the gloom ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... in Hacket, but would be contemptible in any other person, not to see this advice of the Lord Keeper's as a black blotch in his character, both as a Protestant Bishop and as a councillor of state in a free and ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge

... suddenly attacked the fire and poked it savagely, Buffle impolitely turned his back to the company, while the fourth man lost himself in the contemplation of the king of spades, which card ever afterward showed in its centre a blotch which seemed the result of a drop of water. Finally Buffle broke the ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton

... time of night to make anything but a black blotch out of the Abbie Rose. Of course I could see that she was pot-bellied, like the rest of the coastwise sisterhood. And that McCord had not stowed his topsails. I could make them out, pursed at the mastheads and hanging down as far as the cross-trees, like huge, over-ripe pears. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... for a little while, and was speaking of manifesting himself to his disciples, when he was interrupted by another question. This time it was Judas who spoke. "Not Iscariot," St. John is careful to say, for the name of Iscariot was now blotted with the blotch of treason. He had gone out into the night, and was of the disciple family no more. Judas could not understand in what special and exclusive manner Jesus would manifest himself to his own. Perhaps he expected some setting apart of Christ's followers like that which ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller

... for the elaborate ornamentation of these interiors puts the ordinary daylight out of countenance, so that a window with only the white sunshine coming through it, or even with a glimpse of the blue Italian sky, looks like a portion left unfinished, and therefore a blotch in the rich wall. It is like the one spot in Aladdin's palace which he left for the king, his father-in-law, to finish, after his fairy architects had exhausted their magnificence on the rest; and the sun, like the king, fails in the effort. ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... and would honour him by partaking of refreshment; both which requests Messieurs were nothing loth to fulfil. It was hardly to be realized that these were the besotted habitans, the unimprovable race, the blotch on the fair face of Canadian civilisation; these happy-looking, simple-minded people. Hiram Holt was a slanderer. Full an hour passed before the Wynns could get away from the embarrassing hospitalities and politeness of the good villagers, who shook hands all round at parting in most ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe

... or he may give the latter, viz. the proportions and arrangement of the larger parts and the general masses of light and shade, and leave all the minuter parts of which those parts are composed a mere blotch, one general smear, like the first crude and hasty getting in of the groundwork of a picture: he may do either of these, or he may combine both, that is, finish the parts, but put them in their right places, and keep them in due subordination to the general effect ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt

... her his scorn of the provincial. She had to share it. She had a vision of the Five Towns as a smoky blotch on the remote horizon,—negligible, crass, ridiculous in its heavy self-complacency. The very Orgreaves themselves were tinged with this odious ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett

... Rising noiselessly, the Algonquin sat down by the fire. The Mohawks slept on. The Algonquin gave Radisson a push. The French boy looked up to see the Algonquin studying the postures of the sleeping forms. The dying fire glimmered like a blotch of blood under the trees. Stepping stealthy as a cat over the sleeping men, the Indian took possession of their firearms. Drawn by a kind of horror, Radisson had risen. The Algonquin thrust one of the tomahawks into the French lad's hands and pointed without a ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut

... past tall crags and between the trees, the snow was dry and loose as dust. They made something over two miles in the first hour and soon afterwards came to the mouth of a snowshed. The opening made a dark blotch on the glittering slope, for the roof was pitched at a very small angle to the declivity and the snow passed down hill over it with ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss

... were gathered in the hall, one knocked at the door, and when Stephen went thereto, who should follow him in save Surly John, and with him a stranger, a big tall man, dark-haired and red-bearded, wide-visaged, brown-eyed and red-cheeked, blotch-faced and insolent of bearing. He was girt with a sword, had a shield at his back and bore a spear in his hand, and was clad in a long byrny down to his knees. He spake at once in a loud voice, ere Surly John got out the word: "May Hardcastle be here tonight, ye folk?" The goodman ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris

... satisfaction. By carefully timing its recurrence, he concluded rotation on an axis in a period of 24 hours 4 minutes. The first determination of the kind rewarded twenty years of unceasing vigilance. It received ostensible confirmation from the successive appearances of a dusky streak and blotch in May and June, 1801.[814] These, however, were inferred to be no permanent markings on the body of the planet, but atmospheric formations, the streak at times drifting forwards (it was thought) under the fluctuating influence of Mercurian breezes. From a rediscussion of these somewhat doubtful ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... kitten was no ordinary animal. Its little heart beat bravely when it rose to the surface, and, before its young master came up, it had regained the bank. But, alas! what a change! It went into the stream a fat, round, comfortable ball of eider-down. It came out a scraggy blotch of white paint, with its black eyes glaring like two great glass beads! No sooner did it crawl out of the water than Bob Croaker seized it, and whirled it round his head, amid suppressed cries of "Shame!" intending to throw it in again; but at that instant Martin ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... however, he took careful aim at a white face which lay against the breech of a rifle leveled at him. He aimed for the white space between the eyes quite as coolly as though he were facing a target. Yet he jumped a little in surprise as, following his report, he saw a blotch of red appear where he had aimed—saw it for just a second before the man reeled forward heavily and sunk as though he had ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... flash of red light, and in the instant stunning report of the pistol shot, Barnaby saw, as stamped upon the blackness, a broad, flat face with fishy eyes, a lean, bony forehead with what appeared to be a great blotch of blood upon the side, a cocked hat trimmed with gold lace, a red scarf across the breast, and the gleam of brass buttons. Then the darkness, very thick ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle

... executioner for his sentence on himself. I could not fight you now." His eye fell by chance upon the blotch in Law's bloodstained tunic. "And here," he said; "see! You ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough

... perhaps belongs under the mastery motive: The dreamer sees people scurrying to cover, looks up and sees a thunderstorm impending; immediately he is struck by lightning and knocked down in the street; but he finds he can rise and walk home, and seems to have suffered no harm except for a black blotch around one eye. Now, any man who could take lightning that way would be proud to wear the scar. So the dream was wish-fulfilling, and the wish involved was, as ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... Tho' blotch'd an' foul wi' mony a stain, An' far unworthy of thy train, With trembling voice I tune my strain To join with those, Who boldly daur thy cause maintain In spite ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... the sign of the cross. Giorgio arose and ascended to the loggia, to observe the spot designated. Upon the sand, below the promontory, in close vicinity to the chain of rocks and the tunnel, he perceived a blotch of white, presumably the sheet which hid the little body. A group of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... attract the brilliant sun-bird, and big blue and green and red butterflies. Even when the sea is lustrous the cavern, with all the artfulness and grace of the decorations of its portals, is a black blotch—the entrance to something unknowable and unknown—at least to the blacks. None had ever ventured near it and they never will. They tell you how it came to be made. How a long, long time ago, a big man, "all a same debil-debil," ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield

... was run by a family of three ... there was Mister Brown, the man, a huge-built, blotch-faced, retired stone-mason, his meagre little wife, Mrs. Brown, and their grass-widow daughter, Flora.... Flora did but little work, except to lean familiarly and with an air of unspoken intimacy, over the tables of the men, as she slouched ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... "limpet on the rock" and the "green boots" refer to a wonderful piece by Turner in the previous year's Academy, exhibiting a rock overhanging a magnificent sea, a booted figure appearing on the rock, and at its feet a blotch to represent a limpet: the subject ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... be finished in perfection; in the perfection of perfections!" cried mademoiselle; and to confirm her promise, she deposited a rosy blotch in the middle of the ...
— The American • Henry James

... the inner black. His general color is hoary ash, paler, almost white, below, giving out a slight iridescence in the sunshine; his wings are blackish, with white trimmings; his flanks are stained with salmon-red, and when his wings are spread, there appears a large blotch of scarlet at the inner angle of the intersection with the body. One individual that I afterwards saw wore a scarlet epaulet, which was almost concealed by the other plumes when the wing was closed, but was clearly ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... has a much larger bloom, varies in hue from purest white to deepest red, and flowers in May or June. The most glorious of these things, however, is O. vex. superbum, a plant of the greatest rarity, conspicuous for its blotch of deep purple in the centre of the lip, and its little dot of the same on each wing. Doubtless this is a natural hybrid betwixt the Antioquia form and Odontoglossum Roezlii, which is its neighbour. The chance of finding a bit of superbum ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle

... showed also numerous wounds, while their clothing was rent into tatters from cuts and slashes apart from the wash of the water, which had, of course, swept away most of the blood that had probably flowed from the wounds, although there was a large dark blotch on the deck close to the after hatch, testifying that some gory pool ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... already," she said. "A blotch on a body's name spreads fast and far. Mine was black enough before, God knows, but ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor

... principle in palliating every dishonest measure, of want of decency in defaming every honest man; that should prejudge every question, traduce every opponent; that should give no quarter to fair inquiry or liberal sentiment; that should be "ugly all over with hypocrisy", and present one foul blotch of servility, intolerance, falsehood, spite, and ill-manners. The Quarterly Review was ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt

... now did Miss Mallory venture to take her eyes from the cabin interior.... Madame Sorenson was fighting windmills of hysteria. Far back there was a blotch in the darkness, and a curious blend of sea-water, Russian and Chinese, as Sorenson was dragged into the boat; back farther still the lights of Jaffier's gunboat.... And now she found the Glow-worm staring at her, the big face ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort

... investigation of digestive and reproductive operations in plants may by this time have furnished the microscopic malice of botanists with providentially disgusting reasons, or demoniacally nasty necessities, for every possible spur, spike, jag, sting, rent, blotch, flaw, freckle, filth, or venom, which can be detected in the construction, or distilled from the dissolution, of vegetable organism. But with these obscene processes and prurient apparitions the gentle ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin

... now in. A towel is tied about his head with a big blotch of red ink over his temple. He carries a broom as a flagstaff to which a red bandanna handkerchief is attached as ...
— Class of '29 • Orrie Lashin and Milo Hastings

... triumph beside him as their enemies rushed for safety toward the dip from which they had just climbed. A fourth shot, and he picked out Brokaw. Twice he missed! His gun was empty when Brokaw lunged out of view. Langdon remained an inanimate blotch on the strip of shale. A few steps below him was a second body. A third man was dragging himself on hands and knees over the crest of the coulee. Three—with six shots! And he had missed Brokaw! Inwardly David groaned as ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood

... ere they kneel to kiss the large white hand. His looks sustain his deeds,—the perfect prelate, Whose void chair shall be taken, but not filled. You know not, who are foreign to the isle, Haply, what this Red Disk may be, he guards. 'T is the bright blotch, big as the Royal seal, Branded beneath the beard of every Jew. These vermin so infest the isle, so slide Into all byways, highways that may lead Direct or roundabout to wealth or power, Some plain, plump mark was needed, to protect From the ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus

... showed the horseman to be Irish, Weary drove in his spurs and galloped forward. Ten leaps perhaps he made, when a rifle shot came sharply ahead. He glanced down and saw horse and rider lying, a blotch of indefinable shape, in the trail. Weary drew his own gun and went on, his teeth set tight together. Now, when it was too late, he understood thoroughly ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower

... gray coming on in the embers, symptoms of death in the candle, a blotch of tallow on the Shakespeare, and the coat not half done. It must have been about then, I think, that the thin-edged sweetness of the Singing Mouse's voice pierced keenly through the air. I was right glad when the little creature ...
— The Singing Mouse Stories • Emerson Hough

... is mentioned by an old Arab writer as a white blotch at the foot of Canopus, visible in the Tehama along the Red Sea, but not in Nejd or 'Irak. Humboldt, in quoting this, calculates that in A.D. 1000 the Great Magellan would have been visible at Aden some degrees above the horizon. (Examen, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... rainbow flash. It could not be he from whom the ball had rebounded, and with sickening dread I realized that Lloyd Inwood had come upon the scene. To make sure, I looked for his shadow, and there it was, a shapeless blotch the girth of his body, (the sun was overhead), moving along the ground. I remembered his threat, and felt sure that all the long years of rivalry were about ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... sung. I wish I could convey to the reader the associations that attach to these soil'd and creas'd livraisons, each composed of a sheet or two of paper, folded small to carry in the pocket, and fasten'd with a pin. I leave them just as I threw them by after the war, blotch'd here and there with more than one blood-stain, hurriedly written, sometimes at the clinique, not seldom amid the excitement of uncertainty, or defeat, or of action, or getting ready for it, or a march. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... them? When I have carried them about my body, in the desert, for three months; and lay awake night after night to watch them! When I have looked them over with a magnifying-glass, hour after hour, till my eyes ached; till every tiny blotch, and chip, and dinge became as familiar to me as his chart to a captain; as familiar as they doubtless have been all the time to every thick-headed area-prowler within the bounds of mortality. See here, young man, look at these!" He ranged the lamps in a row on the top ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... throwing in pebbles. Like a little man in a cloak he is with tiny hands. Weeny bones. Almost see them shimmering, kind of a bluey white. Colours depend on the light you see. Stare the sun for example like the eagle then look at a shoe see a blotch blob yellowish. Wants to stamp his trademark on everything. Instance, that cat this morning on the staircase. Colour of brown turf. Say you never see them with three colours. Not true. That half tabbywhite tortoiseshell in the City Arms with the letter em on her forehead. Body fifty ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... will, he aroused himself and looked. To his eyesight, twisted and fixed to a shorter focus by the drug he had taken, the steamship was little more than a blotch on the moon-whitened fog; yet he thought he could see men clambering and working on the upper davits, and the nearest boat—No. 24—seemed to be swinging by the tackles. Then the fog shut her out, though her position was still indicated by the roaring of steam from her iron lungs. This ceased ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson

... countenance, for it was foul without with dirt and more foul within from disease, being covered with ruddy fiery blotch and pimple, and the eyes were of that unnatural hue worn by one who has for years been ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn

... his directions, dragging the tiller hard up, and at the same time calling upon the boatswain to ease off the sheet still further. Under the pressure of her weather helm the boat at once fell broad off; and as she did so I saw, through the rapidly deepening darkness, a great black blotch swing into view past the luff of our sail, which the next instant resolved itself into the shape of a big, hulking brigantine, wallowing along down toward us with her topsail-yard down on the cap, her reef tackles bowsed up, ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... I look directly eastward; but by an oblique glance southward (always from my library-window) the checkered farm-land is repeated in long perspective: here and there is a farm-house with its clustered out-buildings; here and there a blotch of wood, or of orcharding; here and there a bright sheen of winter-grain; and the level ends only where a slight fringe of tree-tops, and the iron cordon of a railway that leaps over a marshy creek upon trestle-work, separate it from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various

... they clasped them around it, and urged him to "try;" but they instantly fell away, the pen dropped upon the snowy counterpane making a great, unsightly blotch of ink, and they knew that he was past putting his signature, or even his mark, ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon

... injury &c. (deterioration) 659; spots on the sun|!; eyesore. stain, blot; spot, spottiness; speck, speckle, blur. tarnish, smudge; dirt &c. 653. [blemish on a person's skin: list] freckle, mole, macula[Anat], patch, blotch, birthmark; blobber lip[obs3], blubber lip; blain[obs3], maculation, ; scar, wem|; pustule; whelk; excrescence, pimple &c. (protuberance) 250. V. disfigure &c. (injure) 659; speckle. Adj. pitted, freckled, discolored; imperfect &c. 651; blobber-lipped, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget

... father. "So was Nicholas Weaver, who managed the Brooklyn business for Holland & Mack. Who John Stumpy can be I do not know. Perhaps I would if I saw him face to face. There was another man— he was quite bald, with a red blotch on the front of his hand— who was brought forward by Woodward to prove that he had nothing to do with the presentation of the forged checks and notes, but what his name was I ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer

... The huge gasometers were sinking low between their steel girders; and the tall brick chimney was throwing out its final belches of thick black smoke, which spread curling over the field of space in an ever-widening blotch. In the neighborhood of the Sea Bridge, the customs agents, burying their faces in their mufflers, were walking up and down to shake off the damp chill of the morning. Through the windows of the revenue office the clerks ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... are you hiding there?" she said, stepping up and inspecting my bare arm. She found an ugly blotch. "Woe is me! A lamentation upon me!" she said, looking aghast. ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan

... favourable situations to about 4 feet in height. It has lanceolate leaves that are glutinous above, and thickly covered with a whitish tomentum on the under sides, and large and showy vhite flowers with a conspicuous purple blotch at the base of each petal. Unless in southern and western England, but particularly on the sea-coast, this handsome Portuguese shrub is not to be depended on, in so far as ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster

... Slowly a dark blotch began to grow in the landscape. Slowly it assumed definite form. It puzzled the reporter. It looked familiar. He could have sworn he had seen it somewhere before. It was alive, for ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak

... like a flash-light of our camping ground. It was a little blurry, but some of the objects were quite clear. Our tent was a white blotch except for the outlines; the wagons showed plainly. I didn't think much of it as a picture, so I paid scant attention. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy gave it close scrutiny; presently she said, "Oh, yis, I see what it is. It's a puzzle picture ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart

... who will reach this condition of affairs in a generation or so, and to under estimate the conflicting tendencies that will make its attainment difficult to all, and impossible to many, and that will for many years tint and blotch the achievement of those who succeed with patches of unsympathetic colour. To understand just how modifications may come in, it is necessary to consider the probable line of development of another of the four main elements in the social body of the coming time. As a consequence and visible ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... long time, he reappeared upon his original track, it was as a dark blotch, indistinguishable from a dozen other dark blots of moon-shadow, creeping forward belly-flat in the snow. This belly-creep, hugging always every available inch of cover, he kept up till he came ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars

... and began some explanations concerning longitudes, and smiled with superiority at Felicite's bewilderment. At last, he took his pencil and pointed out an imperceptible black point in the scallops of an oval blotch, adding: "There it is." She bent over the map; the maze of coloured lines hurt her eyes without enlightening her; and when Bourais asked her what puzzled her, she requested him to show her the house Victor lived in. Bourais threw up his hands, sneezed, and then laughed uproariously; such ignorance ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert

... uneasy sensation; without even a disturbance of the attitude of repose, he opened his eyes and beheld Merton, the servant of whom we have spoken, standing at a little distance from his bed. The moonlight fell in a clear flood upon this figure: the man was ghastly pale; there was a blotch of blood on his face; his hands were clasped upon something which they nearly concealed; and his eyes, fixed on the servant who had just awakened, shone in the cold light with a wild and lifeless glitter. This specter drew close to the side of the bed, and stood for ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... bought with gold Thy clergy perjured, thy whole people sold. An atheist [symbol] a [symbol]'s ad ... [125] Blotch thee ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope

... dim and misty, and by the time breakfast was over a north wind was raging—a furnace-like blast that bore off the sandy deserts of the interior. The sun was a yellow blotch in a copper sky; the thermometer had leapt to a hundred and ten in the shade. Blinding clouds of coarse, gritty dust swept house-high through the streets: half-suffocated, Mahony fought his way along, his veil lowered, his handkerchief at his mouth. Outside those public-houses ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson

... that was Glyn Severn, and he to himself; but at the same time he had caught Singh's eye as he sat some distance from him, and, placing his sheet of foolscap by his side, he raised his blotting-pad so that his companion could see a great blotch of ink thereon which seemed as if it had been roughly made by a brush that had been dipped ...
— Glyn Severn's Schooldays • George Manville Fenn

... the track in compliance. Lestrange turned to make ready, but paused beside the awed Dick to look over the infield toward the flaming blotch against the ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram

... was the same favoring of the left foot. He was traveling in a circle. Sometimes in unsheltered places, where the wind swept through an avenue of trees, small drifts covered the impressions, but the dog found them again, still doubling that broad circle. Finally I saw a great dark blotch ahead where the ground sloped up to a narrow plateau. And in a moment I saw it was caused by a great many fresh twigs of spruce, all stuck upright in the snow and set carefully in rows, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson

... rapacious in her colonizing policy on the Black Sea and she left a record of exploitations which makes a black blotch on ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger

... reckoning, they were mid-way between island and continent. They were all wide awake, too weary and miserable to sleep. Suddenly a fog-horn smote the oppressive gloom. It drew near. A huge blotch crossed their bows. They could feel it rather than see it. They heard some order given in a foreign language, and De ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy

... with a thin face which had an odd lopsided look, squeezed through the door and sidled along the wall of the room, his rifle pointed straight at Drew's head. He spat a blotch of tobacco juice on the hearth, spattering the edge of the top blanket which ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... beautiful hand, particular about neatness, very accurate and calm, detesting strong expressions, and remarkably self-controlled; while his eager impetuous boy, careless of his dress, always forgetting to wash his hands and brush his hair, writing an execrable hand, and folding his letters with a great blotch for a seal, was a constant care and irritation. Many letters to your uncle have I read on these subjects. Sometimes a specimen of the proper way of folding a letter is sent him, (those were the sad days before envelopes were known,) and he is desired to repeat the experiment ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan

... floor, sprawling, as falls a lifeless body, lay the long Ichabod. On his forehead, almost geometrically near the centre, was a tiny, black spot, around it a lighter red blotch; his face otherwise very white; his hair, on the side toward which he leaned, a little ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge

... was smoking over a low, red glow of coals, the chimney-place yawned black before him, the hearth was all strewn with pots and kettles, and the shelf above it was piled high with a vague household litter. It had leaked around the chimney, and there was a great discolored blotch on the wall above the shelf, and the ceiling. Two or three hens came pecking around the ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... held to his thumb, as if she was afraid of losing him there in the blackness that lay about them like a great ink-blotch. And she crept closer to him, saying nothing, and all the power in his soul fought in Jolly Roger to keep him from putting his arms about her slim little body and crying out the worship ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... own mind, and for some of the Errors, I am confident that Note of Admiration in the middle of two words did not stand so when I had it, it must have dropt out and been replaced wrong, so odious a blotch could not have escaped me. Gifford (whom God curse) has persuaded squinting Murray (whom may God not bless) not to accede to an offer Field made for me to print 2 vols. of Essays, to include the one on Hog'rth and 1 or 2 more, ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas

... his bruises, and many times he made small detours, thinking that a blotch of shadow off to one side might be his pack train. But always a greasewood mocked him, waving stiff arms at him derisively. In the sage-land distances deceive. A man may walk unseen before your eyes, and a bush afar off may trick you with its semblance to man or beast. Casey finally gave up the ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... spring beauty are white or pink, they are always exquisitely marked with pink lines converging near the base and ending in a yellow blotch to serve as pathfinders for the female bumblebees and the little brown bombylius, among other pollen carriers. A newly opened flower, with its stamens surrounding the pistil, must be in peril of self-fertilization one would think who did not notice that when the pollen is in condition for removal ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan

... because—as Dick surmised—the lights of the boats had been sighted by the eager look-outs aboard her. Then her mast-head light came into view, followed, a little later, by her port and starboard side lights; and at length the dark, scarcely discernible blotch that represented her hull lengthened out suddenly, revealing a long triple tier of brightly gleaming ports; and a few seconds later the roar of steam escaping as her engines stopped, reached the two watchers on ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood

... carousals. His cheek bruised in the grog-shop fight. His lip swollen with evil indulgences. Look out what you say to him. For a trifle he will take your life. Lower down and lower down, until, outcast of God and man, he lies in the alms-house, a blotch of loathsomeness and pain. Sometimes he calls out for God; and then for more drink. Now he prays; now curses. Now laughs as fiends laugh. Then bites his nails to the quick. Then runs both hands through ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... is gone already. Oh look,—yon grove upon the mountain,—white In the sweet moon as with a lovelier snow! But what a blotch of blackness underneath! Sinnatus, you remember—yea, you must, That there three years ago—the vast vine-bowers Ran to the summit of the trees, and dropt Their streamers earthward, which a breeze of May Took ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson

... near, who helped him to sit down, to crouch upon some step, where he would stay for hours, motionless, mute, his mouth hanging, his eyes blinking, hushed by the strident monotony of the grasshopper's cry—a blotch of humanity in ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet

... doubt, but that white kitten was no ordinary animal. Its little heart beat bravely when it rose to the surface, and, before its young master came up, it had regained the bank. But, alas! what a change! It went into the stream a fat, round, comfortable ball of eider-down. It came out—a scraggy blotch of white paint, with its black eyes glaring like two great glass beads! No sooner did it crawl out of the water than Bob Croaker seized it, and whirled it round his head, amid suppressed cries of "Shame!" intending to throw it in again; but at that ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... hung about the streets, shifting, changing its density, but never allowing a glimpse of sky. Alone in the drawing-room Irene longed for the end of so-called day, that she might shut out that spirit-crushing blotch of bare trees and ugly houses. She thought of a sudden, how much harder we make life than it need be, by dwelling amid scenes that disgust, in air that lowers vitality. There fell on her a mood of marvelling at the aims and the satisfactions ...
— The Crown of Life • George Gissing

... and to offset it, or finish it out, as if in Nature's and the Great Muse's mockery of these poor mimics, comes interpolated that scene, not really or exactly to be described at all (for on the many hundreds who were there it seems to this hour to have left little but a passing blur, a dream, a blotch)—and yet partially described as I now ...
— Lincoln's Yarns and Stories • Alexander K. McClure

... troublesome than he had thought it would be. The pen persisted in sputtering at almost every word; and when, at crucial points, he took special pains to make the writing legible, the too frequent result was an indecipherable blotch of ink. When the valiant scribe had wrestled with his uncongenial task for half an hour or more, his sister came upon the scene. Quietly she stepped across ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth

... which in one egg I have is so extensive that the ground-colour of the whole of the large end appears to be a delicate pink. Occasionally several of the clear-cut spots appear to run together and form a coarse irregular blotch, and one egg I possess exhibits on one side a large splash. The eggs as a body, as might have been expected, closely resemble those of the Golden Oriole, to which the bird itself is so nearly related; and as observed by ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume

... burned at his throat. But this time he made no resistance, and after a moment the outlaw rose to his feet and stared down into the white, still face half buried in the snow. Then he gently lifted Philip's head in his arms. There was a crimson blotch in the snow and close to it the black edge of a ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood

... ought to be, for us for ever. I have no wish, and God knows I have no need, to exaggerate about this matter; but we all know that if we were turned inside out, and every foul, creeping thing, and every blotch and spot upon these hearts of ours spread in the light, we could not face one another; we could scarcely face ourselves. If you or I were set, as they used to set criminals, up in a pillory with a board hanging ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren

... Blentmouth, and smiled again. He seemed to mock the ignorance of the vanished wagonette. Mina made no sign. He laid his finger on his lips, and nodded slightly toward Cecily. The clouds covered the moon again, and there was no more on the Fillingford road than a black blotch on the deep gray of the night; even this vanished a moment after. And still Cecily gazed ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope

... Denisov's guerrilla band, less than a mile from the road, sitting on a wagon captured from the French beside which horses were tethered, that under it Likhachev was sitting sharpening a saber for him, that the big dark blotch to the right was the watchman's hut, and the red blotch below to the left was the dying embers of a campfire, that the man who had come for the cup was an hussar who wanted a drink; but he neither knew nor waited to know anything ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... QUATORZE; AND DEATH OF ROTHENBURG.—"Our LOUIS QUATORZE is out. But, Heavens, see, your Majesty: a Pirate Printer, at Frankfurt-on-Oder, has been going on parallel with us, all the while; and here is his foul blotch of an Edition on sale, too! Bielfeld," fantastic fellow, "had proof-sheets; Bielfeld sent them to a Professor there, though I don't blame Bielfeld: result too evident. Protect me, your Majesty; Order all wagons, especially wagons for Leipzig, to be stopped, to be searched, and the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle

... the low-lying hills began to cast cool shadows down their eastern slopes, there appeared against the velvet green of the distance the sprawling blotch of a little town, ugly, naked, and unashamed in its bustling newness. And nearer, by a mile or more, on a green slope which caught the golden-red rays of the sinking sun, was a little enclosure, naked and ugly as the town itself, ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly

... and old! A row of icicles hung from the roof of the corner store, irregular and stained from the shingles above, like an ugly set of ill-kept teeth, dripping disconsolately on the sidewalk below, and making there a bumpy blotch of unsightly ice! ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung

... down the beach, where a tiny black blotch on the sand marked the dozen or more racing cars held ready for the start. Then when every one was waiting tense and silent—boom! came the muffled echo of the starting gun. —They're off! cried the crowd, and far, far down the beach the scouts could ...
— The Boy Scout Fire Fighters • Irving Crump

... fingers upon the efflorescent walls he moved cautiously down, step by step, sure now that this was the ancient corridor by which the men-at-arms passed from the guardhouse to the other rampart. Sixty-two steps down he counted, and then he reached a level, where he paused a moment to look at the vague blotch of gray which was the starlight. Even with eyes that had now grown accustomed to the darkness he could see nothing, and so deeming himself safe from observation, he struck a match, which struggled a moment against the foul air and then went out. But ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs

... certain a squat, hump-backed blotch, that was sprawling blackly beside a misshapen block, was either wriggling on the floor as if trying to stand upright . . . or else there was something ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce

... sir;" and he reached the Major a folded paper, sealed with a blotch of wax as red as blood. He ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... acrobatic turn behind, and again the horse proceeded to lower records. Zigzag-wise, through streets that were growing more and yet more thronged instead of silent, they tore barrackward, missing men by a miracle every twelve yards. Kirby's eyes were on a red blotch, now, that danced and glowed above the bazaar a mile ahead. It reminded him ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy

... sail passed around the bend in the stream, and only a desolate blotch in the wilderness was left to tell of England's attempt to colonize America; only a great gash in the forest, there in the quiet and the sunlight, at the edge of the river. Within it were the shapeless ruins of those queer things ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins

... Though Wabigoon was not more than a dozen yards ahead, Rod could only now and then catch a fleeting vision of him through the gloom. Mukoki, doubled over in his harness, was hardly more than a blotch in the early night. Only the wolf was near enough to offer companionship to the tired and down-spirited youth. Rod's enthusiasm was not easily cooled, but just now he mentally wished that, for this one night at least, he was back at the Post, with the lovely little ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood

... leaf tissue, when made by larvae: they are linear, when they are narrow and only a little winding; serpentine, when they are curved or coiled, becoming gradually larger to a head-like end: trumpet-mines, when they start small and enlarge rapidly at tip; blotch mines, when they are irregular blotches tentiform, when the blotch mines throw the leaf into a ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... behind her, clumsy as a playful bear. His eyes followed the direction of hers to where a cloud shadow lay across the slope, heavy, palpable, untransparent, like a blotch of ink. ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White

... illuminated the interior of the room showed only a round blotch against the darkness. In this circle sat the six silent ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson

... but his tone must have carried its own message. There were sharp exclamations from the seated circle. The one who had brought them sprang forward with outstretched, clutching hands; his face was a blood-red blotch. McGuire was waiting in crouching tenseness that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various

... Why did he stand there while the priceless moments before daylight came were passing? The man was a murderer, a blotch on society, and, his life already forfeited, he was living now only because the law had not found him out—the man was a criminal, bloodstained—and his life, because he had taken her father's life and had tried to take the Tocsin's own life, stood between her and every hope of happiness, robbing ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... pine groves. Then began the tumbled, humped waste of sand dunes, and, over their ragged fringes of beach plum and bayberry bushes, the deep blue of the wide Atlantic. The lighthouse was a white dot and the fish shanties a blotch of brown. Along the inner edge of the blue were scars of dancing white, the flashing teeth of hungry shoals which had torn to pieces and swallowed many a good ship. And, far out, dotted and sprinkled along the ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln

... not white, are they * All worthy love I see: Black girls wear dark-brown lips;[FN364] * Whites, blotch of leprosy.' ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton

... than the common Dwarf variety of Tropaeolum majus; the stem rarely measuring more than two feet in length, or rising above a foot in height. The flowers are yellow; the lower petals with a blotch of scarlet at their base, and the upper ones delicately striped ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr

... ceased flowing. As long as I could catch a glimpse of this woman's fluttering skirt as she retreated through the ruins, I stood there, self-convicted, above the man I had slain, staring up at that blotch of shining sky which was as the gate of hell to me. Not till their two figures had disappeared and it was quite clear again did the instinct of self-preservation return, and with it the thought ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green

... steps took him to the doorway. The chamber before him was darker than the corridor, so that he could just indistinctly make out the objects in the room. He saw a sleeping dais near the center, with a darker blotch of something lying on the marble floor beside it. He moved a step farther into the doorway and the scabbard of his sword scraped against the stone frame. To his horror he saw the sleeping silks and furs upon the central dais move. He saw a figure slowly arising to a sitting ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... until the retreating sheep lost their individuality as blatting animals, ambling erratically here and there, while they moved toward the brow of the hill, and merged into a great, gray blotch against the faint green of the new grass—a blotch from which rose again that vibrant, sing-song humming of many voices mingled. Then they rode back down the coulee to their own work, taking it for granted that the trespassing was an incident ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower

... then it does injure the foliage more or less. On the whole, in Illinois, we are using the lime-sulphur in preference to the bordeaux, and our commercial orchard growers there have completely abandoned the bordeaux except for bitter rot fungus or blotch fungus, which comes late in the season. The spray just before the bloom is a very important one for the scab fungus. After you can see the pink of the bloom on the trees as they begin to look pink, before the blossoms open, put on your lime-sulphur, or you can use bordeaux ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various

... eyes the fast disappearing train, handkerchiefs and caps and hands were waving from every window, faint snatches of cheers, and the tune of "The Girl I Left Behind Me," came floating backward. But the boys only saw a small blotch of khaki color on the rear platform of the train, and a brilliant point of light where the golden Canada sun flung back its reflections from a well-polished bugle. They watched that light growing less and less in the distance, until it finally ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson









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