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More "Taint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... protection in a quarter from which they would once have had to expect nothing but implacable severity. By this time the philosophy of the eighteenth century had purifed English Whiggism from that deep taint of intolerance which had been contracted during a long and close alliance with the Puritanism of the seventeenth century. Enlightened men had begun to feel that the arguments by which Milton and Locke, Tillotson and Burnet, had vindicated the rights of conscience might be urged ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... universal experience is contemplated as both positive sin and negative falling short of the 'glory' (which here seems to mean, as in John v. 44, xii. 43, approbation from God). 'There is no distinction,' but all varieties of condition, character, attainment, are alike in this, that the fatal taint is upon them all. 'We have, all of us, one human heart.' We are alike in physical necessities, in primal instincts, and, most tragically of all, in the common experience ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... leprous taint of bigotry to sully his soul, blur his vision, or cramp his sphere of action, the broad stream of Christian charity flowed from his noble, generous heart, sweeping away obstacles that would have impeded the usefulness of a minister less catholic in sympathy, more hampered by creed ligaments ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... my dear?" said Aunt Keziah, mollified by the praise of her beloved mixture. "Drink first, dear, so that my sick old lips need not taint it. You look pale, Septimius; ...
— Septimius Felton - or, The Elixir of Life • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... must be removed by screening or sifting. River sand is frequently used, but is not so good as pit sand on account of the particles being rubbed smooth by attrition. Sea sand is objectionable for two reasons; it cannot be altogether freed from a saline taint, and if it is used the salt attracts moisture and is liable to keep the brickwork permanently damp. The particles, moreover, are generally rounded by attrition, caused by the movement of the sea, which makes it less efficient for mortar than if they retained ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... and Rodolph slunk away. For the old story is known throughout the shore, and Rodolph proved, in his fight with you, the bad blood in his veins. It never does to cross the white blood with the red, for the treachery of the Indian will taint the race ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... gloomy, sensual, headstrong, and brutal than the German—is for that very reason, as the baser of the two, also the most pious: he has all the MORE NEED of Christianity. To finer nostrils, this English Christianity itself has still a characteristic English taint of spleen and alcoholic excess, for which, owing to good reasons, it is used as an antidote—the finer poison to neutralize the coarser: a finer form of poisoning is in fact a step in advance with coarse-mannered people, ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... habit, the coarse Hebrew type, One might have elbowed in the public mart Iscariot,—nor suspected one's soul-peril. Christ's blood! it sets my flesh a-creep to think! We may breathe freely now, not fearing taint, Praise be our good Lord Bishop! He keeps count Of every Jew, and prints on cheek or chin The scarlet stamp of ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... concerning whose "prudence and gentleness" he could once turn so many fine periods. He even expressed some anxiety lest doubts should begin to be entertained as to the perfect clemency of the King's character. "Here is so much confiscation and bloodshed going on," said he, "that some taint of cruelty or avarice may chance to bespatter the robe of his Majesty." He also confessed that he had occasionally read in history of greater benignity than was now exercised against the poor Netherlanders. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... their backs. As the season advances and the water becomes chilled, they are flung in myriads on the shores, where the wolves and bears assemble to banquet on them. Often they rot in such quantities along the river banks as to taint the atmosphere. They are commonly from two ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... now got herself quickly out of the room, absolutely kissing the woman whom she had both dreaded and despised. As soon as she was alone in the street she tried to think of it all. How full of beauty was the face of that American female,—how rich and glorious her voice in spite of a slight taint of the well-known nasal twang;—and above all how powerful and at the same time how easy and how gracious was her manner! That she would be an unfit wife for Paul Montague was certain to Hetta, but that he or any man should have loved her and have been loved ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... Government. And it was to this noble quality of his character that he owed his death. Corruption had grown up in connection with the offices of State, and Garfield's last mission was to purge the Government of this taint. He was resolved to set his face against "the waste of time and the obstruction to public business caused by the greedy crowd of office-seekers." And he also announced that "rigid honesty and faithful service would be required from ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... before they are put in use; and for old Casks, if they stand any time out of use, they are apt to grow musty: unslack'd Lime, about a Gallon to a Hogshead, with about six Gallons of Water put in with it, and the Hogshead presently stopp'd up, will clear it of its Taint, if the same be repeated four or five times; or burning of Linnen dipp'd in Brimstone, to be close stopped in a Cask, three or four times repeated, will do the same: or else put Water in your Vessels, and throw ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... motto, "Roy ne puis—Prince ne veux—Rohan je suis," is one which is theoretically strong among the country squires of England, the possessors of the bluest blood and longest deeds of hereditary lands; but the snobbishness of the nineteenth century is practically apt to taint the younger branches when they read of garden-parties given by the royal princes or balls where duchesses and cabinet ministers are as plentiful as blackberries. Their great-grandmothers, it is true, were sometimes troubled with the same longings, for among the many proclamations ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... together prest, And on her silver cross soft amethyst, And on her hair a glory, like a saint: She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest, Save wings, for heaven:—Porphyro grew faint: She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint. ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... to enjoy the sardonic metaphysics of the case with Putney. He said gravely that he had been talking of the matter with Dr. Morrell, and he had no doubt that there was a taint of insanity in every wrong-doer; some day he believed the law would ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... into the background, but the line must be drawn somewhere, and the daughter of a London soap-boiler they would not receive. Who was to be positive there had been a marriage at all. And poor Inez Catheron! Ah it was very sad—very sad. There was a well-known, well-hidden taint of insanity in the Catheron family. It must be that latent insanity cropping up. The young man must simply ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame, too, shall soon ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... at all events, nature had by this time lost its taint of sin, and had shaken off all trace of demoniacal powers. St. Francis of Assisi, in his Hymn to the Sun, frankly praises the Lord for creating the heavenly bodies ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... average "gangster" shows a taint of alcoholism. This is further aggravated by living under immoral surroundings, where petty crimes like stealing and lying are considered "smart." This is the starting point of the New York "gangster." He is handicapped, and under ancestral disabilities and the ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... minnit.' And at et he goes accordin'. Ef he seed the Scarlet Woman about in his part o' the country, he'd lay by an' h'ist her, an' you'd say, 'Well done!' an' I don't say you'd be wrong. But jest you stop an' ax hes motives, an' you'll find 'taint religion. Lor' bless 'ee, sir, a bull's got no more use for religion than a toad for side-pockets. 'Tes obstinacy—that's what 'tes. You tells me a jackass es obstinate. Well, an' that's true in a way; and so's a hog. Ef you wants quiet contrariness, a jackass or a hog'll ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... India preserved their religion, though not without some taint from the circumjacent idolatry. Their celebration of the Moharram, with tasteless and extravagant ceremonies, and their forty days' fast in Ramzan, were alike misplaced in a country where, from the movable nature of their dates, they sometimes fell in seasons when the rigour of the climate ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... them. Certainly it is obvious to you all that a university ball-player making himself famous here, and then playing during the summer months at a resort, is laying himself open to suspicion. I have no doubt that many players are innocent of the taint of professionalism, but unfortunately they have become members of these summer teams after being first requested, then warned, ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... the sun, From taint and blemish free— Great William Stow was there for one, And George A. Knight ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... hoein', and ploughin', and drill, And my hosses all knows me and works with a will; I'm fond o' my 'chinin', and thackin' and drainin', For when work's to be done, 'taint ...
— Sagittulae, Random Verses • E. W. Bowling
... up to the hatchway that led down to the forecastle. If disease had smitten the Minnie B they hoped to get some clew from the taint of the sailors' quarters. Greer stuck a nose down the ladder first. Beyond the usual close ship smells there seemed to be nothing ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... persons, and the time; And, like the haggard, check at every feather That comes before his eye. This is a practice As full of labour as a wise man's art: For folly that he wisely shows is fit; But wise men, folly-fall'n, quite taint their wit. ...
— Twelfth Night; or, What You Will • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... yes, I have just died, as they call it, and 'taint so bad a change after all; only I suppose there'll be dry times here for the want of ...
— Modern Spiritualism • Uriah Smith
... year, he informed me, had now elapsed without effacing from her mind this singular taint of insanity; still her friends hoped it might gradually wear away. They had at one time removed her to a distant part of the country, in hopes that absence from the scenes connected with her story might have ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... ar heap too big a crap to be gethered 'thout whisky. 'Lasses-and-water nuver gethered no crap sence de woil' war' made, ner 'taint gwine to." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... sweet, innocent, ladylike, high-spirited, joyous creature. Those struggles of her father to get rid of the last porcine taint, though not quite successful as to himself, had succeeded thoroughly in regard to her. It comes at last with due care, and the due care had here been taken. She was so nice that middle-aged men wished themselves younger that they might make love to her, or older that they might ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... shall be taken to some desert place By man untrod, and in a rock-hewn cave, With food no more than to avoid the taint That homicide might bring on all the State, Buried alive. There let her call in aid The King of Death, the one god she reveres, Or learn too late a lesson learnt at last: 'Tis labor lost, to ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... rowels rang, Or on the floor my sabre smote, The sound went through her like a pang. I saw this; and the days to come Forewarned me with an iron clang, That drowned the music of the drum, That made the rousing bugle faint; And yet I sternly left my home,— Haply to fall by noisome taint Of foul disease, without a deed To sound in rhyme or shine in paint; But, oh, at least, to drop a seed, Humble, but faithful to the last, Sown by my Country in her need! O Death, come to me, slow or fast; I'll do my duty while I may! Though sorrow burdens every ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Neither the throne nor the senate-house, the secret conclave nor the popular assembly, can shield one from the force of that primary law of human action—thou shalt not sin against thine own soul. Purity of purpose and sincerity of conduct must preserve the citizen from the taint of evil, or he will become corrupt, and if he do not ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... hast nature in thee, bear it not; Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury and damned incest, But, howsoever thou pursu'st this act, Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught; leave her to Heaven, And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, To goad and sting her. Fare thee well at once The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, And 'gins to pale his uneffectual fire. Adieu, adieu, adieu! ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard
... that you have nothing whatever to fear. Clemency is her mother's living and breathing image as far as looks go, and as far as I can judge in the innermost workings of her mind. I have not seen in her the slightest taint from her evil father, though God knows I have watched for it with horror as the years have passed. After she was born I smuggled her away by night, and gave out word that the child had died at the same time with the mother. There was a private funeral, and the casket was ...
— 'Doc.' Gordon • Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
... dogs, and hawks, and his wife well; he has a good riding face, and he can sit a great horse; he will taint a staff well at tile; when he is mounted he looks like the sign of the George, that's all I know; save, that instead of a dragon, he will brandish against a tree, and break his sword as confidently upon the knotty ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... danger from that source. A rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... old railroad bond debt, held a conservative position in the Union,—financially, socially, patriotically and commercially. Its credit is the best, its prospects the brightest, and it makes very little difference which political party dominates its future so long as it is free from the taint of anarchy and is guided by the principles of honor and justice. The only thing to be feared is that some political party may gain control of the government of the nation, and either degrade its currency, involve ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... Ethel, his jovial ministrations overflowed to Mrs. Scott, until the sedate colonel's wife admitted to herself that no such pleasant voyage had fallen to her lot since the days when she had started for India on her wedding journey. Weldon had the consummate tact to keep the taint of the filial from his chivalry. His attentions to Mrs. Scott and Ethel differed in degree, but not in kind, and Mrs. Scott adored him accordingly. One by one, the languid days dropped into the past. Neptune had duly escorted them over the Line, to the boredom of the first-class passengers and ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... himself "entitled to treat as an imbecile conceit the pretence" that a French school of thought survived in Great Britain. Such was the Podsnappery of the hour in its vigilance against moral and religious taint. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... of Joseph's innocence, and when he cast him into prison, he said to him, "I know that thou art not guilty of so vile a crime, but I must put thee in durance, lest a taint ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... Thackeray says that he was only a great jester. Humor is the laughter of the heart, and Sterne's pathos is closely interwoven with his humor. He was the foremost of English sentimentalists, and he had that taint of insincerity which distinguishes sentimentalism from genuine sentiment, like Goldsmith's, for example. Sterne, in life, was selfish, heartless, and untrue. A clergyman, his worldliness and vanity and the indecency of his writings ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... by one concentrated effort, even as England cleaned her corrupt borough elections of a century and a half ago. Let us fix on one man who will stand for civic purity, virtue and honor, no matter what his party. Let us elect a United States senator who is above reproach, above the taint of gaining a victory by the downfall of his fellow men! In the next ballot, let us each ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... bee-life, I would not introduce the subject of heredity. But you know, Miss Martin, that such racial characteristics are transmitted, or transmissible, I should say, by sex opposites. Thus, an epileptic mother is more likely to give her taint to a son than to a daughter.... Yes, I mean all that, and more," he went on, seeing the look of horror, not unmixed with fear, in Doris's eyes. "There must be no more irritating of Siddle, or playing on his feelings—by you, at any rate. Treat him gently. If he insists ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits; or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... her former attitude, looking downward as before. "But that I always was—a slave, and the daughter of a slave. Your child, though unknown and unacknowledged, better that it died than lived my life over again, cursed with the proud Anglo-Saxon blood, debased by the African taint, that, if it exists but in the slightest degree, poisons all ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... candlesticks are dainty, the saint's scarlet hat is dainty, and its violet tassel, and its ribbon, and his blue cloak and his spare pair of shoes, and his little brown partridge—it is all a perfect quintessence of innocent luxury—absolute delight, without one drawback in it, nor taint of the Devil ...
— On the Old Road, Vol. 2 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... 'taint you, is it? And you compared yourself with that little, peaked-faced chap that's around just the same—you with shoulders as broad as them are, and two ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... freedom she endorsed and applauded. The descendants of those black soldiers, who were engaged in the prolonged struggle for freedom, can rejoice in the fact that no single act of those patriots is in keeping with the Englishman's prediction; no taint of brutality is even charged against them by those whom they took prisoners in battle. The confederates themselves testify to the humane treatment they unexpectedly received at the hands of their negro captors. Mr. Pollard, the ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... of the visionary projects just mentioned the gravest doubts began to agitate the fertile and casuistic mind of the Lady Superior. The holier her ideal St. Ginx of the future, the more to be deplored was any heretical taint in the present. Holy mother! Was it not perhaps eminently perilous to his spiritual purity that an unbeliever like Mrs. Ginx should bring unconsecrated milk into the convent to be administered to this suckling ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... as the following ludicrous sketches of some of the enormities of Charles II. "Towards the close of the Protectorate, many signs indicated that a time of license was at hand. But the restoration of Charles II rendered the change wonderfully rapid and violent. A deep and general taint infected the morals of the most influential classes, and spread itself through every province of letters. Poetry inflamed the passions; philosophy undermined the principles; divinity itself, inculcating an abject reverence for the court, gave additional effect to its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... He has a masculine judgment and no small degree of wit—though 'tis of a hard intellectual kind; but through misprising his fellow creatures he has come to lack flair. His lady, if she scent a taint on the wind wafted through her routs and assemblies, no doubt sets it down to breathings upon her humble origin, or (it may be) even to some leaking gossip of her foregone wrong. (Women, my dear sir, are brutes to rend a wounded one of the herd.) ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... already set in. In phlegmonous and suppurative habitual erysipelas, a cure is generally facilitated, if a dose of Sulphur 30 is interpolated, in the manner which we have explained before, in order to neutralize the psoric taint which ...
— Apis Mellifica - or, The Poison of the Honey-Bee, Considered as a Therapeutic Agent • C. W. Wolf
... creatures, despite its human form, its rag of clothing, and the rough humanity of its bodily form, had woven into it—into its movements, into the expression of its countenance, into its whole presence—some now irresistible suggestion of a hog, a swinish taint, the unmistakable mark of ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... other translator less immediately under Wyclif's influence. The freedom with which the Bible admittedly circulated for many years, and the well-known allusion by Sir Thomas More to an English translation untouched by any taint of heresy, point also in the same direction. That the second version is really only a revision of the first can hardly be adduced as a strong argument on the other side. The ethics of literary acknowledgment were not ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... was in great part due to misunderstanding. The law requires to be systematised and made clear rather than to be substantially altered. It is, on the whole, a 'generous, humane, and high-minded system, eminently favourable to individuals, and free from the taint of that fierce cowardice which demands that, for the protection of society, somebody shall be punished when a crime has been committed.' Though English lawyers are too apt to set off 'an unreasonable hardship against an unreasonable ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Hildreth kept himself alive with nostrums until he was seventy, but he was an invalid all his life. He ought to be cursed for his contemptible selfishness in bringing so much suffering upon the race! There's none of the taint about Evadne, bless her! Russe told me the Hospital examiners said they had never passed such ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... to explain how it is that, to a physicist unsmitten with any taint of solipsism, a well-elaborated scheme which is consistent with already known facts necessarily seems to correspond, or have close affinity, with the truth. It is the result of experience of a mathematical theorem concerning unique distributions. ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... his rightful meed was gone. And I was all distraught and conquered. Of ending his base life I never thought, never at my wildest, though I had thought to end my own; but when Fate struck the blow for me, then I swore that carrion should not taint my whole life through. It should not—should not—for 'twas Fate's self had doomed me to my ruin. And there it lay until the night; for this I planned, that being of such great strength for a woman, ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... pavement; the shutters of the glass door were closed; I could not see into the interior; and both my eyes and spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house—from the grey-hollow filled with rayless cells, as it appeared to me—to that sky expanded before me,—a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn march; her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops, from behind which she had come, far and farther below her, and aspired to the zenith, midnight dark in its fathomless depth ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... has a distinctive smell, as of an arid dried-out swamp, with a faint taint of fish. But in the Flats the odor changes. Here is the smell of factories, warehouses, and trading marts; the smell of stale cooking drifting from the homes of the laborers and lower class techmen who ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet
... from the desire of serious and able men in the American Army to maintain the high ideals for which all of them have fought, to preserve the soldier comradeship and carry it over into civilian life as an element of broad helpfulness while keeping the record of the army free from the taint of selfish aims. It was also wisely intended to forestall by the creation of one big genuinely representative, nonpartisan and democratic body, the formation of numerous smaller organizations in various places by men intent on exploiting the ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... hand-portmanteau, and I had told Joe that I wished to walk away all alone. I am afraid—sore afraid—that this purpose originated in my sense of the contrast there would be between me and Joe, if we went to the coach together. I had pretended with myself that there was nothing of this taint in the arrangement; but when I went up to my little room on this last night, I felt compelled to admit that it might be so, and had an impulse upon me to go down again and entreat Joe to walk with me in the ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... pursu'st this Act, Taint not thy Mind; nor let thy Soul contrive Against thy Mother ought; leave her to Heav'n, And to those Thorns that in her Bosom lodge, To prick and sting her. ...
— Some Account of the Life of Mr. William Shakespear (1709) • Nicholas Rowe
... an inquiry as to the cause of the proceedings. He made no friends, and though his surliness repelled us, he made few enemies. Indeed, he was rather a favorite, since he was a genuine character; his gruffness had no taint of selfish greed in it; he minded his own business strictly, and wanted others to do the same. When he first came into the company, it is true, he gained the enmity of nearly everybody in it, but an incident occurred ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... even as they are known? Men, too—alas! how fast their number grows—whom I have known, have loved, and lost too soon; and all gleaming out of the gloom, as every image of the dead should do, in pure white marble, as if purged from earthly taint? To ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... now, an' I reckon dey calls him by he fus' name. An' now, look h'yar, Aun' Patsy, I wants you not to disremember dis h'yar. Don' you go imaginin' ebery time anything happens to folks, that ole miss done been kunjerin' 'em. Dat ain't pious, an' 'taint suitable fur a ole pusson like you, Aun' Patsy, wot's jus' settin' on de poach steps ob heaben, a waitin' till somebody finds out you's dar, ...
— The Late Mrs. Null • Frank Richard Stockton
... been a revolution,[55] properly so called; there never has even been one grand national rebellion. The people, tho often lawless, are never free. Among them we find still preserved that peculiar taint of barbarism which makes men prefer occasional disobedience to systematic liberty. Certain feelings there are of our common nature, which even their slavish loyalty can not eradicate, and which, ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... which we have already referred, and which Mr. Britton kindly submitted to us with various other correspondence on the subject), he says, "there can now be no impropriety in mentioning what could not be said when the collected edition of Chatterton's works was published,—that there was a taint of insanity in his family. His sister was once confined; and this is a key to the eccentricities of his life, and the deplorable rashness of his death." Of this unhappy predisposition, indeed, he seems to have been himself conscious, for "in his last will and testament," ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... life, his character, or his works. The three are inseparably connected, and to understand one we must understand all. The reason is that Shelley is one of the most subjective of writers. It would be hard to name a poet who has kept his art more free from all taint of representation of the real, making it nor an instrument for creating something life-like, but a more and more intimate echo or emanation of his own spirit. In studying his writings we shall see how they flow from his dominating emotion of love for his fellow-men; and ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... Ring, nor pomander cannot expiate for, dost thou tell me I should? I'le pose thy Worship in thine own Library and Almanack, which thou art daily poring on, to pick out days of iniquity to cozen fools in, and Full Moons to cut Cattle: dost thou taint me, that have run over ...
— The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher - Vol. 2 of 10: Introduction to The Elder Brother • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... the image of Divine Maternity, which so many illustrious painters have vied with one another to represent; something which should remind him, indeed, but only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... perhaps then because it's so bad—because your industry as you call it, IS so vulgar—that Mr. Chad won't come back? Does he feel the taint? Is he staying away not to be mixed ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... sweet scent of clover or of new-mown grass, the odour which arises from the cottages is peculiarly offensive. It is not that they are dirty inside—the floor may be scrubbed, the walls brushed, the chairs clean, and the beds tidy; it is from outside that all the noisome exhalations taint the breeze. The refuse vegetables, the washings, the liquid and solid rubbish generally is cast out into the ditch, often open to the highway road, and there festers till the first storm sweeps it away. The cleanest woman indoors thinks nothing disgusting ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... look so grave. No one knows, or values thy sterling piety half so tenderly and reverentially as I do. But this is no common case. Were Marie one of those base and grovelling wretches, those accursed unbelievers, who taint our fair realm with their abhorred rites—think of nothing but gold and usury, and how best to cheat their fellows; hating us almost as intensely as we hate them—why, she should abide by the fate she has drawn upon herself. But the wife of my noble Morales, one who has associated so long with zealous ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... routed them, always was the man on the job. It was his name that appeared in the newspapers, it was his name that headed the list of the junior officers mentioned for distinguished conduct. Standish had followed his career with an admiration and a joy that was without taint of envy or detraction. He gloried in Aintree, he delighted to know the army held such a man. He was grateful to Aintree for upholding the traditions of a profession to which he himself gave all the devotion of a fanatic. He made a god of him. This was the attitude of ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... therefore, I shall enter the body of my preceptor's lady. I shall stay within her and yet not touch her person, like a drop of water on a lotus-leaf which lies on it and yet does not drench it at all. If I be free from the taint of passion, I cannot incur any fault by doing what I wish to do. As a traveller, in course of his sojourn, takes up his residence (for a while) in any empty mansion he finds, I shall, after the same manner, reside this day within the body of my ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... in incredulous silence a moment longer, and then hurried back to the living room, as though some of his horrible guilt would taint them, too, if they looked too long. Morty stayed behind long enough to give Lou a quizzical, annoyed glance. Then he also went into the living room, leaving only Emerald standing in ...
— The Big Trip Up Yonder • Kurt Vonnegut
... attention with which it ought to protect property from such violence,—the commonwealth then is become totally perverted from its purposes; neither God nor man will long endure it; nor will it long endure itself. In that case, there is an unnatural infection, a pestilential taint, fermenting in the constitution of society, which fever and convulsions of some kind or other must throw off, or in which the vital powers, worsted in an unequal struggle, are pushed back upon themselves, and, by a reversal of their whole functions, fester to gangrene, to ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... gadding vine o'ergrown, And all their echoes mourn. The willows, and the hazel-copses green, Shall now no more be seen Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. As killing as the canker to the rose, Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that graze, Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe wear, When first the white-thorn blows; Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherds' ear. Where were ye, Nymphs, when the remorseless deep Closed o'er the head of your ...
— The Hundred Best English Poems • Various
... And his unkindness may defeat my life, But never taint my love. Othello, Act iv. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... cited by Mr. Ray. Here might come in (or be nam'd at least) wild-cornel, or dog-wood, good to make mill-cogs, pestles, bobins for bone-lace, spokes for wheels, &c. the best skewers for butchers, because it does not taint the flesh, and is of so very hard a substance, as to make wedges to cleave and rive other wood with, instead of iron. (But of this, see chap. II. book II.) And lastly, the viburnum, or way-faring-tree, growing also plentifully in every ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... have not been able to lift a pen. My constitution and frame were, ab origine, blasted with a deep incurable taint of hypochondria, which poisons my existence. Of late a number of domestic vexations, and some pecuniary share in the ruin of these cursed times; losses which, though trifling, were yet what I could ill bear, have so irritated me, that my feelings at times could only be envied by a reprobate spirit ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... reformed And the average feminine fortress is stormed. In rescuing men from abysses of sin She loses her head—and herself tumbles in. The mind of a woman was shaped for a saint, But deep in her heart lies the devil's own taint. With plans for salvation her busy brain teems, While her heart longs in secret to know how sin seems. And if with this question unanswered she dies, Temptation came not in the right sort of guise. There's my estimate, Reese, of the beautiful sex; I see by your face that my ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... experiences of her childhood? Had the cruelty which tortured her during the years when the soul is being fashioned left upon her no brand of slavish vice, nor the baseness of those early associations affected her with any irremovable taint? As far as human observation could probe her, Jane Snowdon had no spot of uncleanness in her being; she had been rescued while it was yet time, and the subsequent period of fostering had enabled features of her ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... other corrupt and infectious maladies, broke out with great violence as the army advanced along the northern shores of the AEgean Sea; and as every victim to these dreadful and hopeless disorders helped, by his own dissolution, to taint the air for all the rest, the wretched crowd was, in the end, reduced to the last extreme of misery ...
— Xerxes - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... of meat, the long pipe which runs by the bone should be taken out, being apt to taint, as likewise ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... complexion, with a Tartar physiognomy and fierce little eyes, he walked with his fists clenched, his body bent forward, darting suspicious glances from under an enormous cocked hat. His intelligence was limited, and his sanity itself was doubtful. The hereditary taint expressed itself, in his case, not by mystic leanings as in his two brothers, Alexander and Nicholas (in their various ways, for one was mystically liberal and the other mystically autocratic), but by the fury of an uncontrollable temper which generally broke out in disgusting abuse ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... been violently torn. This incident symbolises very aptly the attitude of America. The country has not yet recovered from the hostility which it once professed to George III. It assumes that a difference of policy always implies a moral taint. The American Colonies broke away from the mother country; therefore George III. was a knave, whose name may not be mentioned without dishonour, and all the brave men who served him in serving the colonies are dishonoured also. It is ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... be always in the power of the most skilful of the faculty to pronounce, with any certainty, whether a person who has been under their care, in certain stages of this malady, is so effectually cured, as to leave no possibility of his being still capable of communicating the taint. I think I could mention some instances which justify my presuming to hazard this opinion. It is likewise well known, that amongst a number of men, there are, generally, to be found some so bashful as to endeavour to conceal their labouring under any symptoms of ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... the last skimming add half a dozen whole cloves, a dozen whole alspice, a pod of red pepper, a few whole grains of black pepper, and if you like, a young onion or a stalk of celery. Personally I do not like either onion or celery—moreover they taint the fat one may save from the pot. Let the water boil hard for half a minute, no longer, then slack heat till it barely simmers. Keep it simmering, filling up the pot as the water in it boils away, until the ham is tender throughout. The time depends on several things—the ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... pitifully ignorant. I thought that love had come to me. Girls are so eager for love. They snatch at the shadow of it.—That is what I did.—I am not trying to plead for myself.—Some things are not to be forgiven.—Somewhere in my nature there was a taint—a plague-spot.—If life is given me, I shall find it and root it out. I only ask for time to do that. But meanwhile I have done what I could. I have told you the truth. I have set you free. I have given you ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... do? Is murder your intent?—While I have life I fear you not!—And think you that brutality can taint the dead? Nay, think you that, were you endowed with the superior force which the vain name of man supposes, and could accomplish the basest purpose of your heart, I would falsely take guilt to myself; or imagine I had received the smallest ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... surgeon shook his head. "Captain Sharkey," said he, "it would be an ill deed to speak you false. The taint is on you. No man on whom the leper scales have rested ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... vigorous opponents of the Jansenists, who, indeed, soon had cause to look upon Vincent as one of the most powerful of their enemies. But although he hated the heresy with all the strength of his upright soul, Vincent's charitable heart went out in pity to those who were infected with its taint, and it was with compassion rather than indignation that he would speak of St. Cyran and his adherents. Not until they had been definitely condemned by the Church did he cease his efforts to win them from their errors—efforts which were received, for the most part, ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... bear. The grain which becomes our bread grows best when its roots are spread in unseen corruption; and so perfect is the chemistry of nature, that the yellow ears of harvest retain absolutely no taint of the putrescence whence they sprung. Thus easily and perfectly the Lord brings lessons of holiness from examples of sin. He pauses not to apologize or explain: majestically the instruction advances, like the processes of nature, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... alliance between the Tories and malcontent Whigs for Walpole's overthrow. The alliance succeeded, though too late for Bolingbroke to enjoy the fruits of success; but in effecting the purgation of the Tory party from its taint of Jacobitism he rendered no inconsiderable service. His foundation, moreover, of the Craftsman—the first official journal of a political party in England—showed his appreciation of the technique of political controversy. Most of ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... words, to which he had listened intently, re-perused, throughout, this record of the stone; and finding that the general purport consisted of nought else than a treatise on love, and likewise of an accurate transcription of facts, without the least taint of profligacy injurious to the times, he thereupon copied the contents, from beginning to end, to the intent of charging the world to hand them down ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... of more than of amusing himself. I say, "at the best," for perhaps he will suffer from exhaustion and a distaste of the subjects which once pleased him; or perhaps he has suffered some real intellectual mischief; perhaps he has contracted some serious disorder, he has admitted some taint of scepticism, which he will never get ...
— The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated: In Nine - Discourses Delivered to the Catholics of Dublin • John Henry Newman
... from my birth. I loathed it and shrank from it. Why? I could not have said. Had I been born in Carolina instead of Massachusetts I should hardly have escaped the taint of "service." Its temptations in wage and comfort would soon have answered my scruples; and yet I am sure I would have fought long even in Carolina, for I knew in my heart ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... broke from Fulvia. She admired and respected Crescenti, yet she had never fully trusted him. The taint of ecclesiasticism was ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... breast at all, but remove the entrails from the hind opening, leaving the gizzard in its place. Put no water in but wipe out the blood with a dry cloth. Leaving the entrails in is injurious, tending to sour the meat and taint it with ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... flashing screens; central operators of communications dropped under the winking lights of their panels. Observers and centrals in the outlying sections of the city wondered briefly at the unwonted universal motionlessness and stagnation; then the racing taint in water and in air reached them, ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... Brother Beans, "but I think I'll let you in on it. The name of our noble organization is 'Grue's Overseas Grouches,' and our humble object is to rebuke the only taint of Prussianism which we have personally encountered in an otherwise perfectly good man's army. When we've done that we ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... thoughts rose in pictures) possibly condemned the speculator as a description of gambler. An erratic severity in ethics is easily overlooked by the enthusiast for things old English. She was consciously ahead of them in the knowledge that her father had been, without the taint of gambling, a beneficent speculator. The Montgomery colony in South Africa, and his dealings with the natives in India, and his Railways in South America, his establishment of Insurance Offices, which were Savings ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of 'oman can fix 'em, so's dey won't be so turrible bad," suggested the negro, "'taint fer, so you jes' run down ter my cabin an' tell Sukey I say fix ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... law requires to be systematised and made clear rather than to be substantially altered. It is, on the whole, a 'generous, humane, and high-minded system, eminently favourable to individuals, and free from the taint of that fierce cowardice which demands that, for the protection of society, somebody shall be punished when a crime has been committed.' Though English lawyers are too apt to set off 'an unreasonable hardship against an unreasonable indulgence,' 'to trump one quibble by another, and to suppose that ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... that be a propagation of the distemper which was the best means to prevent it; and this too is an evidence of it, and brings me back to what I only hinted at before, but must speak more fully to here, namely, that men went about apparently well many days after they had the taint of the disease in their vitals, and after their spirits were so seized as that they could never escape it, and that all the while they did so they were dangerous to others; I say, this proves that so it ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... young fireman brushed them aside quickly, removed the adornments from the horses and wagon, sprang to the vehicle, threw the sign overboard, and, lifting up the unconscious driver, placed him out of view under the wagon seat. As he did so, Ralph noticed the taint of liquor on the ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... labor disputes without allowing itself to be employed as an ally of either side. Its proper role in industrial strife is to encourage the processes of mediation and conciliation. These processes can successfully be directed only by a government free from the taint of any suspicion that ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... the truth, prompted by feelings of gratitude and good will towards my kind friends the savages. I have wished to illustrate the customs and character of a people very much calumniated, amongst whom I have found strong and devoted friendship free from every taint of ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair, With two left legs, and Judas-colored hair, And frowsy pores that taint the ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... and those in great abundance, which are likeliest to taint both life and doctrine, cannot be suppressed without the fall of learning and of all ability in disputation, and that these books of either sort are most and soonest catching to the learned, from whom to the common people whatever is heretical or dissolute ...
— Areopagitica - A Speech For The Liberty Of Unlicensed Printing To The - Parliament Of England • John Milton
... and the King; at York, at Oxford (where the King held a little Parliament of his own), and at Uxbridge. But they came to nothing. In all these negotiations, and in all his difficulties, the King showed himself at his best. He was courageous, cool, self-possessed, and clever; but, the old taint of his character was always in him, and he was never for one single moment to be trusted. Lord Clarendon, the historian, one of his highest admirers, supposes that he had unhappily promised the Queen never to make peace without her consent, and that this must often be taken as his excuse. ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... owes a measure of confidence to his child's lover, and there are some warnings that it is cruel to withhold, notably where there is any taint of insanity in the family. In the case of a fatherless girl the suitor must address himself to her mother, nearest relative, ...
— The Etiquette of Engagement and Marriage • G. R. M. Devereux
... husband's business and interests, as well as in his recreative enjoyments. The household affairs were under her skilful guidance. She conducted them with economy, and yet with generous liberality, free from the least taint of ostentation or extravagance. The home fireside was a scene of cheerfulness. And most of our family have been blest with this sunny gift. Indeed, a merrier family circle I have never seen. There were twelve persons ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... came about that I carried no taint of the dread associations of the Wolfsberg about me as I went down the bustling street to the Weiss Thor to call on that learned and well-reputed lawyer, Master Gerard von Sturm. So great was the fame of Master Gerard that he was often called in to settle the mercantile quarrels of the burghers ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... growth the elm and plane Fling their huge arms across my way, Gray, old, and cumbered with a train Of vines, as huge, and old, and gray! Free stray the lucid streams, and find No taint in these fresh lawns and shades; Free spring the flowers that scent the wind Where never scythe has ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... Allen G. Thurman for Vice-President brought to the ticket what its head seemed to lack—popularity among the people of the West—and did much to hearten all such Democrats as insisted upon voting a ticket free from all taint ...
— History of the United States, Volume 5 • E. Benjamin Andrews
... the hartes of your ennemyes, than they had beene able to haue done in your castel, with their thundring ordinaunce." The Countesse somewhat shamefast and abashed, to heare herselfe so greatly praysed of a Prince so greate, began to blushe and taint with roseall colour, the whitenesse of her alablaster face. Then lifting vp her bashfull eyes, somewhat towards the king, she said vnto him: "My soueraigne Lord, your grace may speake your pleasure, but I am well assured, ...
— The Palace of Pleasure, Volume 1 • William Painter
... the quagmire which held them fast. They ran after the stone that was to turn all to gold, or the elixir that should conquer death, or the signs in the heavens that should foretell their destinies; and the taint of this may be traced even when the dark period that followed was clearing away. Four hundred years after Roger's death, his illustrious namesake, Francis Bacon, was formulating his Inductive Philosophy, and with complete cock-sureness was teaching mankind all about everything. ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... shaved; he rejected all attempts of consolation; and remained deaf to the most earnest and respectful remonstrances of those who had a right to render their advice. In this case, the affliction of the mind must have been reinforced by some peculiarity in the constitution. He inherited a melancholy taint from his father, and this seems to have been dreaded as a family disease; for the infant don Louis, who likewise resided in the palace of Villa-Viciosa, was fain to amuse himself with hunting and other diversions, to prevent his being infected with the king's ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... Blackey's place to-night. They're a goin' to ast you if they kin. Blackey's found out as you've got respectable relations as wouldn't like to see your name in the papers, and he's goin' to 'ave a new lay on. 'Taint no bloomin' error neither. The gal—Tilley, don't-cherknow—she'll say, 'I'll walk home with you a bit,' when Blackey's out. He meets you, and he says, 'Wot 'cher doin' 'long o' my wife? Didn't I trust you at home? I'll expose you.' She ain't no more ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... little; Not that I like them so much, or care a bajocco for Vernon, But I am slow at Italian, have not many English acquaintance, And I am asked, in short, and am not good at excuses. Middle-class people these, bankers very likely, not wholly Pure of the taint of the shop; will at table d'hote and restaurant Have their shilling's worth, their penny's pennyworth even: Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth! Yet they are fairly descended, they give you to know, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Cornet, they would deserve to be handed down to posterity as poltroons and cowards. He would, he said, go still further; they would not only deserve to be thus branded with infamy, but they would actually be so; and their pusillanimity would be a taint in the blood of their children's children. He begged, he prayed, he intreated, he implored that they would not disgrace the name of man by conduct at once so cowardly and so foolish. But he begged, prayed, intreated and implored in vain—his venerable character ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... charge as with those she bought for herself. She sedulously sent up remainders till they were expressly countermanded. Less economical by nature, and hungrier by habit, Mary Ann had much trouble in restraining herself from surreptitious pickings. Her conscience was rarely worsted; still there was a taint of dishonesty in her soul, else had the stairs been less of an ethical battleground for her. Lancelot's advent only made her hungrier; somehow the thought of nibbling at his provisions was too sacrilegious to be entertained. ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... refined with perfect harmony and the chastest good keeping—compared with which, the fabled gorgeousness of Eastern fairyland itself would appear to be clothed in as many dark and murky colours, as must be the mind of the splenetic and unmanly being who could presume to taint with the venom of his envy, the preparations made by the virtuous and highly distinguished lady at whose shrine this humble tribute of admiration was offered.' This last was a piece of biting sarcasm against the INDEPENDENT, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... no pang at the thought my sister could be entirely happy without any participation on my part in her bliss. We are all so selfish that it is hard to say how far even our most innocent longings are free from the taint of ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... houses of ill-fame in the city—probably not over fifty in all—but they are located in the best neighborhoods, and it is said that Fifth avenue itself is not free from the taint of their presence. As a rule, they are hired fully furnished, the owners being respectable and often wealthy people. The finest of these houses command from ten to twelve thousand dollars rent. The neighbors do not suspect the true character of the place, ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... have emanated to some extent from the Dutch papers in Cape Colony and the Transvaal, but in a much fuller and more substantial form from the Continental papers, notably the Parisian Press. On the other hand, our own journalists have not been altogether free from this taint. Let us take one or two concrete instances, e.g., violation of the white flag, firing on ambulances, the use of "explosive" bullets, looting. Just after the first reverse at the Tugela, a correspondent wired home that the Boers ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett
... of this lower world to the contemplation of that imperishable existence, which Christianity has opened beyond the grave. A tenderness pervades the piece, which may remind us of the best manner of Petrarch; while, with the exception of a slight taint of pedantry, it is exempt from the meretricious vices that belong to the poetry of the age. The effect of the sentiment is heightened by the simple turns and broken melody of the old Castilian verse, ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... political character is about on a par with Whittle Harvey's moral character; his insolence and swaggering, bullying tone in the House of Lords have excited as much disgust out of the House as they have given offence in it, and the only excuse for him is—what many people believe—that there is a taint of madness about him. The other night, in his reply to the Duke of Wellington's violent and foolish speech, he chose to turn upon Lord Rolle, a very old man and a choleric, hard-bitten old Tory. Rolle was greatly exasperated, and after he sat down ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William IV, Vol. III • Charles C. F. Greville
... content simply to enjoy it. It does not really matter how close to anything else something which possesses independent goodness is; the very utmost technical originality, the most spotless purity from the faintest taint of suggestion, will not suffice to confer merit on what does not otherwise possess it. Whether, as I rather think, Fielding pursued the plan he had formed ab incepto, or whether he cavalierly neglected it, or whether the current of his own genius carried him off his legs and landed ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... education which is to blame, but the inborn sinfulness of their corrupt and fallen natures. Such an education is regarded by those who advocate it as pre-eminently useful. There is no nonsense about it, no cant of idealism, no taint of socialism. It keeps the "lower orders" in their places, and forbids them to dream of rising above "that state of life unto which it" has pleased "God to call them." As it is a reductio ad absurdum of the conventional type of education, my objection to it is that ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... He had sold his freedom for gold, and although outwardly he appeared calm and happy, inwardly he was racked with contending emotions. What would he now not have given to be back in his old position, free from the taint of crime, free to do as he wished? But the fatal step had been taken; he could not retrace it, he must go on, and when he won, as he now felt sure he would, could he not find some quiet way to get ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... white asses laden with the freight Of Tyrian vessels, purple, gold and balm, To bribe my will: I'll bid them chase him forth, Nor let him breathe the taint of his surmise On my secure resolve. Ay, 'tis secure: And therefore let him come to spread his freight. For firmness hath its appetite and craves The stronger lure, more strongly to resist; Would know the touch of gold to fling it off; Scent wine to feel its lip the soberer; ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... And hath divine Intelligence designed That noisome dungeon for her own restraint— By her own act to galling bonds consigned,— Self-doomed, with wilful purpose, to acquaint Herself with sin and sorrow, and pollute Aethereal essence with corporeal taint? How doth thy helpless misery confute That frantic boast of vain conceit, untaugh The paltriest of ...
— Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics - With Some of Their Applications • William Thomas Thornton
... then as a good, pious prince, who knew how to speak in princely fashion. The Duke, however, told him at that audience, that the Bohemians entertained great expectations of him; and yet George, who on his mother's side was grand-son to Podiebrad, King of Bohemia, was anxious to have all taint of the hateful Bohemian heresy most carefully avoided. On this point Luther remarked to him that he knew well how to distinguish between the pipe and the piper, and was only sorry to see how accessible princes might ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... the union, who promise to perpetuate the virtues of their parents. And it is to be hoped, and we believe it to be a fact which the passage of so many years may be considered to have tolerably settled, that the fatal blood-taint of insanity, which had seemed hereditary on the side of one ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... the business quietly, and even rated some of their former officers as midshipmen, in special token of esteem. At the Nore, however, and in Duncan's squadron at Yarmouth, the mutiny was marked by bloodshed and taint of disloyalty, little surprising in view of the disaffected Irish, ex-criminals, impressed merchant sailors, and other unruly elements in the crews. In the end 18 men were put to ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... perform his will. Now all the Gods had gathered there, Each one for his allotted share— Brahma, the ruler of the sky, Sthanu, Narayan, Lord most high, And holy Indra men might view With Maruts for his retinue; The heavenly chorister, and saint, And spirit pure from earthly taint, With one accord had sought the place The high-souled monarch's rite to grace, Then to the Gods who came to take Their proper share, the hermit spake:— "For you has Dasaratha slain The votive steed, a son to gain; Stern penance-rites the King has tried, ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... all nourishment convert. Ah! happy she, whose wisdom learns to find A healthful fancy, and a well-trained mind. A sick man's wildest dreams less wild are found Than the day-visions of a mind unsound. Disordered phantasies indulged too much. Like harpies, always taint whate'er they touch. Fly soothing Solitude! fly vain Desire! Fly such soft verse as fans the dang'rous fire! Seek action; 'tis the scene which virtue loves; The vig'rous sun not only shines, but moves. ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... body shaking him to the heart. But no matter how inviting the opening, a man could not speak what rose in his heart to say, standing as he stood, a debtor in such measure. To say what he would have said to Joan, he must stand clear and towering in manliness, no taint of humiliation on ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... de Rennepont's will; the latter having declared his desire to the grandfather of the Samuels, that the capital should only be augmented by interest at five per cent.—so that the fortune might come to his descendants free from all taint ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... university ball-player making himself famous here, and then playing during the summer months at a resort, is laying himself open to suspicion. I have no doubt that many players are innocent of the taint of professionalism, but unfortunately they have become members of these summer teams after being first requested, then ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... these cases appear here, and are the result of a want of a perfect equability in the climate, and to this extent it must be held answerable. We might, however, conclude that even this final fraction could be accounted for in the hereditary taint, but we forbear, as we likewise do to claim entire exemption here from this complaint. No climate, perhaps, in any portion of the whole habitable earth, could be found to be utterly exempt. Then, too, consumption ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... most true— All this is very true. When saw you, sir, When saw you now, Baldazzar, in the frigid Ungenial Britain which we left so lately, A heaven so calm as this—so utterly free From the evil taint ...
— Edgar Allan Poe's Complete Poetical Works • Edgar Allan Poe
... he has to address. His powers are uncommon and unfettered in their play; his aim is worthy. He is fulfilling and will fulfil an important task as an educator of the people, if all be not marred by a taint of self-love and arrogance now obvious in his discourse. This taint is not surprising in one so young, who has done so much, and in order to do it has been compelled to great self-confidence and light ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... positions which appeared preposterously out of accord alike with his early career and with his later opportunities for development. In trying to explain this, it is easier to say what was not the underlying quality than what it was. Certainly there was no taint whatsoever of that vulgar self-confidence which is so apt to lead the "free and equal" citizens of the great republic into grotesque positions. Perhaps it was a grand simplicity of faith; a profound instinctive confidence ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... head deprecatingly. "Don't seem lak I evah able to rickermembah dat boy's name, nohow. His grampa' 'uz a Hynds, likewise his ma, but she 'sisted on marryin' er furriner, an' de boy takes atter de furriners 'stead er we-all. 'Taint de po' boy's fault, but ol' Mis' Scarlett hated 'im wuss 'n pizen. De only notice she take er de boy is ter warrant 'im fo' trispassin'. Dat 's how come folkses ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... crime deserving the severest punishment." From which representation (if the said Warren Hastings did not falsely and unjustly accuse and slander the Company's service) it appeared that the peculation which infected the whole army, derived from the taint which it had in Oude, and so fatal to the discipline of the troops, would be dangerously increased by his treaty and agreement aforesaid with the Nabob, and by his own said evil counsel to the ...
— The Works Of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. IX. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... BLESSING.—Where one parent is consumptive and the other vigorous, the chances are just half as great. If there is a scrofulous or consumptive taint in the blood, beware! Sickly children are no comfort to their parents, no real blessing. If such people marry, they had better, in ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... his luckier brothers and cousins, got neither a peerage nor a gentle breeding. Instead he was reared meagrely, if not harshly, under the maternal roof and name, until he grew old enough to realize that he was on an island where bad birth is not forgiven, even if the taint be royal. Then he ran away, reached the coast of France, and made his way to the French court, where his father was now, and properly enough, an exile. He was a fine youth, with a prompt tongue and clever head, and some attention was finally shown him. They gave him ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Pomp. de parricid. cited by Mr. Ray. Here might come in (or be nam'd at least) wild-cornel, or dog-wood, good to make mill-cogs, pestles, bobins for bone-lace, spokes for wheels, &c. the best skewers for butchers, because it does not taint the flesh, and is of so very hard a substance, as to make wedges to cleave and rive other wood with, instead of iron. (But of this, see chap. II. book II.) And lastly, the viburnum, or way-faring-tree, growing ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... Burke, and Mill, and to all manner of people dangerous to the back-veld views of Lacedaemon. He opened the way to Tolstoy's rediscovery of the Christian Law, amongst other northern treasures, didn't he? And I, with the Arcadian taint in my veins, saw the way open and went northwards. Now it has come to pass that I remember my own people as Moses did, and use the wisdom of Oxford as he used the wisdom of Egypt, to help one's own people towards a promised land. They want leaders, don't they? Is there ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... night soil, or human excrement. There has always been a false delicacy about mentioning this fertilizer, which has caused much waste, and great loss of health, from the impure and offensive odors which it is allowed to send forth to taint the air. ...
— The Elements of Agriculture - A Book for Young Farmers, with Questions Prepared for the Use of Schools • George E. Waring
... sent my love to thee, Thou with a smile didst take it in, And entertain'dst it royally, Though grimed with earth, with hunger thin, And leprous with the taint ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... sophist who would work for wages. A gift was legitimate, but pay ignoble; and the stigma of asking for and taking pay rested upon all labor. The abolition of slavery made small difference, for the taint had sunk in too deeply to be eradicated. A curse rested upon all labor; and even now, after four thousand years of vacillating progress and ...
— Women Wage-Earners - Their Past, Their Present, and Their Future • Helen Campbell
... "'taint much use o' tryin', I guess. I know that critter. You might as well try to squeeze ile out of Bunker Hill Monument as to c'lect a debt out of him. But any how, Squire, what'll you give, sposin' I ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... all white meat, is quick to taint, and never should be kept long before cooking. If you have the slightest doubt about pork, it is best to reject it, for unlike other meat which may be quite wholesome and usable, though not of precisely prime quality, pork must be in really first class ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... on the other, the frozen sea. With neither food nor shelter, he could not run far. All they had to do was to wait till he wandered back to the tent, as he inevitably must, when the frost and hunger laid hold of him. But these men did not stop to think. There was a certain taint of madness running in the veins of all of them. Besides, blood had been spilled, and upon them was the blood- lust, thick and hot. "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord, and He saith it in temperate climes where the warm sun steals away the energies of men. But in the Northland they have ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... woman, and bowed to the ascendency of a celestial purity. Now I am happy and blessed indeed; for I have in you precisely what I needed, without knowing it—this pure affection, free from all earthly taint—unalterable—eternal. I possess at last the love of ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... memory of the past, no fear of the future. The delicious present monopolised his existence. The ties of duty, the claims of domestic affection, the worldly considerations that by a cruel dispensation had seemed, as it were, to taint even his innocent and careless boyhood, even the urgent appeals of his critical and perilous situation; all, all were forgotten in one ...
— Henrietta Temple - A Love Story • Benjamin Disraeli
... high principle was in the balance against it, no qualms whatsoever. It was the inevitable result of his harsh training in the life that was his. The hot, rich blood of strong manhood ran in his veins, but it was the hot blood tempered with honesty and courage, and without one single taint of meanness. ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... Mephistopheles galloping hard to be in season at the witches' Sabbath-gathering? That must be the cousin of Elsie's who wants to marry her, they say. A dangerous-looking fellow for a rival, if one took a fancy to the dark girl! And who is she, and what?—by what demon is she haunted, by what taint is she blighted, by what curse is she followed, by what destiny is she marked, that her strange beauty has such a terror in it, and that hardly one shall dare to love her, and her eye glitters always, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... stood stock-still for a time. Then, coming to himself, he prostrated himself at my feet in acceptance of the relationship and did me reverence. When he rose his eyes were full of tears ... O little brother mine! I am fast going to my death—let me take all your sin away with me. May no taint from ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... the other. For we see that it is the manner of men to scandalise and deprave that which retaineth the state and virtue, by taking advantage upon that which is corrupt and degenerate, as the heathens in the primitive Church used to blemish and taint the Christians with the faults and corruptions of heretics. But nevertheless I have no meaning at this time to make any exact animadversion of the errors and impediments in matters of learning, which are more secret and ...
— The Advancement of Learning • Francis Bacon
... There is peril abroad, suspicion, anger, and distrust. A spark might fire a mighty blaze. The cardinal's warning and rebuke to the heads of colleges has wrought great consternation and anger. They are eager to purge themselves of the taint of heresy, and to ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... know that those who wait upon the Great Kaan with his dishes and his drink are some of the great Barons. They have the mouth and nose muffled with fine napkins of silk and gold, so that no breath nor odour from their persons should taint the dish or the goblet presented to the Lord. And when the Emperor is going to drink, all the musical instruments, of which he has vast store of every kind, begin to play. And when he takes the cup all the Barons and the rest of ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Middleton's life shall be a reproduction of the attempt made two hundred years before; and Middleton's knowledge of that incident shall be the means of his salvation. That would be a good idea; in fact, I think it must be done so and no otherwise. It is not to be forgotten that there is a taint of insanity in Eldredge's blood, accounting for much that is wild and absurd, at the same time that it must be subtile, in his conduct; one of those perplexing mad people, whose lunacy you are continually mistaking for wickedness or vice versa. This shall ...
— The Ancestral Footstep (fragment) - Outlines of an English Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... all public men then living, the one most deeply imbued with the spirit of our free constitution. Its checks and balances jumped with his humour. His nature was without any taint of fanaticism, nor was he anything of the doctrinaire. He was neither a Richard Baxter nor a John Locke. He had none of the pure Erastianism of Selden, who tells us in his inimitable, cold-blooded way that "a King is a King men have made ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... had more than once changed the fate of the world. It might be now on its way only to change that fate once more. The cause, too, was a noble one. It was sustained by no aggression, perfidy, or desire of change. It was to protect a friendly nation, and to sustain an inspired cause. There was no taint of cruelty or crime to degrade the soldiership of England. We were acting in the character which had already exalted her name as protectors of the weak and punishers of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... nor from their fellows, how to receive with gratitude what is valuable beyond appraisement" (Goethe). An intense Philistinism underlay the great spiritual reaction that followed the Revolution, and not even such of its apostles as Wordsworth and Carlyle wholly escaped the taint. ...
— Diderot and the Encyclopaedists (Vol 1 of 2) • John Morley
... of the world where such might be expected, there is, in truth, not a taint of it in her veins. The olivine tint is Hispano Moriscan—a complexion, if not more beautiful, certainly more picturesque than ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... the life of the nation which has resulted in the conscious ideal of the Britain of to-day. The "separation" from Rome fifty years after Bosworth had no conscious imperial purpose, but it rescued the rising empire of England from the taint of medievalism which sapped the empires of Spain, of the Bourbons, and of the Hapsburgs. The Reformation in England owes much of its character amongst the people at large, apart from the government, above all in ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... been, one of its benefactors. His travels are interesting, not merely to those who care about Africa, or the great schemes to his zeal for which he fell a martyr, but to all who take delight in the spectacle of unbounded courage and heroic ardour, unalloyed with any taint of ferocity, selfishness, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... and was very kind-hearted; but was subject to peculiar fits of insanity, during which he did wild and foolish things for the mere love of notoriety. He had two natures—one bright and good, the other sullen and criminal. A taint of madness ran in the family—came down from drunken and unprincipled fathers of dead generations; under different conditions, it might have developed into genius in one or ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... seeming paradox by asserting that "a vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice, while a vice condemned by the general opinion produces a pernicious effect on the whole character." "One," says Macaulay, "is a local malady, the other is a constitutional taint." I have quoted the famous historian in this connection because his observations are, I think, illustrative of my contention, viz., that morality is largely a matter of convention, sanctioned or condemned by what Macaulay terms ...
— The Empire of the East • H. B. Montgomery
... unphilosophical taint, which marked the earliest heavenward cries of terrified man, has clung to the petitions which he offers up at this hour for material favours and blessings. At the close of a prolonged drought, the Archbishops ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... should give my support. It is by the force of reason, and by considering facts, that I have come to the conviction that a people, who, after ten centuries of slavery, have re-conquered liberty, have need of war. War is necessary to consolidate liberty, and to purge the constitution from all taint of despotism. War is necessary to drive from amongst us those men whose example might corrupt us. You have the power of chastising the rebels, and intimidating the world; have the courage to do so. The emigres persist in their rebellion, the sovereigns persist in supporting them. ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... "No, 'taint likely, Tom. He had liquor in him; I could see that; and besides, he always has. Well, when pap's full, you might take and belt him over the head with a church and you couldn't phase him. He says so, his own self. So it's the same with Muff Potter, of course. But if a man was dead sober, I reckon ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which I do, unless it is motived by this regard to Him as its 'chief end,' loses its noblest consecration, and is degraded from its loftiest beauty. The Altar sanctifies, and not only sanctifies but ennobles, the gift. That which has in it the taint of self-regard so pronouncedly and dominantly as that God is shut out, is like some vegetation down in low levels at the bottom of a vale, which never has the sun to shine upon it. But let it rise as some tree above the brushwood ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... few are more beautiful, and in some respects more touching, than a friendship between two boys, unalloyed by any taint of selfishness, indiscriminating in its genuine enthusiasm, delicate in its natural reserve. It is not always because the hearts of men are wiser, purer, or better than the hearts of boys, that "summae puerorum amicitia: saepe cum ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... on the next section of corridor wall when he caught that faint taint in the air, the very familiar scent of wolverines. Now it provided Shann with a guide as well ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... not always a willful breach of duty on the part of the father, but usually comes from ignorance as to how to broach this subject to the boy. A great many growing lives would be saved from moral taint and become a blessing instead of a curse if the father discharged his whole duty to his growing son, by putting at his disposal the knowledge which is necessary to an understanding of the ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... the lodge, fearing that some taint of Nuflo's evil-smelling den and dinner might still cling to me, I turned aside to where a streamlet in the wood widened and formed a deep pool, to take a plunge in the water. After drying myself in the air, and thoroughly ventilating my garments ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... could not make, And give her, for her comfort's sake! He would beat his weary, empty hands Upon the table, would hold up strands Of silver and gold, and ask her why She scorned the best which he could buy. He would pray as to some high-niched saint, That she would cure him of the taint Of failure. He would clutch the wall With his bleeding fingers, if she should fall He could catch, and hold her, and make her live! With sobs he would ask her to forgive All he had done. And broken, spent, He would call himself impertinent; Presumptuous; a tradesman; a nothing; driven To madness ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... influence Dame Reason, but it will be useless. And now, Reason, you are to remember, as of course you do, for Reason forgets nothing, that you are to think neither of brothers or of sisters. You are entirely to drop your feelings as Agatha, and to be pure Reason undefiled by mortal taint. You are to say, whether, were you, Reason, placed as I am now, you would marry this unreasonable young man as soon as he gets to Chatillon, which means tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that at the very latest. Now, Reason, speak, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... mounseers, and persuaded ourselves that their whole literature consisted in atheism and murder, and though we now know that frogs are by no means the common food of the peasantry—costing about a guinea a dish—and that it is possible for a Frenchman to be a strapping fellow of six feet high, the taint of our former persuasion remains with us still as to their books; and, in some remote districts, we have no doubt that Peter Pindar would be thought a more harmless volume in a young lady's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... at length " 'taint the folks that thinks themselves the best that is the best always if you ain't good, I should like to know what goodness is. There's somebody that thinks you be," said he, a minute or two afterwards, as the horses were ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... doubt with me, if it be always in the power of the most skilful of the faculty to pronounce, with any certainty, whether a person who has been under their care, in certain stages of this malady, is so effectually cured, as to leave no possibility of his being still capable of communicating the taint. I think I could mention some instances which justify my presuming to hazard this opinion. It is likewise well known, that amongst a number of men, there are, generally, to be found some so bashful as to endeavour to conceal their labouring under any symptoms of this disorder. And there are ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... was a big, broad-chested, muscular man, whose neck rose like a mortised beam out of his shoulders, straight with the back of his head. His face was handsome in a bold, shrewd mold, but dark as if his blood carried the taint of a baser race. He went about always dressed in a long frock coat, with no vest to obscure the spread of his white shirt front; low collar, with narrow black tie done in exact bow; broad-brimmed white sombrero tilted back from his forehead, a cigar that ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... awful cold. Its so cold that the tooth past rolls right offen your brush in the morning. The Captin has a cold in his nose. He says he wont take the men out in such bad wether as today. Taint nothin gainst him Mable but I hope he has ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... indeed," said his mother; "she is so free from the least taint of hypocrisy or deceit; so perfectly honest and truthful; so warm-hearted, too; so diligent and energetic in anything she undertakes to do—very painstaking and persevering—and a brave, womanly ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... with heroism; this loses no lustre through time and distance. Good is gold; it is rare, but it will not tarnish. Evil is like dirty water—plentiful and foul, but it will run itself clear of taint. ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... I s'pose we must call a gentleman 'mister' who speaks so fine an' looks so fine, tho' he be's an Injun—it's mighty easy to settle who hut the bird. That thing's a fifty or tharabouts; Killbar's a ninety. 'Taint hard to tell which has plugged the varmint. We'll soon see;" and, so saying, the hunter stepped off towards the tree on which ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... "Well 'taint me," said Rose shrinking. "Look here — I've got a delicious plan in my head — I'm going to make them take us in the boat ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... topsy-turvy; where things sometimes come miraculously, without any return for them in labor, and where they sometimes do not come at all. They are born, moreover, with diseased bodies, often with the taint of alcoholism in their veins; too often with some other inherited malady, such as epilepsy or unsound mind, as a direct result of parental excesses. How can we say that we 'do not let children suffer,' so long as alms keeps together thousands of these so-called homes in our large ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond
... Us two'll walk, me and him," announced the patrolman. "'Taint so far where we're goin', and the walk'll do this fresh guy a little good—maybe'll sober him up. And never mind about any of the rest of you taggin' along behind us neither. This is a pinch—not a free street parade. Go on home now, the lot of ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... times high winds in gusts swept over the highlands with a bullying noise, and disappeared, leaving everything still as the grave. I felt once more "at home in the wilderness"—such, indeed, it appeared after Boma, where the cockney-taint yet lingered. ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... too often disgraced. It has been turned into an engine of cruelty, and amidst the bitterness of persecution, every trace has disappeared of the mild and beneficent spirit of the religion of Jesus. In what degree must the taint have worked itself into the frame, and have corrupted the habit, when the most wholesome nutriment can be thus converted into the deadliest poison! Wishing always to argue from such premises as are not only really sound, but from such ...
— A Practical View of the Prevailing Religious System of Professed Christians, in the Middle and Higher Classes in this Country, Contrasted with Real Christianity. • William Wilberforce
... championess of her race, of all who are oppressed, in every capital in Europe, save, alas! Italy and the Austria who crushes her. I have taken, I should tell you, an Italian name. It was better, I thought, to hide my African taint, forsooth, for awhile. So the wise New Yorkers have been feting, as Maria Cordifiamma, the white woman (for am I not fairer than many an Italian signora?), whom they would have looked upon as an inferior being under the name of Marie Lavington: though there is finer ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... discovered or suspected. We have undertaken a difficult and painful task, and we shall accomplish it; unrestrained by a false delicacy, we shall drag forth from the dark and mysterious labyrinths of great cities, the hidden iniquities which taint the moral atmosphere, and assimilate human ...
— City Crimes - or Life in New York and Boston • Greenhorn
... for refreshing country drives. Quite evidently she enjoyed Claire's society, quite evidently also she preferred to enjoy it when other visitors were not present. Claire was not offended, for she knew that there was no taint of snobbishness in this decision; she was just sorry, and, in a curious fashion, remorseful into the bargain. She did not argue out the point, but instinctively she felt that Janet, not herself, was the one to ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... errand-boy, daguerreotypist, teacher, doctor;—so he came into the Gurney garden that night, shrewd, defiant, priding himself on detecting shams. His waistcoat and trousers were of coarser stuff than suited his temperament; a taint of vulgarity in his talk, his whiskers untrimmed, the meaning of his face compacted, sharpened. It was many a year since a tear had come into his black eyes; yet tears belonged there, as much as to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... not here concerned with the severe forms of the disease which prove fatal, but with the milder forms in which the infant is apparently healthy when born, but after from two to six weeks begins to show evidence of the syphilitic taint. ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... keep off the demon of remorse or the cloud of sorrow, like the forgery or the robbery to save from want. "The brilliant position she had longed for, the imagined freedom she would create for herself in marriage"—these "had come to her hunger like food, with the taint of sacrilege upon it," which she "snatched with terror." Grandcourt "fulfilled his side of the bargain by giving her the rank and luxuries she coveted." Matrimony as a bargain never had and never will have ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... sympathy was keen and most sensitive, her modesty and humility were almost excessive, and her tenderness of nature was a woman's own. She gave her sympathy readily and freely to the humble and unfavored. She had no taint of intellectual aristocracy, says one of her friends. Faithful, devoted love; the sacredness of simple duties and plain work; earnest help of other souls,—these were among the daily lessons of her life and teaching. "How strong was the current of ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... "Jest yet 'taint easy to tell. Thar's somethin' on foot among 'em—some darned Injun trick. Clar as I kin see, that big chief wi' the red cross on his ribs, air him they call the Horned Lizard; an' ef it be, thar ain't a cunniner ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... object indicating that some convulsion had disturbed the general order of nature at this place. We had passed a portage above it and after two long portages below it we encamped. Near the last was a small stream so strongly impregnated with sulphur as to taint the air to a great distance around it. We saw two brown bears on the hills in ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... the highest bidder; and have even now no civilization except what they have acquired in this condition of abject slavery; separated, too, from the dominant class, not only by this stigma of slavery, but by complexion and features so marked and peculiar, that a small taint of the blood of the servile class can be detected with unerring certainty. If history decides anything, it is that a system of political equality cannot be formed out of such elements. The experience of the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. III, No. V, May, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... Or on the floor my sabre smote, The sound went through her like a pang. I saw this; and the days to come Forewarned me with an iron clang, That drowned the music of the drum, That made the rousing bugle faint; And yet I sternly left my home,— Haply to fall by noisome taint Of foul disease, without a deed To sound in rhyme or shine in paint; But, oh, at least, to drop a seed, Humble, but faithful to the last, Sown by my Country in her need! O Death, come to me, slow or fast; I'll do my duty while I may! Though sorrow burdens every blast, And want ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... late to scold arterward. Wot I sez is, do you' scoldin' an' yo' whippin' 'fo' dere's any cause fer it—'taint no good to do it arterward; 'twon't ondo nuffin' wot's done," said Henny; but her wisdom was lost on the party, who had already started on their way, aunt and niece riding double, and Dan ...
— Her Mother's Secret • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... always talking about heredity, like Mr. Blatchford. Sandwich Islanders are always talking about environment, like Mr. Suthers. Savages—those that are truly stunted or depraved—dedicate nearly all their tales and sayings to the subject of physical kinship, of a curse on this or that tribe, of a taint in this or that family, of the invincible law of blood, of the unavoidable evil of places. The true savage is a slave, and is always talking about what he must do; the true civilised man is a free man and is always talking about what he may do. Hence ...
— All Things Considered • G. K. Chesterton
... sphere of morality. By statistic methods of sociology the social problems of immorality and crime have been opened up, and external facts have been studied; and criminal anthropology has revealed the "inferior types" who by hereditary taint are those who have a predisposition to all the moral infection of their surroundings. Morel's theories concerning degeneration and the resulting theories of Lombroso concerning criminals have undoubtedly brought light into this ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... saloup, portable soup, sugar, molasses, vegetables (at all times when they could be got) were, some in constant, others in occasional use. These were of such infinite service to the people in preserving them from a scorbutic taint, that the use of the malt was (with respect to ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... but I has my point before me all the same, and I'm comin' to it. Ac-knowledgin' our error, it'd done, and bein' done, it's writ aloft. Oh! if you ony knew what a sweet young creature she be! Indeed; 'taint all of humble birth that's unworthy, Sir Austin. And she got her idees, too: She reads History! She talk that sensible as would surprise ye. But for all that she's a prey to the artful o' men—unpertected. And it's a young marriage—but there's no fear for her, as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... on their efforts. In truth, Mr Brooke belongs not to the present generation. His energy, his perseverance, which nothing can subdue, his courage which no dangers can appal, his simplicity which no possession of power and authority can taint, his integrity and honest mind, all belong to a more masculine and primitive age, and constitute a rare exception for our respect and gratitude in this. We take the earliest opportunity afforded us to pay our humble tribute to worth that cannot be questioned, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... business in her voice that struck him as amusingly delightful—and such a sweet, clear voice, too, untinged with the slightest taint ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... doubt that he has that pullet on his conscience yet, unless he has paid for it. He was of a race which elsewhere has so immemorially plundered hen-roosts that chickens are as free to it as the air it breathes, without any conceivable taint of private ownership. But the spirit of New England had so deeply entered into him that the imbecile broiler of another, slain by pure accident and by its own contributory negligence, was saddening him, while I was off in my train without ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... her now that she could not define: the warmth of Love, the sense of protection and security—almost as if unseen arms, that were strong and devoted and selfless, held her closely, shielding her from evil and from the taint of selfish human passions. ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... and put it under one of the waterfalls that the play might keep it sweet. There was plenty more dead fish in the numerous holes, and I picked out two and put them in the shade; but I knew that the great heat must soon taint them and rot the rest, whence would come a stench that might make ...
— Stories by English Authors: The Sea • Various
... Mathieson," called one of the men from the inside of the frame, "I s'pose 'taint worth carrying any of this stuff—Jackson'll have enough without it?" The words were explained to Nettie's horror by a jug in the man's hands, which he lifted to ...
— The Carpenter's Daughter • Anna Bartlett Warner
... bravely, and when you find out who I am, "remember" the last word I spoke. My family were scattered and poor. Afterward my eldest son avenged my "murder," as he considered it, but three of my judges escaped, and found shelter in America. There was, however, a taint of falsehood in all of us, and my children's children were at last dispossessed of what ...
— Harper's Young People, March 16, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... party manager, as well as lobbyist and boss in a real sense long before that term was coined. His capacity for politics amounted to genius. He never sought office; and his memory has been left singularly free from taint. He became the editor of the Albany Journal and made it the leading Whig "up-state" paper. His friend Seward, whom he had lifted into the Governor's chair, passed on to the United States Senate; and when ...
— The Boss and the Machine • Samuel P. Orth
... see the negro in me," she said quietly. "In Jamaica that was considered disgraceful, but in Vienna no one knows about the taint." ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... in London—'taint very long ago, for he was in this here office, and I see him; but that warn't yesterday, and it warn't the day before. Where he's betaken himself between whiles, ain't known to me. Shall I make a ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... that if her kings had not been expelled, Rome must very soon have become a weak and inconsiderable State. For seeing to what a pitch of corruption these kings had come, we may conjecture that if two or three more like reigns had followed, and the taint spread from the head to the members, so soon as the latter became infected, cure would have been hopeless. But from the head being removed while the trunk was still sound, it was not difficult for the Romans to return to a free and ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... professions alone were sacrosanct. The calling of architect, for example, or of civil engineer, was, if a fortune had not been accumulated, utterly without prestige; trade, any connection with trade—the merest bowing acquaintance with buying and selling—was a taint that nothing could remove; and those girls who were related to shopkeepers, or, more awful still, to publicans, would rather have bitten their tongues off than have owned ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... "Prisoners and Paupers," says that conviction for the third time for an offence, is proof of hereditary criminal taint. ...
— The Fertility of the Unfit • William Allan Chapple
... creating an alliance between the Tories and malcontent Whigs for Walpole's overthrow. The alliance succeeded, though too late for Bolingbroke to enjoy the fruits of success; but in effecting the purgation of the Tory party from its taint of Jacobitism he rendered no inconsiderable service. His foundation, moreover, of the Craftsman—the first official journal of a political party in England—showed his appreciation of the technique of political controversy. ...
— Political Thought in England from Locke to Bentham • Harold J. Laski
... 'Lord, lift Thou up the light of Thy countenance upon us.' That is blessedness. It is the only thing that makes the heart to be at rest. It is the only thing that makes life truly worth living, the only thing that brings sweetness which has no after taint of bitterness and breeds no fear of its passing away. To have that unsetting sunshine streaming down upon my open heart, and to carry about with me whithersoever I go, like some melody from hidden singers sounding ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the wise adjustment of the organized machinery of such a commission. For the weak and uneducated to be in complete subjection to the stronger and more cultivated is in strict accordance with the divinest order; only this relation must be that of dependence and providence, without a taint of selfishness. It must be humanitary or beneficent in its aims, and not inhuman and malevolent, as is always the case when the weak are subjected to distinguish, aggrandize, and enrich those who subject them. That the freedmen may be organized and directed ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... (where the King held a little Parliament of his own), and at Uxbridge. But they came to nothing. In all these negotiations, and in all his difficulties, the King showed himself at his best. He was courageous, cool, self-possessed, and clever; but, the old taint of his character was always in him, and he was never for one single moment to be trusted. Lord Clarendon, the historian, one of his highest admirers, supposes that he had unhappily promised the Queen never to make peace without her consent, and that this ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... no taint of Muscovite intrigue about my attitude!" exclaimed Stampoff with a vehemence that showed how deeply he was moved. "I have given the best years of my life to my country, and I am too old now to be forced to act against my principles. Every man in this room is a Slav, and ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... thought; and whilst they laughed, she did it. Henceforth the single redress for the English of this capital oversight, but which never could have redressed it effectually, was—to vitiate and taint the coronation of Charles VII. as the work of a witch. That policy, and not malice, (as M. Michelet is so happy to believe,) was the moving principle in the subsequent prosecution of Joanna. Unless they unhinged the force of the first coronation in the popular ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... common rich people from the States. The best county families, with daughters to marry, shook their heads. It was very sad—very sad, to see a good old name and a good old family degenerate in this way. But there was always a taint of madness in the Catheron blood—that accounted for a good deal. Poor Sir Victor—and poor ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... of amber-coloured wine from his stores in the grotto. These we drank, lying full-length upon the tufa in the morning sunlight. The panorama of sea, sky, and long-drawn lines of coast, breathless, without a ripple or a taint of cloud, spread far and wide around us. Our horses and donkey cropped what little grass, blent with bitter herbage, grew on that barren summit. Their grooms helped us out with the hermit's wine, and turned to sleep face downward. The whole scene was very quiet, islanded in immeasurable ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... They felt rather than understood what was happening. Belle's pleading was beginning to be effectual, and the old man was rising to the same heights of self- sacrifice which Dan had reached, when he slipped away from home with the taint of his friend's disgrace upon him in order to ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... off with his bride, but no such custom, of course, is recognized in the law. On the contrary, the groom is supposed to belong to the same village, and special rites are enjoined 'if he be from another village.' But again, in the early rule there is no trace of that taint of family which the totem-scholars of to-day cite so loosely from Hindu law. The girl is not precluded because she belongs to the same family within certain degrees. The only restriction in the House-rituals is that she shall have ...
— The Religions of India - Handbooks On The History Of Religions, Volume 1, Edited By Morris Jastrow • Edward Washburn Hopkins
... on the steps, and breathed the cool night air. A slender taint of drugs hung everywhere about the building, and the almost imperceptible permeation sickened him; it was deadly, he thought, and imbued with a hideous portent of suffering. That John Harkless, of all men, should lie stifled with ether, and bandaged ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... the difference between the theologian and the naturalist is not fundamental, and evolution may be as profoundly and as particularly theistic as it is increasingly probable. The taint of atheism which, in Dr. Hodge's view, leavens the whole lump, is not inherent in the original grain of Darwinism—in the principles posited—but has somehow been introduced in the subsequent treatment. Possibly, when found, it may be eliminated. Perhaps ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... the chief of the haruspices; "they are invited, caressed, and honored. Like dust, when the simoon blows through the chinks of a wooden house, they crowd into the houses and temples, taint our manners ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... guest went away, it was with the persuasion, that though outwardly restored in mind as in fortune, yet, some taint of Charlemont's old malady survived, and that it was not well for friends to ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... be kept from the taint of idolatry, Jacob left Laban; yet Rachel had stolen her father's images—and there is then great significance in that act by which Jacob renewed his covenant with God, when called upon to build ...
— Notable Women of Olden Time • Anonymous
... life, and whose greatest defect was in being as timid and shy as a virgin, treated as a frequenter of places of that description; and in finding myself charged with being......, I, who not only never had the least taint of such disorder, but, according to the faculty, was so constructed as to make it almost impossible for me to contract it. Everything well considered, I thought I could not better refute this libel than by having it printed in the city in which I longest resided, ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... but that cannot change his duty, or ours. He is helping us to struggle for that which is our own; but he would mar his generosity if he put a taint on that which he is endeavouring to ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... time of most illusions; and the same scientific method is being strenuously applied to all other processes of human endeavour. It is even hinted that Sylvanus has practically proved that the imaginative element in literature is purely a taint of barbarism, though he has not yet announced the fact. But many of his class are looking forward to his final lecture on the subject as to a profoundly sensational event, which is likely to set a deep mark upon all our conceptions of literary endeavour. So that," he said with a tolerant smile, ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... its strength against the feeble assaults of the new friends of freedom, finding all its demands readily yielded to, and itself victorious in every conflict, it soon threw off its false professions of modesty, pronounced itself free from every taint of wrong-doing, claimed to be the very corner stone and basis of free institutions themselves, the condition sine qua non of all successful experiment in republican and democratic organizations, and became boldly and openly ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... very much on this. How many a young woman of fine attractions has had her reputation injured, and her prospects for life destroyed, by associating with those whose character and habits proved to be bad. When once young women get a taint on their reputation in this way, or in any other manner, it is exceedingly difficult ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... que la beaute', according to the good La Fontaine. She had the soft abandonment, the supple and elegant movements, and the graceful carelessness of the creoles.—(The reader must remember that the term 'Creole' does not imply any taint of black blood, but only that the person, of European family, has been born in the West Indies.)—Her temper was always the same. She was ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... jostle aristocracy into the background, but the line must be drawn somewhere, and the daughter of a London soap-boiler they would not receive. Who was to be positive there had been a marriage at all. And poor Inez Catheron! Ah it was very sad—very sad. There was a well-known, well-hidden taint of insanity in the Catheron family. It must be that latent insanity cropping up. The young ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... disappointed, and through long years compelled to struggle on in all the bitter loneliness of feelings unreplied to, bound by indissoluble chains to one who had no tastes or sympathies in common with her. Death had freed her now, but, ah! too late. The taint of sin was on her soul. She had forgot her vows at the altar, debased herself and wronged her husband by listening to words of passion from another. O, far less bitter would have been her grief, as she stood weeping over his lifeless form, could she ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... finished supper, Lark said, "Don't you think we'd better go right to bed, Prue? We don't want to taint the atmosphere of the parsonage. Of course, Fairy will want to wash the dishes herself to make sure they are ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... the kitchen. "Now you all go your ways," she began. "'Taint nothing to clear off ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... and we shall learn more definitely later, that Saadia is opposed to the view of the ascetics—a view Neo-Platonic in its origin—that matter and body as such are evil, and that the constant effort of man must be to free the soul from the taint of the body in which it is imprisoned, and by which it is dragged down from its pristine nobility and purity. Saadia's opposition to the belief in the pre-existence of the soul at once does away with the Neo-Platonic ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik
... wind of the moor, the taint of the last meal and over-clad fellow-beings seemed to cling unpleasantly to the low-ceilinged room whither we fled, and I do not think we breathed comfortably again till we had paid our bill and returned to the sunlight. Before ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... it all turned out differently, he would have said and done things that would have offended you. Now he has left you a purged and stainless memory—one, I think, which must come very near to the reality. The man who went up there—for an idea, a fantastic point of honor—sloughed off every taint of the baseness that hampers most of us in doing it. It was a man changed and uplifted above all petty things by a high chivalrous purpose, who ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... agitated, as do the dead leaves of a long-withered but still firmly attached bough. Thus he was regarded in Chicago as an American of the old type; but being human, his strength had not been strong enough to resist the taint in the atmosphere he had breathed ever since he began to be very rich and to keep the company of the pretentious. His originally sound constitution had been gradually undermined, just as "doing like everybody else"—that is, ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... Coates's maid had, in repeating the news, "turned the sore throat into a spotted fever, or a scarlet fever, she did not rightly know which, but both were said by the apothecary to be generally fatal, where there was any Jewish taint ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... however rescued from the last degree of actual crime in each case by the good taste of the author, feeling that such chapters had better not be written voluntarily in fiction, or perchance by his love for his proud maidens, whom he cannot taint with degradation in act, even if the sin upon their souls be wellnigh as black in the eyes of a strict judge, arbiter alike of the seen and the unseen. Such are hardly the conceptions wherewith the brain of a cultivated woman ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol III, Issue VI, June, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... conquer." They desired not to crush Charles, but to force him back, with as much of his old strength remaining as might be, to the position of a constitutional king. The old loyalty, too, clogged their enterprise; they shrank from the taint of treason. "If the king be beaten," Manchester urged at Newbury, "he will still be king; if he beat us he will hang us all for traitors." To a mood like this Cromwell's reply seemed horrible: "If I met the king in battle ...
— History of the English People, Volume VI (of 8) - Puritan England, 1642-1660; The Revolution, 1660-1683 • John Richard Green
... he loves dogs, and hawks, and his wife well; he has a good riding face, and he can sit a great horse; he will taint a staff well at tile; when he is mounted he looks like the sign of the George, that's all I know; save, that instead of a dragon, he will brandish against a tree, and break his sword as confidently upon the knotty bark, as the other did upon the ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... people from a distant city could come summer after summer to the same spot and yet remain unknown to their nearest neighbours; but Kenmore was not a social community. It had all the reserve of its English heritage combined with the suspicion of its Indian taint, and it took strangers hard. Then, added to this, the Traverses aroused doubt, for no one, especially Nathaniel Glenn, could account for a certain big, heavy-browed man who shared the home life of the Hill Place without any apparent right or position. ...
— The Place Beyond the Winds • Harriet T. Comstock
... that bad Tressilian blood—notoriously bad, and never more flagrantly displayed than in the case of the late Ralph Tressilian. It was impossible that Oliver should have escaped the taint of it; nor could Sir John perceive any signs that he had done so. He displayed the traditional Tressilian turbulence. He was passionate and brutal, and the pirate's trade to which he had now set his hand was of all trades the one for which he was by nature best equipped. He was harsh and overbearing, ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... cried he. "Let thy paternal heart rest in peace; and by Jesus' help, Lady Helen shall again be in her own country, as free from Southron taint as she is from all mortal sin! De Valence dare not approach her heavenly innocence with violence; and her Scottish heart will never consent to give him a lawful claim to her precious self. Edward's legions are far beyond the borders! but wherever this earl may be, yet I will reach ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... suggestion that the poet had not only given up his work, but that the taint of landowning under the existing conditions had corrupted him. As late as 1614 he was assisting one William Combe, a landowner and son of his old friend John Combe—who had left him five pounds by will—in an attempt to enclose the common lands round his estate at Welcombe. In the early days ...
— William Shakespeare - His Homes and Haunts • Samuel Levy Bensusan
... avowedly does not cease to be one because it concerns spiritual things. Nor is it the less wrong because it is uttered by one to whom all spiritual things have become indifferent. Filial affection is a motive which would, if any motive could, remove some of the taint of meanness with which pious lying, like every other kind of lying, tends to infect character. The motive may no doubt ennoble the act, though the act remains in the category of forbidden things. But the ...
— On Compromise • John Morley
... represented the Bad Accounts Department of more and more important concerns. At thirty- five he was out of debt. They were living well—too well it proved, for his nervous health. There must have been a neurotic taint, as expressed in Aunt Fannie's asthma. Early that fall he had his first attack of hay-fever. For years he had been self-indulgent; he always drank when drinks were offered; he used much tobacco and rich food. ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... you may depend. Great folks! Well, come, that's a good joke, that bangs the bush. No, my friend,' says I, 'the meat that's at the top of the barrel, is sometimes not so good as that that's a little further down; the upper and lower eends are plaguy apt to have a little taint in 'em, but the middle is ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... the man that made the play so interesting. A robust, vigorous man of thirty-eight, flaunting and florid as a rather successful Italian can be, there was yet a secret sickness which oppressed him. But it was no taint in the blood, it was rather a kind of debility in the soul. That which he wanted and would have, the sensual excitement, in his soul he did not want it, no, not at all. And yet he must act from his physical ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... tommyhawk, I make no doubt. Oh, elder, how ye have been deceived in people! Ye believe that every one is as good as one can be, or can be grafted to bear sweet fruit, but, hoe-down-hoe, elder, 'taint so. Yer Aunt Indiana knows how desperately wicked is the human heart. If ye don't do others, others will do ye, and this world is a warfare. Come in; I've got somethin' new to tell ye. It's ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... (to use a metaphysical word) objective; and the sentient organ project itself as its own object. For two months I suffered greatly in my head, a part of my bodily structure which had hitherto been so clear from all touch or taint of weakness (physically I mean) that I used to say of it, as the last Lord Orford said of his stomach, that it seemed likely to survive the rest of my person. Till now I had never felt a headache even, or any the slightest pain, ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... all free from earthly taint, Where human passion played no part, As pure as thoughts that thrill a saint, Or hunt ...
— Poems: Patriotic, Religious, Miscellaneous • Abram J. Ryan, (Father Ryan)
... of the unfit, we cannot say. Possibly or even probably the ill results would be inappreciable. It must not be forgotten that the marriage of near relatives is only harmful because or if it hands on to the children of the union an hereditary taint in a strengthened form, a result which is likely to follow in civilised life because hereditary taints are allowed to flourish unchecked by prudence and controlled by natural selection only so far as humanitarianism will permit it. These hereditary ...
— Kinship Organisations and Group Marriage in Australia • Northcote W. Thomas
... said nothing further. Perhaps he was a little ashamed of himself in the face of Mr. Gibney's simple faith in his own ability; perhaps in his veins, all unknown, there flowed a taint of the heroic blood of some forgotten sea-dog. Be that as it may, something did swell in his breast when Mr. Gibney spoke of the flag and his scorning to hide behind it, and Scraggs's snaggle teeth came together with ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... on the live bamboo that grows through the gangrened flesh; I had hove him down by the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and draws, Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws! He is lazar within and lime without, ye can nose him far enow, For he carries the taint of a musky ship—the reek of the slaver's dhow!" The skipper looked at the tiering guns and the bulwarks tall and cold, And the Captains Three full courteously peered down at the gutted hold, And the Captains Three called courteously from deck to scuttle-butt:— "Good Sir, we ha' dealt with ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... minority. But, happily, the vanquished people found protection in a quarter from which they would once have had to expect nothing but implacable severity. By this time the philosophy of the eighteenth century had purifed English Whiggism from that deep taint of intolerance which had been contracted during a long and close alliance with the Puritanism of the seventeenth century. Enlightened men had begun to feel that the arguments by which Milton and Locke, Tillotson and Burnet, had vindicated the rights of conscience ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... quickly out of the room, absolutely kissing the woman whom she had both dreaded and despised. As soon as she was alone in the street she tried to think of it all. How full of beauty was the face of that American female,—how rich and glorious her voice in spite of a slight taint of the well-known nasal twang;—and above all how powerful and at the same time how easy and how gracious was her manner! That she would be an unfit wife for Paul Montague was certain to Hetta, but that he or any man should have loved her and have been loved by her, and then have been willing ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... can fix 'em, so's dey won't be so turrible bad," suggested the negro, "'taint fer, so you jes' run down ter my cabin an' tell Sukey I ...
— Miss Minerva and William Green Hill • Frances Boyd Calhoun
... with paternal affection, granted the pallium at her request and that of Gallican bishops to S. Syagrius, Bishop of Autun, and appealed to her as one who had the will as well as the power to reform abuses, remove scandals, and destroy paganism. He set himself determinedly to work against the taint of money which hung over the whole Church. He earnestly pleaded for the expulsion of "these detestable evils," for the summoning of a synod which should reform the whole Church. He pleaded in vain; but his work was not without lasting results. He founded the ...
— The Church and the Barbarians - Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003 • William Holden Hutton
... off quicker'n greased lightnin'. But they ain't goin' to Heaven, be they? Not much they ain't; no more'n my dog's goin' to the Legislature. And there's them outside the church that's a whole lot worse. Taint Christianity that makes folks mean, but they're mean in spite of it, though you can't get such fellers as you to see it that way, no more'n you can foller a mosquito through a mile o' fog. To-be-sure, I aint blamin' you ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... said, as Yates was about to offer more. "'Taint worth it. Two and a half would be about the right figure. Don'no but that's too much. I'll think on it going home, and charge you what it's worth. I'll be ready to leave in about an hour, if that suits you. That's my team on the other side of the road. If it's gone ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... Society, purged now, by successive 'scrutinies or epurations,' from all taint of Girondism, has become a great Authority: what we can call shield-bearer, or bottle-holder, nay call it fugleman, to the purged National Convention itself. The Jacobins Debates are reported in ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... sorrowful examples of Doulton ware and a pair of wrought-iron candlesticks. It was a room divorced from all sense of youth and live beings, sunless, grave, unlovely; an arid room that bore to the nostrils the taint and humour ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... up, Mr. Haskins; wade right into what we've got; 'taint much, but we manage to live on it she gits fat on it," laughed Council, pointing his ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Arrogant, masculine, naive, rowdyish, Laugher, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, countryman, Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer swimmer in rivers or by the sea, Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from taint from top to toe, free forever from headache and dyspepsia, clean-breathed, Ample-limbed, a good feeder, weight a hundred and eighty pounds, full-blooded, six feet high, forty inches round the breast and back, Countenance sunburnt, bearded, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
... And it was to this noble quality of his character that he owed his death. Corruption had grown up in connection with the offices of State, and Garfield's last mission was to purge the Government of this taint. He was resolved to set his face against "the waste of time and the obstruction to public business caused by the greedy crowd of office-seekers." And he also announced that "rigid honesty and faithful service would be required from every officer of ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... the dim silver thou dost look, I do behold thy face, though blurred and faint. Oh joy! no flaw in me thy grace will brook, But still refine: slow shall the silver pass From bright to brighter, till, sans spot or taint, Love, well content, shall see no speck of brass, And I his perfect face shall hold as in ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... you mean, Bobolink?" asked Joe; "you're just trying to scare us, and you know it. 'Taint fair either. I felt a draught of air, and that was what puffed your light out. There ain't any wild animals in here, are ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... spoiled before eating, pellagra is most common. Experiments have shown that in these districts, by excluding corn from the diet and furnishing a substantial fare, the disease has been banished. Unfortunately, the taint of the disease passes from parent to child and even to the third and fourth generation, and the physical deformities commonly seen in pellagrous districts are due to this hereditary taint. Dr. Babcock, Superintendent of the City Hospital at Columbia, South Carolina, after discussing ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... mere name already done for us that we may say, boldly, and this is our First Theorem: that all Bromides are bromidic in every manifestation of their being. But a better comprehension of the term, and one which will perhaps remove the taint of malediction, will be attained if we examine in detail a few essential bromidic tendencies. The adjective is used more in pity than in anger or disgust. The Bromide can't possibly help being bromidic—though, on the other hand, he ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... mos' discombobulationest eveh was nohow. Yass, sah. Dey's been su'thin' happen aft. Yass, sah. Ah ain't gwine tell no boy, nohow. No, sah. 'Taint dis nigger would go tell a boy dat Mistah Hamlin he have a riot with Mistah Cap'n Falk, no sah. Ah ain't gwine tell no boy dat Mistah Hamlin, he say dat Mistah Cap'n Falk he ain't holdin' to de right co'se, no, sah; nor dat ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... and innocent he lies; Like some small angel strayed, His face still warmed by God's own smile, That slumbers unafraid; Or like some new embodied soul, Still pure from taint of sin— My thoughts are reverent as I stoop To ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... the woman, and bowed to the ascendency of a celestial purity. Now I am happy and blessed indeed; for I have in you precisely what I needed, without knowing it—this pure affection, free from all earthly taint—unalterable—eternal. I possess at last the love ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... The hereditary taint due to the primeval barbarism of our race, and maintained by later influences, will have to be bred out of it before our descendants can rise to the position of free members of an intelligent society: and I may add that the most likely nest at the present time for self-reliant ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... and the men round for the most part echoed his words. "'Taint fair for thee to take t' lad at his word. He be roight. I hadn't ought to ha' matched Flora no more. She ha' been a good bitch in her time, but she be past it, and I'll own up that thy pup ha' beaten her, and pay thee the ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... particular objection to making a noise. He did not consider it necessary to stop every little while, stiffen himself to a monument of immobility, cast wary glances about the gloom, and sniff the air for the taint of enemies. He did not care who knew of his coming, and he did not greatly care who came. Behind his panoply of biting spears he felt himself secure, and in that security he moved as if he held in fee the whole green, shadowy, perilous ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... you mean yourself you should say "mich" (myself)", so she at once rapped "mich!" "And after yourself?" "Dich!" ("thee," the familiar of you commonly used in German). A frank remark, at all events, and without the taint of human egoism! ...
— Lola - The Thought and Speech of Animals • Henny Kindermann
... the Will-o'-the-Wisp floating above the quagmire which held them fast. They ran after the stone that was to turn all to gold, or the elixir that should conquer death, or the signs in the heavens that should foretell their destinies; and the taint of this may be traced even when the dark period that followed was clearing away. Four hundred years after Roger's death, his illustrious namesake, Francis Bacon, was formulating his Inductive Philosophy, and with complete cock-sureness was teaching mankind all ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... destiny, positions which appeared preposterously out of accord alike with his early career and with his later opportunities for development. In trying to explain this, it is easier to say what was not the underlying quality than what it was. Certainly there was no taint whatsoever of that vulgar self-confidence which is so apt to lead the "free and equal" citizens of the great republic into grotesque positions. Perhaps it was a grand simplicity of faith; a profound instinctive confidence ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... separable. There may be a strong coward and a weak hero. But in the spiritual region, strength and courage do go together. The consciousness of the divine power with us, and that alone, will make us bold with a boldness that has no taint of levity and presumption mingled with it, and never will overestimate its own strength. The charge to Joshua, then, not only insists upon the duty of strength, but on the duty of conscious strength, and on the duty of measuring the strength that is at my back with ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... concentrated effort, even as England cleaned her corrupt borough elections of a century and a half ago. Let us fix on one man who will stand for civic purity, virtue and honor, no matter what his party. Let us elect a United States senator who is above reproach, above the taint of gaining a victory by the downfall of his fellow men! In the next ballot, let us each ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... or Histoire des classes ouvrieres, would have more closely defined the scope of this remarkable work. Here we have a new phenomenon, history written for the labouring class and from the point of {8} view of the labouring class. And although not free from the taint of the party pamphlet, not of the first rank for historical erudition, intellectual force or artistic composition, Jaures' history presents the Revolution under the aspect that gives most food for thought and that places it most ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... O peaceful hours, When on its axis sleeps the untiring wheel, And from this loud-voiced world of ours No taint of earth can on ...
— Welsh Lyrics of the Nineteenth Century • Edmund O. Jones
... entered into a human being, producing sickness or madness, exorcism must be resorted to; magicians, prophets, and saints are able by ceremonies or by prayer to expel the intruder and restore the afflicted to health. Ritual taint (which is supernatural), incurred, for example, by touching a dead body, is removed by sprinkling with ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... your cruel foes! To scatter rage and traitorous guilt Where Peace her jealous home had built; A patriot-race to disinherit Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear; 75 And with inexpiable spirit To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer— O France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind, And patriot only in pernicious toils! Are these thy boasts, Champion of human kind? 80 To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway, Tell in the hunt, and ...
— Coleridge's Ancient Mariner and Select Poems • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... about that I carried no taint of the dread associations of the Wolfsberg about me as I went down the bustling street to the Weiss Thor to call on that learned and well-reputed lawyer, Master Gerard von Sturm. So great was the fame of Master Gerard that ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... uplifted hand, and glancing around at his little master, Burl, with a look of great surprise, exclaimed, "W'y, Bushie, taint nothin' but ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... awakened with a keen reaction. Her head ached. She had a sense of taint over her. She was virtue rampant again, as on the day she had first visited the old lodge ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... want peace—honorable peace—with all nations; peace with the Indians, and peace between all of the citizens of all of the States. We want a financial policy so honest that there can be no stain on the National honor and no taint on the National credit; so stable that labor and capital and legitimate business of every sort can confidently count upon what it will be the next week, the next month, and the next year. We want the burdens of taxation so ...
— The Life, Public Services and Select Speeches of Rutherford B. Hayes • James Quay Howard
... deal honourably with those who do the like by us. You, Don Miguel, are one of our enemies, a passive one, it is true, but none the less an enemy, because you are not for us. Also I see with sorrow and certainty that you will never become a convert. There is something in your blood, some hereditary taint of conservatism, which forbids it. But for all that, you shall find that we anarchists can keep faith with our opponents. You shall have your rigid eighteen months' monopoly of the diamonds before we begin to stir the market and set about ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... that I know intimately,' said the archdeacon, 'Arabin is, in my opinion, the most free from any taint of self-conceit. His fault ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... fierce little eyes, he walked with his fists clenched, his body bent forward, darting suspicious glances from under an enormous cocked hat. His intelligence was limited, and his sanity itself was doubtful. The hereditary taint expressed itself, in his case, not by mystic leanings as in his two brothers, Alexander and Nicholas (in their various ways, for one was mystically liberal and the other mystically autocratic), but ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... phrase that overjoyed me beyond expression. I am in a deuce of a flutter with politics, which I hate, and in which I certainly do not shine; but a fellow cannot stand aside and look on at such an exhibition as our government. 'Taint decent; no gent can hold a candle to it. But it's a grind to be interrupted by midnight messengers and pass your days writing proclamations (which are never proclaimed) and petitions (which ain't petited) ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... letter." These constitute two different and often antagonistic movements. The letter kills the spirit. But when this occurs we are apt to mistake the slayer for the slain and impute to the ardent spirit all the cold vices of its murderer. Hence, the taint of insincerity that seems to hang about enthusiasm is, after all, nothing but illusion. To be just we should discount this illusion in advance as the wise man discounts discouragement. And the epithet for the man whose lungs are large with the breath ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... any of the questions of the day. So frankly does he accept life that there is in him no note of protest whatsoever, which is again fortunate, for protest, too, will lead a man to morals and leave on his work the taint of a passing system of morality as it ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... mountain. The greatest mischief wrought by these successive eruptions was the destruction of the pasturages, which were for the most part covered with volcanic ashes. Even where left exposed, the herbage acquired a poisonous taint which proved fatal to the cattle, inducing among them a peculiar murrain. Fortunately, owing to the nature of the district through which the lava passed, there was on this occasion no loss ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... covered the whole family. The Ransomes, to be sure, stood more in the center, they were more deplorably bespattered, and more, much more intimately tainted. But, by the very closeness of their family attachment, the mud of Violet's plungings would adhere largely to the Randalls, too. The taint would hang for years around him, John Randall, in his shop. He had hardly entered his sister's room before he had calculated about how long it would be before the scandal spread through Wandsworth High Street. It wasn't as if ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... which is one of the special features of Italian life. Nothing is more unlike the social jealousy of the Frenchman, or the surly incivility with which a Lancashire operative thinks proper to show the world that he is as good a man as his master. In either case one feels the taint of a mere spirit of envious levelling, and a latent confession that the levelling process has still in reality to be accomplished. But the ordinary Italian has nothing of the leveller about him. The little town is proud of its Marchese and of the ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... Hosea ses taint hardly fair to call 'em hisn now, cos the parson kind o' slicked off sum o' the last varses, but he told Hosee he didn't want to put his ore in to tetch to the Rest on 'em, bein they wuz verry well As thay wuz, and then Hosy ses he sed suthin ...
— The Biglow Papers • James Russell Lowell
... lofty creature!" exclaimed Aylmer, with fervid admiration. "There is no taint of imperfection on thy spirit. Thy sensible frame, too, ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... and weak, and great numbers are seen floating down the rivers on their backs. As the season advances and the water becomes chilled, they are flung in myriads on the shores, where the wolves and bears assemble to banquet on them. Often they rot in such quantities along the river banks as to taint the atmosphere. They are commonly from ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... those who wait upon the Great Kaan with his dishes and his drink are some of the great Barons. They have the mouth and nose muffled with fine napkins of silk and gold, so that no breath nor odour from their persons should taint the dish or the goblet presented to the Lord. And when the Emperor is going to drink, all the musical instruments, of which he has vast store of every kind, begin to play. And when he takes the cup all the Barons and the rest of the company drop on their knees and ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... anything except meanness; but meanness kills love, cripples even natural affection; without esteem true love cannot exist. Moore, with all his faults, might be esteemed; for he had no moral scrofula in his mind, no hopeless polluting taint—such, for instance, as that of falsehood; neither was he the slave of his appetites. The active life to which he had been born and bred had given him something else to do than to join the futile chase of the pleasure-hunter. He was a man undegraded, ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... blazed forth with such energy at the beginning of the war was fast sinking to a fitful, smouldering flame. Individual interests were again taking the precedence of general interests. The moral sense of the people had contracted a deadly taint from daily contact with corruption. The spirit of gambling, confined in the beginning and lost to the eye, like Le Sage's Devil, had swollen to its full proportions, and, in the garb of speculation, was undermining the foundations of society. Rogues were growing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Take from me all taint of sadness; Fill my soul with trust unshaken In that Being who has taken Care for every living thing, In ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... always for our benefit?" replied his mother. "Look what a position we have. No one can say there is any taint on our money. There are no rumours about your father. He has kept the laws of God and of man. He has never made ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... serious and able men in the American Army to maintain the high ideals for which all of them have fought, to preserve the soldier comradeship and carry it over into civilian life as an element of broad helpfulness while keeping the record of the army free from the taint of selfish aims. It was also wisely intended to forestall by the creation of one big genuinely representative, nonpartisan and democratic body, the formation of numerous smaller organizations in various places by men intent on exploiting the soldier sentiment and the soldier ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... from the press of Paradise. How free from the taint of the world was every shrub and flower! I thought that a poet had laid him down and dreamed, and awaking and stealing away, had left ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... the inevitable result of a craven spirit now. Let the Republican party be mild and forbearing,—for the opportunity to be so is the best reward of victory, and taunts and recriminations belong to boys; but, above all, let them be manly. The moral taint of once submitting to be bullied is a scrofula that will never out ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... comfortable circumstances. As it was, the whole of his property went to her only surviving son, a youth who had inherited, with some of his father's good looks, all his bad principles; and in addition a taint—we may suppose—of the penal atmosphere in which he was born. But there was not a shadow of doubt about his being the person named in the will. Perhaps, if it had been worded "my lawful son," Themis would ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... hateful man! 'Twould vex a saint! Around my pretty, cherished book, The odor vile, the noisome taint Of horrid, stale tobacco-smoke Yet lingers! The hateful man, my book to spoil! Patrick, the tongs—lest I should ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... several other corroborating proofs, the jury found him guilty, upon which he arraigned the justice of a Court which hitherto had been preserved without a taint, declaring that he was innocent, and that they might punish if they would, but they could not make him guilty, and much more to the like effect; but the Court were not troubled with that, so he scarce endeavoured to make ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... then, is told by Plato, in the tenth book of "The Republic", one Er the son of Armenius, a Pamphylian, was slain in battle; and ten days afterwards, when they collected the dead for burial, his body alone showed no taint of corruption. His relatives, however, bore it off to the funeral pyre; and on the twelfth day, lying there, he returned to life, and he told them what he had seen in the other world. Many wonders he related concerning the dead, for example, with their ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... wash itself clean. This excellent intention it has, however, evidently contributed towards the making of that imaginary pavement mentioned in the old adage; for it is still emphatically a dirty street. It has never been able to shake off the Hebraic taint of filth which it inherits from the ancestral thoroughfare. It is slushy and greasy, as if it were twin brother ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... it unwittingly, eaten ignorantly and surely died?... Or was he going mad? Good God! Could that be it? Was there something they hadn't told him—a strange taint in his blood, or his mother's blood.... Would he end his days in a madhouse.... What a fate, what a dreadful fate! A slavering gray-headed man, wandering through the Valley of the Black Pig, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... sound drew near, the form advanced, already it touched that part of the staircase to which I clung. Was it the phantom of one of those wretches who had just met death? Had it come fresh from eternity, the taint of recent earth yet hanging about it, to warn me of my own departure? A sudden vivid flash enabled me to dispel all doubt; the dull, grey eye, and thin furrowed form, were not to be so mistaken; the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 323, July 19, 1828 • Various
... is, perhaps, sufficient to say, that they present, in a great degree, the features which might have been looked for in the working of a scheme devised on the spur of an emergency, and destined to be followed out in remote localities, and under influences partaking, in no ordinary degree, of the taint of human frailty. In some parts of the country, the local committees have done their duty conscientiously and respectably; in others we are afraid they are not entitled to the same praise. Yet, on the whole, things have answered better than could have ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... monied worldlings with dismay: Ev'n rich men, brave by nature, taint the air With words of apprehension and despair; While tens of thousands, thinking on the affray, Men unto whom sufficient for the day And minds not stinted or untill'd are given, Sound healthy children of the God of Heaven, Are cheerful as ...
— On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... judicious reflection. And he could far better affirm his state of mind by his dress, than by any written words. Lying on the bed, cleanly shaved, wearing evening clothes, silk socks, patent leather shoes and white gloves? No, that would be vulgar, and all taint of vulgarity must be avoided. He must represent, even in a state of symbol, the young man, who having drunk of life to repletion, and finding that he can but repeat the same love draughts, says: "It is far too great a bore, I will go," and he goes out of life just as if he were ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... Without them, destitute of heat and light, This world would be the reign of endless night: In their excess how would our race complain, Abhorring life! how hate its length'ned chain! From air adust what num'rous ills would rise? What dire contagion taint the burning skies? What pestilential vapours, fraught with death, Would rise, and overspread the lands beneath? Hail, smiling morn, that from the orient main Ascending dost adorn the heav'nly plain! ...
— Religious and Moral Poems • Phillis Wheatley
... gray, and yet you do not blush To think your wife is honest. Get thee home; You'll find her locked, this moment, in your son's Incestuous embrace. Believe your king. Now go; you stand amazed; you stare at me With searching eye, because of my gray hairs. Unhappy man, reflect. Queens never taint Their virtue thus: doubt ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... number of times round the garden. Her mind was so full that she did not as usual observe every twig, almost every leaf, as she passed. Nor, now that she was alone, was that religious bias, which had so much to do with her daily life, very strong within her. There was no taint of hypocrisy in her character; but yet, with the force of human disappointment heavy upon her, her heart was now hot with human anger, and mutinous with human resolves. She had proposed to herself to revenge herself ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... attended by danger. But for the present at least he was free. Free! The word had never appealed to him so strongly before. He drew in great draughts of the mountain air. They seemed in a way to cleanse his lungs from the prison taint. ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... literally been so pure from the smallest taint of earthliness, it can only be because he is a Seer, that he knows of crime. Not Julian's little (no, great) angel heart and life are freer from any intention or act of wrong than his. And this is best proof to me of the absurdity of the prevalent idea that it is necessary to go through the fiery ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... adornment refined with perfect harmony and the chastest good keeping—compared with which, the fabled gorgeousness of Eastern fairyland itself would appear to be clothed in as many dark and murky colours, as must be the mind of the splenetic and unmanly being who could presume to taint with the venom of his envy, the preparations made by the virtuous and highly distinguished lady at whose shrine this humble tribute of admiration was offered.' This last was a piece of biting sarcasm against the INDEPENDENT, who, ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... lingered round the polls, which, in greater part, were in the rear of shops, in barns and sheds. There was a good deal of repeating in some of the districts, and a dozen arrests had been made. Neither party was free from this taint of dishonest politics. But no one could prophesy what the final results of the ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... through which was dimly revealed the man. It was as though his personality was merely a nexus to the things he stood for and had done, so that he appeared to Evelyn less a human entity than a symbol. But at least Bessie Dane was interested and the fine atmosphere of the table was without a taint. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... a description of how he had striven to find a girl who had the strong qualities his family germ plasm seemed to have lost, mainly, I gathered, resistance to a taint much like manic depressive insanity. And as he talked, it was borne in on me that, after all, contrary to my first prejudice, there was nothing very romantic indeed about disregarding the plain teachings of science on the subject of ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... to carry off oil retained by the bags. The pulp is then removed from the bags, ground again in the mill, then replaced in the bags, and pressed a second time. The water used in the process of making oil must be quite pure; the mill, press, bags, and vessels sweet and clean, as the least taint would ruin the quality of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... columns of deadly engines! Everywhere, always, death, or the preparation for death—every road and footpath crammed with it, every field trampled by it, every woodland shattered by it, every stream running thick with its pollution. The sour smell of marching men, the stale taint of unclean fires, the stench of beasts—the acrid, indescribable odor that hangs on the sweating flanks of armies seemed ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... mam I sho was. Jes put up on a platform and auctioned off. Sold right here in Des Arc. Nom taint right. My old mistress [Mrs. Snibley] whoop me till I run off and they took me back when they found out where I lef from. I stayed way ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... dignity to accept the lower moral standard for men, which exposes them to the risk of exchanging monogamy for a peculiarly vile polygamy—polygamy with its sensuality, but without its duties—bringing physical risks to their children and the terrible likelihood of an inherited moral taint to their sons. It is an impossibility, now that mothers know, that they should remain indifferent as to what sort of manhood they send out into the world—the so-called manhood that either makes and maintains the ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... have no right to cherish. She takes pleasure in the society of Dalton,—what right have you to say her—nay? His character indeed is not altogether such as you could wish; but will it not be selfish to tell her even this? Will it not be even worse, and show taint of a lurking suspicion, which you know would wound her grievously? You struggle with your distrust by meeting him more kindly than ever; yet at times there will steal over you a sadness, which that ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... her baby, a kissin' it and huggin' it every minute, and I said, says I, Misses Pearsons, you hadn't better make a idol of a perishin' creature. And sure enough, God tuck it. He's jealous of our idols. But I can't help helpin' you. You're a onbeliever yet yourself, and I 'low taint no sin fer you to marry Gus. It's yokin' like with like. I wish you was both Christians. I'll speak to Jonas. I don't know what I ought to do, but I'll speak to Jonas. He's mighty peart about sech things, is Jonas, and got as good a heart as ...
— The End Of The World - A Love Story • Edward Eggleston
... thousand little daily acts like these, the depth and tenderness of his friendship, his brotherly love for me. As yet, I had it all. And God, who knows how little else I had, will pardon, if in my unspeakable thankfulness lurked a taint of selfish joy in my sole possession ...
— John Halifax, Gentleman • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... go 'long!" she protested. "'Taint no sech thing. I ain't got sich a long appetite as date. Fifteen miles! Lan'a massa! ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... of humiliation. For there is not a taint of self-conceit, not even of self-satisfaction, in him. He only sees his own weakness, and want of life, of spirit, of manfulness, of power. His soul cleaveth to the dust. He is tempted, of course, again and again, to give way; to become low- minded, cowardly, ...
— Westminster Sermons - with a Preface • Charles Kingsley
... by the various persons examined are few and far between. In the trial for the rehabilitation of the Maid of Orleans, the story of her deeds in the field was not of much importance to the commissioners. What they principally desired to ascertain was the fact that no taint of heresy could attach to the life of the heroine. It was for this reason that all those persons who could throw any light upon Joan's early days and the actions of her childhood had been collected to give their evidence. We now come to those witnesses who ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... they are doing it in a mean way, sir; but of course soldiers hate thieves, and so the merest taint of a suspicion serves to make some of the men feel rather shy about having anything unnecessary to do with ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... rare. Jove in his wrath hath scatter'd them; our wealth Is marketed, and Phrygia hath a part Purchased, and part Maeonia's lovely land. But since the son of wily Saturn old 360 Hath given me glory now, and to inclose The Grecians in their fleet hemm'd by the sea, Fool! taint not with such talk the public mind. For not a Trojan here will thy advice Follow, or shall; it hath not my consent. 365 But thus I counsel. Let us, band by band, Throughout the host take supper, and let each, Guarded against nocturnal danger, watch. And if a Trojan here be rack'd in mind Lest ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... the brick-stuff out of you And hover like a presentment, fading faint And vanquished, evaporate away To leave but only the merest possible taint! ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... line of development which Catholicism as an institution has consistently followed, and must continue to follow to the end. I can see no other fate in store for the soma of Catholicism; the germ-cells of true Christianity live their own life within it, and are transmitted without taint to those who are born ...
— Outspoken Essays • William Ralph Inge
... veins, then an over-supply of blood of diverse kinds, mingling with air in the veins, having variegated colours and bitter properties, as well as acid and saline qualities, contains all sorts of bile and serum and phlegm. For all things go the wrong way, and having become corrupted, first they taint the blood itself, and then ceasing to give nourishment to the body they are carried along the veins in all directions, no longer preserving the order of their natural courses, but at war with themselves, because they receive no good from one another, and are hostile ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... no formal engagement between them. Cyril seemed to shrink from the materialising of his love by any thought of marriage. To him she was an ideal of womanhood rather than a flesh-and-blood woman. His love for her was a religion; it had no taint of earthly passion in ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome
... mother; "she is so free from the least taint of hypocrisy or deceit; so perfectly honest and truthful; so warm-hearted, too; so diligent and energetic in anything she undertakes to do—very painstaking and persevering—and a brave, womanly ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... know 'taint all clear profit," said Dick, who had already set to work. "There's the blacking costs something, and I have to get a new brush ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... mean 'bout goin' back, an' feelin' like a whipped houn' dog, sir, 'taint in Jim Hasty tuh do thet aways. Fact is," the guide went on, with a stubborn ring in his voice, "meetin' up with Ole Cale jest kinder makes me more sot in my mind than ever. I stays with yuh right through, ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... When offers are disdain'd, and love denied; Then gay ideas crowd the vacant brain, While peers, and dukes, and all their sweeping train, And garters, stars, and coronets appear, And in soft sounds, 'Your Grace' salutes their ear. 'Tis these that early taint the female soul, Instruct the eyes of young coquettes to roll, Teach infant cheeks a bidden blush to know, And little hearts to flutter ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... however, she awakened with a keen reaction. Her head ached. She had a sense of taint over her. She was virtue rampant again, as on the day she had first visited the ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... meat, is quick to taint, and never should be kept long before cooking. If you have the slightest doubt about pork, it is best to reject it, for unlike other meat which may be quite wholesome and usable, though not of precisely prime quality, pork must be in really first class condition to be wholesome, ...
— The Story of Crisco • Marion Harris Neil
... Ef you've a drove of one thousand or of ten thousand it's all the same; the panic strikes every beast at the same moment. It's somethin' in the air; 'taint my business to know what. But you look like a 'run' yourself, restless and hot, and as ef somethin' was gitting 'the mad' up in you. I noticed Whaley is 'bout the same. I'd keep clear of him, ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... Stella as letters while admitting its excellence as "narrative."[12] To other judges these are some of the most perfect letters in existence, some of the most absolutely genuine and free from the slightest taint of writing for publication; some of the most extraordinarily blended of intense intimacy which is neither ridiculous nor productive of the shame-faced feeling that you ought not to have heard it; and full of that dealing ...
— A Letter Book - Selected with an Introduction on the History and Art of Letter-Writing • George Saintsbury
... been partly or altogether brought up by hand, or who is of a feeble and delicate constitution, or imbued with any hereditary taint, the process of dentition will be attended with more or less difficulty, ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... It isn't likely as Master Walter will always be putting his hand round your neck and kissing of you when you're good, and pick a white hair off your coat if he do but see one when you're going out, and shine upon you in-doors more than the sun does on you out-of-doors; and 'taint to be supposed as Mr. Walter will never meet me on the stairs without breaking out into a smile to cheer an old fellow's heart, and showing L2000 worth of ivory all at one time; and if I've a cold or a bit of a headache ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... is a mighty roamer; He bids me keep me free, Clean from the taint of the gold-lust, Hardy and pure as he; Cling with my love to nature As ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... Military Governor of Algiers—and given him their confidence. And yet I could see why they should do so, for just the very reason that he took their confidence as a matter of course, knowing that his loyalty would always be above suspicion. He had a great capacity for loyalty. There was no taint in it of self-interest, nor of snobbishness. He believed, for instance, in the divine right of kings; and from what he let fall we could see that he had given the most remarkable devotion not only to every cause for which he had fought, but ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... too, in many places, exhibits the effect of a powerful blight. In some places, also, where turnips have been grown, they present—as, indeed, has been the case in other parts of the county—a healthier exterior in top and skin, but, on being opened, are found deeply impregnated with a taint similar to that which has smitten the potato, to such an extent, that one cannot stand in the blackened fields without being overpowered by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... longing to pry into those mysteries of the grave from which human beings avert their thoughts had long been hereditary in his house. Juana, from whom the mental constitution of her posterity seems to have derived a morbid taint, had sate, year after year, by the bed on which lay the ghastly remains of her husband, apparelled in the rich embroidery and jewels which he had been wont to wear while living. Her son Charles found an eccentric pleasure in celebrating his own obsequies, in putting ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 5 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... not only the question of foodstuffs as contraband but brought up also the applicability of the doctrine of "continuous voyages," where the article being conveyed to a belligerent by stages were goods which, except under unusual circumstances, have generally been held to be free from the taint of contraband character. Great Britain has held that provisions and liquors fit for the consumption of the enemy's naval or military forces may be treated as contraband. In the case of the seizure of "naval or victualling" stores her rule ...
— Neutral Rights and Obligations in the Anglo-Boer War • Robert Granville Campbell
... to their extraordinary biting power, I knew the fate that must necessarily befall a couple of ordinary hounds when overtaken by half a dozen full-grown wolves. On such occasions we do not spend much time in grief over a loss of any kind, "it taint according to mountain law," Pete ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... begins to use it at all seasons if he lives in the literary atmosphere. The actor who works in the theatre at night, and lives only among his peers during the day, ends by becoming a mummer even in private life; a teacher who does not systematically shake off the taint of the school is among the most tiresome of creatures; the man who hurries from race-meeting to race-meeting seems to lose the power of talking about anything save horses and bets; and the literary man ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... carry a suspicion of being swept and garnished for the dollar-distributing visitor from over the Atlantic, and of being less genuine than they really are. However that may be, the moment you are out of these show-streets of Chester, there is a singular lack of charm in the environment. The taint of commerce and the smoke of the north hangs visibly on the horizon. Its immediate surroundings are modern and garish to a degree that by no means assists in the fiction that Chester is the unadulterated old-country ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... nuts over meats is that they are absolutely free from any possible taint of disease. Those delectable foods, the walnut, the pecan, the hickory nut and the almond, are never the vehicle for parasites or other infections. Nuts are not subject to tuberculosis or any other disease which may ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... guess, anyhow," rejoined the Texan, taking hold of the knife, in a hand passed behind him. Then bringing it forward and under his eyes, he added, "'Taint sech a bad sort o' blade eyther, tho' I weesh 'twas my ole bowie they took from me at Mier. Wal, Cap; ye kin count on me makin' use o't, ef 'casion calls, an' more'n one yaller-belly gittin' it inter his guts; notwithstandin' ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... you's had more spurrience in dese hyer t'ings 'n I is, but dat ston certain'y did strike ma heart. But ef yo' say 'taint right why, pleas ma'am git a pair o' scissors an' prize it out, tho' I done brought de belt fer de sake ob dat buckle. Well, nemmine. I reckons I kin keep it, an' if I ever marhrys agin it sho will ...
— Peggy Stewart: Navy Girl at Home • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... "Then shall the taint of sin be purged from the earth, for every temple and pest-hole of Satan, including this whole Wizard City, will be consumed by an awful fire whose lurid light will glimmer long after the metals and granites of this great Tower shall have been reduced ...
— Mr. World and Miss Church-Member • W. S. Harris
... astonishment, strong opinions began to find utterance, and I discovered that his lordship, in his general and lofty disregard of the shades of popular sentiment, had among his guests some individuals whose rank and wealth had not preserved them from the taint of republicanism. As it was not my purpose to make a ball-room the scene of a political squabble, and as I felt it due to my official position to avoid any unnecessary entanglement in the obscure follies of provincial partizanship, I first tried to laugh down the topic. But a young orator, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... To-night as she wandered up and down her room like a little distraught ghost, all the happy and romantic associations of the home she had loved and cherished for so many years seemed cut down like a sheaf of fair blossoms by a careless reaper,—a sordid and miserable taint was on her life, and she shuddered with mingled fear and grief as she realised that she had not even the simple privilege of ordinary baptism. She was a nameless waif, dependent on the charity of Farmer Jocelyn. True, the old man had grown to love her and she had loved him—ah!—let the many tender ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... of a judge were clear and strong, as he showed in various admirable speeches and charges: his duties as regards his own conduct and reputation; his duties in keeping his subordinates free from the taint of corruption. He was not ignorant of the subtle and unacknowledged ways in which unlawful gains may be covered by custom, and an abuse goes on because men will not choose to look at it. He entered on his ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... another contribution penetrating directly into the sphere of morality. By statistic methods of sociology the social problems of immorality and crime have been opened up, and external facts have been studied; and criminal anthropology has revealed the "inferior types" who by hereditary taint are those who have a predisposition to all the moral infection of their surroundings. Morel's theories concerning degeneration and the resulting theories of Lombroso concerning criminals have undoubtedly brought light into this chaos, wherein opinion as to human goodness and ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... is the case I am surprised you have so little wrong-doing to confess. I believe you will ultimately convince me that a few of your sex have escaped the taint of ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... cried. "Do you not think they will rise to this standard-bearer, will they not rally to his call? For he is a true Prince, my comrades, who comes to them with no stain of wrong or treachery, without a taint, as untarnished as the white snow that lies summer and winter in the hollow of our hills, 'and a child shall lead us, and a child shall set them free.' To the yacht!" he shouted. "We will sail at once, and while they wait for us to be betrayed into their hands at the ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... her kings had not been expelled, Rome must very soon have become a weak and inconsiderable State. For seeing to what a pitch of corruption these kings had come, we may conjecture that if two or three more like reigns had followed, and the taint spread from the head to the members, so soon as the latter became infected, cure would have been hopeless. But from the head being removed while the trunk was still sound, it was not difficult for the Romans to return to a ...
— Discourses on the First Decade of Titus Livius • Niccolo Machiavelli
... broad strap of black leather. In truth, face, figure, and all included, he was as harsh and ill-favoured a person as could have been encountered even at that day,—one whose lips would have seemed to taint the blessing to which he might have given utterance; and graceless as Burrell undoubtedly was, there was excuse for the impatience he felt ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... will risk it. Thank God! whatever other faults I confess to, there is no taint of cowardice in ...
— Macaria • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... test, where it is successfully encountered, of nobility,—the practice, namely, of self- revelation and self-delineation. To talk much about oneself with detail, composure, and ease, with no shadow of hypocrisy and no whiff or taint of indecent familiarity, no puling and no posing,—the shores of the sea of literature are strewn with the wrecks and forlorn properties of those who have adventured on this dangerous attempt. But a criticism ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson • Walter Raleigh
... all events, nature had by this time lost its taint of sin, and had shaken off all trace of demoniacal powers. Saint Francis of Assisi, in his Hymn to the Sun, frankly praises the Lord for creating the heavenly bodies and the ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt
... like view of the situation, and between him and Burke the word "Hessian" reached America with a taint upon it which a century of use has not been able ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... had been too wild for acceptance. As Bradley listened with a half-saddened smile to the grave visions of this aged enthusiast, he remembered the son's unsophisticated simplicity: what he had considered as the "boyishness" of immaturity was the taint of the utterly unpractical Mainwaring blood. It was upon this blood, and others like it, that Oldenhurst had ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... again in the mill, then replaced in the bags, and pressed a second time. The water used in the process of making oil must be quite pure; the mill, press, bags, and vessels sweet and clean, as the least taint would ruin the quality ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... shelter, he could not run far. All they had to do was to wait till he wandered back to the tent, as he inevitably must, when the frost and hunger laid hold of him. But these men did not stop to think. There was a certain taint of madness running in the veins of all of them. Besides, blood had been spilled, and upon them was the blood- lust, thick and hot. "Vengeance is mine," saith the Lord, and He saith it in temperate climes where the warm ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... all in its position as the one representative of national order and in its policy of peace. For two hundred years England had been almost constantly at war, and to war without had been added discord and misrule within. The violence and anarchy which had always clung like a taint to the baronage grew more and more unbearable as the nation moved forward to a more settled peacefulness and industry. At the very time however when this movement became most pronounced under Edward the Third, the tendency of the nobles to violence received ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... in the dim silver thou dost look, I do behold thy face, though blurred and faint. Oh joy! no flaw in me thy grace will brook, But still refine: slow shall the silver pass From bright to brighter, till, sans spot or taint, Love, well content, shall see no speck of brass, And I his perfect face shall ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... "That cuts no ice. Hard luck, sonny, but we've got to take our medicine in this world. 'Taint no medicine ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... That religion could have affiliation with anything so worldly as poetry would have seemed to some pious people a questionable proposition. There were the Psalms, in the Old Testament, to be sure; and the minister had been heard to allude to them as poetry: might not that indicate some heretical taint in him, caught, perchance, from the "German neologists" whose influence we were beginning to dread? It did not seem quite orthodox to describe the Psalms as poems; and when, a little later, some one ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... everywhere imprinted on Nature, it was the fault committed by the first ancestors of humanity in the exercise of their moral freedom which condemned their descendants to punishment, and by bequeathing to them an original taint predisposed them to sin. But this predisposition to sin does not condemn man fatally to its committal; he may escape from it by the exercise of his free will; and in the same way he may by personal effort raise himself gradually out of the state of material decline and misery to which the ...
— The Contemporary Review, Volume 36, September 1879 • Various
... first place, it was most indecorous and ungrateful to treat with such neglect the rules which had been approved by our Royal Patron. In the next place, the medals themselves became almost worthless from this original taint: and they ceased to excite "competition amongst men of science," because no man could feel the least security that he should get them, even though his discoveries should fulfil all the conditions on ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... service must forever be grudgingly given and grudgingly paid. There is something in it, I do not quite know what, for I can never place myself precisely in an American's place, that degrades the poor creatures who serve, so that they must not only be social outcasts, but must leave such a taint of dishonor on their work that one cannot even do it for one's self without a sense of outraged dignity. You might account for this in Europe, where ages of prescriptive wrong have distorted the relation out of all human wholesomeness and Christian loveliness; ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... They're white, an—it's beginnin' to git dark! Why don't Moran come? I'd ruther have him, than them—an' now there's another one of 'em—to raise out of the ashes of a fire! I'd ort to camp, but if I keep a pluggin' along mebbe I kin git to the Injun village. 'Taint fur, now—acrost this flat an' then dip down onto the river—What's that!" The man halted abruptly and stared. "It's one of 'em now!" he faltered, with tongue and lips that felt stiff. "An' it's covered with fine white ashes!" He ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... I picked it with my hand, and, you see, a drop of my blood is on it; when you can give me a rose with a drop of your blood on it as free from taint as the stain mine makes, I shall have an answer that will not ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... "Towards the close of the Protectorate, many signs indicated that a time of license was at hand. But the restoration of Charles II rendered the change wonderfully rapid and violent. A deep and general taint infected the morals of the most influential classes, and spread itself through every province of letters. Poetry inflamed the passions; philosophy undermined the principles; divinity itself, inculcating an abject reverence ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... see, where with her comes My serpent gliding in an angel's form, To taint the new-born Eden of our joys. Why should we fear them? We'll not stir a foot, Nor coy it for their pleasures. ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... civilizations. It protects the weak against the strong. It is necessary for rapid action in war, it makes for clarity and method during peace, it secures a minimum for all, and it forbids the illusions and vices of the rich to taint the whole commonwealth. ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... of milk in the absorption of taint from the atmosphere, or any substance with which it comes in contact, ought to be thoroughly understood by all persons engaged in handling it, but, we believe, that but few comparatively are alive to the true facts of ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... were the happiest time of her life, for Herminia. All day long she worked hard with her classes; and often in the evenings Alan Merrick dropped in for sweet converse and companionship. Too free from any taint of sin or shame herself ever to suspect that others could misinterpret her actions, Herminia was hardly aware how the gossip of Bower Lane made free in time with the name of the young lady who ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... or it so unkindly rejected him, still seemed to soak through, somehow, when you saw him in public. A whiff of the vestry queerly clung to his coats and his trousers, thus meanly giving away his relinquished ambitions; unless, and that was worse still, essaying to be extra smart, a taint of the footlights declared itself in the over florid curl of a hat-brim or sample of "neck-wear." To head a domestic procession, in eminently cosmopolitan circles, composed of a small, elderly, very palpable invalid and a probable ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... grave. But swear you're a sinner whom she has reformed And the average feminine fortress is stormed. In rescuing men from abysses of sin She loses her head—and herself tumbles in. The mind of a woman was shaped for a saint, But deep in her heart lies the devil's own taint. With plans for salvation her busy brain teems, While her heart longs in secret to know how sin seems. And if with this question unanswered she dies, Temptation came not in the right sort of guise. There's my estimate, Reese, of the beautiful sex; I see by your face that my words wound and vex, ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... wrought the direst woe that could ever chance in battle. One must say of the chosen knights in truth, that these proud Burgundians acquitted them so well that they can well preserve their honor from every taint of shame. Through their hands we saw many a saddle bare, while the field resounded with the flashing swords. So well rode the warriors from the Rhine, that it were better for their foes had it been avoided. ...
— The Nibelungenlied • Unknown
... was "simple" about some things. A taint of deceit would have caused her as deep remorse as her ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... grief, inly indignant at the fate of my innocent friend. Nor in my madness was I silent: and, should any chance offer, did I ever return a conqueror to my native Argos, I vowed myself his avenger, and with my words I stirred his bitter hatred. From this came the first taint of ill; from this did Ulysses ever threaten me with fresh charges, from this flung dark sayings among the crowd and sought confederate arms. Nay, nor did he rest, till by Calchas' service—but yet why do I vainly unroll the unavailing tale, or why hold ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... taken the common clay, And thy hands be not free From the taint of the soil, thou hast made thy spoil The greater shame to thee.'—The ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... a numerous class in whom crime seems to be hereditary, a taint in the blood. In the same family there are generations of criminals. Prison life adds another large section to the criminal class. By the congregate system the prison becomes a school of crime, where the young offender is both demoralized by ...
— The Twin Hells • John N. Reynolds
... young gentlemen, if it were; but I'll say good night, for 'taint my watch, and I think a turn in won't be bad preparation for ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... books. And feels at ease that he is free: From taint or tarnish of the crooks. To Canada he ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XII, Jan. 3, 1891 • Various
... he, "'taint much use o' tryin', I guess. I know that critter. You might as well try to squeeze ile out of Bunker Hill Monument as to c'lect a debt out of him. But any how, Squire, what'll you give, ...
— The Book of Anecdotes and Budget of Fun; • Various
... she could not define: the warmth of Love, the sense of protection and security—almost as if unseen arms, that were strong and devoted and selfless, held her closely, shielding her from evil and from the taint of ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... have hoped to be able to defecate such dialogue, and yet leave any of the wit, whose whole spirit is in the lees, behind. The very life of such characters as Berinthia is their licentiousness, and it is with them, as with objects that are luminous from putrescence,—to remove their taint is to extinguish their light. If Sheridan, indeed, had substituted some of his own wit for that which he took away, the inanition that followed the operation would have been much less sensibly felt. But to be so liberal of a treasure so precious, and for the enrichment of the ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... who feeds his thoughts upon the segment of the world which surrounds him cannot avoid being an egotist; but then his egotism is not unpleasing. If he be without taint of boastfulness, of self-sufficiency, of hungry vanity, the world will not press the charge home. If a man discourses continually of his wines, his plate, his titled acquaintances, the number and quality of his horses, his men-servants ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... laden with the freight Of Tyrian vessels, purple, gold and balm, To bribe my will: I'll bid them chase him forth, Nor let him breathe the taint of his surmise On my secure resolve. Ay, 'tis secure: And therefore let him come to spread his freight. For firmness hath its appetite and craves The stronger lure, more strongly to resist; Would know the touch of gold to fling it off; Scent wine to feel its lip the soberer; Behold soft byssus, ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... disenthrall "Manhood" by "playing for" a woman's fall; Redeem the wreckage of a "noble" name By building hope on sin, and joy on shame; Redress the work of passion's reckless boldness By craven afterthoughts of cynic coldness; Purge from low taint "the blood of all the HOWARDS" By borrowings from the code of cads and cowards! Noblesse oblige? Better crass imbecility Of callow ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 9, 1890. • Various
... superficial area was not more than twelve square feet; where the air was foul, and the bilges reeked with a pestilential stench; where the purser's store-room near gave out the smell of rancid butter and poisonous cheese; where the musty taint of old ropes came to them, there was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... to every heart. Out of conflicting experience, amid barbarism and dogmatism, from feathers that float and stones that fall, we deduce the great law of moral gravitation, which binds spirit to spirit, and all souls to the best. Recognition of that law is worship. We rejoice in it without a taint of selfishness. We adore it with entire satisfaction. Worship is neither belief nor hope, but this certainty of repose upon Perfection. We explore over our heads and under our feet a harmony that is only enriched by dissolving discords. The drag of time, the cramp of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... think you did hev 'em," retorted his mother as she trailed after him in the direction of the front hall. "'N' whatever you got, you got 'em bad. Now you stop right where you air 'n' tell me whatever you got. 'Taint likely its measles, fer you've hed them three times, 'n' whoopin' cough ain't 'them,' it's 'it,' 'n'—." Mrs. Case paused and gasped—horrified. "Fer lan' sakes, Willie Case, you come right out o' this house this minute ef you got anything in your head." She made a grab for Willie's arm; but ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... age, you happy man, your fields Will still be yours, and ample for your need! Though, with bare stones o'erspread, the pastures all Be choked with rushy mire, your ewes with young By no strange fodder will be tried, nor hurt Through taint contagious of a neighbouring flock. Happy old man, who 'mid familiar streams And hallowed springs, will court the cooling shade! Here, as of old, your neighbour's bordering hedge, That feasts with willow-flower the Hybla bees, ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... them much or care a bajocco for Vernon, But I am slow at Italian, have not many English acquaintance, And I am asked, in short, and am not good at excuses. Middle-class people these, bankers very likely, not wholly Pure of the taint of the shop; will at table d'hote and restaurant Have their shilling's worth, their penny's pennyworth even: Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth! Yet they are fairly descended, they give you to know, well connected; Doubtless somewhere in some neighbourhood have, and are careful ...
— Amours de Voyage • Arthur Hugh Clough
... life in ceaseless action—the strange voice of gold, roaring greed and battle and death over the souls of men. But above that, presently, rose the murmur of the creek, a hushed and dreamy flow of water over stones. It was hurrying to get by this horde of wild men, for it must bear the taint of gold and blood. Would it purge itself and clarify in the valleys below, on its way to the sea? There was in its murmur an imperishable and deathless note of nature, of time; and this was only a fleeting ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... action it induces is "the letter." These constitute two different and often antagonistic movements. The letter kills the spirit. But when this occurs we are apt to mistake the slayer for the slain and impute to the ardent spirit all the cold vices of its murderer. Hence, the taint of insincerity that seems to hang about enthusiasm is, after all, nothing but illusion. To be just we should discount this illusion in advance as the wise man discounts discouragement. And the epithet for the man whose lungs are large with the breath of life ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... purely objective sketches of them after the manner of a painter—if we compare these descriptions with what we know of Hoffmann's mind and character, his restless, brilliant imagination, and the taint of sensuousness that helped to mar its purity, his keen eye for beauty in form and colour, his strong talent for seeing the things with which he came in contact through an unmistakable veil of either love or hatred, we may perhaps hazard the ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... remainder well washed. In very cold weather, meat and vegetables touched by the frost, should be brought into the kitchen early in the morning, and soaked in cold water. In loins of meat, the long pipe that runs by the bone should be taken out, as it is apt to taint; as also the kernels of beef. Rumps and edgebones of beef, when bruised, should not be purchased. All these things ought to enter into the consideration of every household manager, and great care should be taken that nothing is thrown away, or suffered to be wasted in the kitchen, ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... grieve For what is lost. Then wandered off a pace To seek new life in lands across the sea; He left thee here, thy life was wild and free. Long years ago came tidings of his death, Born sadly on the wind's taint whispering breath. He was a peer, the last of all his race, His Saxon strength was written on thy face. Yet in thy veins thy mother's Southern blood Is bounding with its warm, impetuous flood. Enough; my words are ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... From the act therefore of one defending himself a twofold effect may follow, one the preservation of his own life, the other the killing of the aggressor. Now such an act, in so far as the preservation of the doer's own life is intended, has no taint of evil about it, seeing that it is natural to everything to preserve itself in being as much as it can. Nevertheless, an act coming of a good intention may be rendered unlawful, if it be not in proportion to the end in view. And therefore, if any one uses greater ...
— Moral Philosophy • Joseph Rickaby, S. J.
... He has won his share, All cleansed from taint of sin; For on earth prepared, No toil he spared That holy place to win. That he hath won Near God's dear Son Fast by the holy river— Oh, such as thine May the end be mine; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... happens to be the lady of my choice, and I shall revenge myself on you, through her, in the way best calculated to pierce your thick British hide. The future Countess of Fairholme should be superior to Caesar's wife in being not only above suspicion, but altogether removed from its taint. I am afraid that it will be my ...
— Cynthia's Chauffeur • Louis Tracy
... him such dire disgrace and trouble bred?' And as a neighbour's death appals the sick, and, by the dread Of dying, forces them to put upon their lusts restraint, So tender minds are oft deterred from vices by the taint They see them bring on others' names; 'tis thus that I from those Am all exempt, which bring with them a ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... of conquest and dominion sure, They sought alone to hold their fruits secure; When taught by these, Oppression hid the face, To leave Corruption stronger in her place, By silent spells to work the public fate, And taint the vitals of the passive state, Till healing Wisdom should avail no more, And Freedom loathe to tread the poison'd shore: 90 Then, like some guardian god that flies to save The weary pilgrim from an instant grave, Whom, sleeping and secure, the guileful snake Steals near ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... prayers for the king has been violently torn. This incident symbolises very aptly the attitude of America. The country has not yet recovered from the hostility which it once professed to George III. It assumes that a difference of policy always implies a moral taint. The American Colonies broke away from the mother country; therefore George III. was a knave, whose name may not be mentioned without dishonour, and all the brave men who served him in serving the colonies are dishonoured also. It is not quite clear why this ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley
... We's rich in grace, I'd have you to know! 'Sides havin' of a heap o' treasure laid up in heaven, I reckons! Keep de truck, chile; for 'deed you aint got no oder 'ternative! 'Taint Dinah as is a-gwine to tote 'em home ag'n. Lor' knows how dey a'mos' broke my back a-fetchin' of 'em over here. 'Taint likely as I'll be such a consarned fool as to tote 'em all de way back ag'in. So say no more 'bout it, Miss Hannah! 'Sides which how ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... between the cause and the effect, between the agency and the result, I saw nothing more astonishing than I had seen in many other cases confessedly true. Thousands of vast effects, by all that I had heard, linked themselves to causes apparently trivial. The dreadful taint of scrofula, according to the belief of all Christendom, fled at the simple touch of a Stuart [11] sovereign: no miracle in the Bible, from Jordan or from Bethesda, could be more sudden or more astoundingly victorious. ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... they found Squat like a toad, close at the ear of Eve, Assaying by his devilish art to reach The organs of her fancy, and with them forge Illusions, as he list, phantasms and dreams; Or if, inspiring venom, he might taint The animal spirits, that from pure blood arise Like gentle breaths from rivers pure, thence raise At least distempered, discontented thoughts, Vain hopes, vain aims, inordinate desires, Blown up with high conceits ingendering pride. Him thus intent Ithuriel with his spear ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... no pleasure in his food, neither could he sleep by night, nor would he lift up his eyes from the ground, nor stir out of his house, nor commune with his friends, but turned from them in silence as if the breath of his shame would taint them. Rodrigo was yet but a youth, and the Count was a mighty man in arms, one who gave his voice first in the Cortes, and was held to be the best in the war, and so powerful that he had a thousand friends among the mountains. Howbeit all these things appeared as nothing to Rodrigo when he thought ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... good democrat and holding office under a democratic administration, had deemed it wise to abbreviate his first name, thereby removing all taint of republicanism. He reduced Abraham to an initial, but, despite his supreme struggle for dignity, was forced by public indolence to submit to a sharp curtailment of his middle name. He was known ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... beckoning arms, And lustrous eyes, and perfect, moving forms. And see! he seizes one bright, charming girl, As the enchanting ring doth nearer whirl; He grasps her in his arms, and she doth yield The treasure of her lips, where sweets distilled Give him a joy without a taint of guilt. It thrills his heart-strings till his soul doth melt, A kiss of chastity, and love, and fire, A joy that few can dare to here aspire. The beauteous spirit has her joy, and flees With all her sister spirits 'neath the trees. And lo! the gesdin[2] ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... ladylike, high-spirited, joyous creature. Those struggles of her father to get rid of the last porcine taint, though not quite successful as to himself, had succeeded thoroughly in regard to her. It comes at last with due care, and the due care had here been taken. She was so nice that middle-aged men wished themselves ...
— Is He Popenjoy? • Anthony Trollope
... that. Fishin's no good here now. River was a pardise for Trontah folks wunst, but it's clean fished out. I seen fellers go to a ho-ul up thayer," said the supposed Ben, pointing in the opposite direction, "and take out a hull barl-ful afore sundown. 'Taint to be did, not now, wuss luck! Wait to I come down, and I'll haylp ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... a sort of number thirteen, a grain of spilt salt, ill-omened, disastrous? Camille would not think so; but it seemed to her that she had never been able to make anyone happy, and that there must be some taint in her therefore, some flaw in ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... he said sharply. "Why will you persist in thinking that there is something peculiar and unclean about this money?—some imagined taint upon your title to it? Don't you understand that it is yours in precisely the same definite and honest way that the money this office ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... lad he was honest, and to-day he is the same; he loves Poland above everything, he keeps up Polish customs, he will not yield to Muscovite fashions. Whenever I return from Prussia, and want to wash off the German taint, I drop in at Soplicowo, as the centre of Polish ways; there a man drinks and breathes his Country! In God's name, brothers Dobrzynski; I am one of you, but I will not let the Judge be wronged; nothing will come ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... powerful at the period when its horns are perfect, or free from the hairy skin. When in this state the meat is, of course, quite uneatable; but the Gauchos assert, that if buried for some time in fresh earth, the taint is removed. I have somewhere read that the islanders in the north of Scotland treat the rank carcasses of the fish-eating ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... that Dore has done; but they are also vapid, and without any one merit whatever in point of art. The illustrations to the 'Contes Drolatiques' are full of power and invention; but those to 'Elaine' are merely and simply stupid; theatrical betises, with the taint of ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... Old Silver does. I git onto some new wrinkle of his every day. No; 'taint no sorter use to tell his tricks; you wouldn't believe, nor would I an' I hadn't ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... escape the taint of its time more than a child the influence of its begetting. Augustus could have Horace and Ovid; he could never ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... his father a secure protection; But who, my daughter, shall with honour guide Thy virgin years? What woman shalt thou find New-wedded to thy father, whose vile arts Will not with slanderous falsehoods taint thy name, And blast thy nuptials in youth's freshest bloom? For never shall thy mother see thee led A bride, nor at thy throes speak comfort to thee, Then present when a mother's tenderness Is most alive: for I ...
— Story of Orestes - A Condensation of the Trilogy • Richard G. Moulton
... me by a Daughter she had, that her mind still had some misgivings about the big leap she had made in the Protestant-Papist way. Finding Anton Ulrich still continue Protestant, she wrote to him out of Spain:—"Why, O honored Grandpapa, have you not done as you promised? Ah, there must be a taint of mortal sin in it, after all!" Upon which the absurdly situated old Gentleman did change his religion; and is marked as a Convert in all manner of Genealogies and Histories;—truly an old literary gentleman ducal and serene, ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... soul, Like my own Psyche—fresh upon her lips Alit the visionary butterfly, 290 Waiting my word to enter and make bright, Or flutter off and leave all blank as first. This body had no soul before, but slept Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free From taint or foul with stain, as outward things 295 Fastened their image on its passiveness; Now, it will wake, feel, live—or die again! Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff Be Art—and further, to evoke a soul From form be nothing? This ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... coom to see the church. Lor' bless ye!' said the good woman, following his eyes towards the edifice and breaking into a laugh, ''taint becos the church is onything much to look at. 'Taint nowt out o' t' common that I knows on. Noa—but they coom along o't' monument, an' Miss Bronte—Mrs. Nicholls, ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... my boy mind. I saw that suffering was real and pressing, and so many suffered resignedly; and that imagery and my companionship with a God (I was highly "religious" then) worked in a self-centred circle. I never strayed from the deadly taint of some gentle form of egotism. I was then truly in a "vault." I did things for a system of ethics, not because of a fine rush of social brotherly intuition. My imagination was ever concerned with me and my prospects, my salvation. I honestly and soberly believe that your ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... Wish 'im luck, the brute! Chuck the slippers after— [Pity 'taint a boot!] Bowin' like a lady, Blushin' like a lad— 'Oo would say to see ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... for our benefit?" replied his mother. "Look what a position we have. No one can say there is any taint on our money. There are no rumours about your father. He has kept the laws of God and of man. He has ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... However, most are of opinion that all this is a mere made-up story, no slight evidence of which is, that during the dissensions among the commanders, which lasted several days, the body continued clear and fresh, without any sign of such taint or corruption, though it lay neglected in a close, ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... master he growled and contracted the muscles of his lips, as if half disposed to threaten with the remnants of his teeth. The younger dog, who was resting after the chase of the morning, also made some signs that his nose detected a taint in the air, and then the two resumed their slumbers, as if ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... him to submit to a heavy loss. He bore his misfortune with fortitude, and still had a competency ample for him, when there came a torrent of ill-fortune—the loss of his beloved wife, and the failure of his sons, under circumstances that bore the distressing stamp of insanity in one of them, a taint of madness that was in the blood which had been so prolific of genius. He suffered where he was strongest and weakest—in his love ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... world called him a fool; a Michael Angelo, working seven long years decorating the Sistine Chapel with his matchless "Creation" and the "Last Judgment," refusing all remuneration therefor, lest his pencil might catch the taint of avarice; a Titian, spending seven years on the "Last Supper;" a Stephenson, working fifteen years on a locomotive; a Watt, twenty years on a condensing engine; a Lady Franklin, working incessantly for twelve long years to rescue her husband ...
— How to Succeed - or, Stepping-Stones to Fame and Fortune • Orison Swett Marden
... he said. He looked at Bruce a moment questioningly before adding, "Reckin's haow you aint usen to the quiet yit. Taint so lonely, the woods an' the hills whend you know um." He twisted his head like a bird and looked out across the extensive sweep of the land and the long slow curve of the river, a deep inspiration swelling his chest. "Simlike they up an' talk ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... that she did not as usual observe every twig, almost every leaf, as she passed. Nor, now that she was alone, was that religious bias, which had so much to do with her daily life, very strong within her. There was no taint of hypocrisy in her character; but yet, with the force of human disappointment heavy upon her, her heart was now hot with human anger, and mutinous with human resolves. She had proposed to herself to revenge ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... until the sedate colonel's wife admitted to herself that no such pleasant voyage had fallen to her lot since the days when she had started for India on her wedding journey. Weldon had the consummate tact to keep the taint of the filial from his chivalry. His attentions to Mrs. Scott and Ethel differed in degree, but not in kind, and Mrs. Scott adored him accordingly. One by one, the languid days dropped into the past. ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... the world knew—that in the voice which called them from the battlefield to reason's court there was no taint of selfishness; that in that call there was no suspicion of an ulterior or dishonorable motive, but that in the heart of the great statesman, whose voice they heeded, there was only the purity of a humane effort to bring about the welfare of all. From the very nature of the development ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... architect, for example, or of civil engineer, was, if a fortune had not been accumulated, utterly without prestige; trade, any connection with trade—the merest bowing acquaintance with buying and selling—was a taint that nothing could remove; and those girls who were related to shopkeepers, or, more awful still, to publicans, would rather have bitten their tongues off than ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... the afternoon breeze the irregularly jagged line of tree-tops stood unchanging, as if traced by an unsteady hand on the clear blue of the hot sky. In the space sheltered by the high palisades there lingered the smell of decaying blossoms from the surrounding forest, a taint of drying fish; with now and then a whiff of acrid smoke from the cooking fires when it eddied down from under the leafy boughs and clung lazily ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... Paul consented, would take the younger, Eugene, with him into the city, where his education could be attended to, and where he, at least, might be saved from the influence of the barbarous mannerism and irreligious taint of these country "common schools." His reverence the doctor furthermore added, that Mr. Prying had no objection to the arrangement he proposed, and that he had conquered the repugnance that Mrs. Prying had to the separation of the brothers by ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... purlieus of the court; and of these brokers the most successful had been, in the days of Charles, the harlots, and in the days of James, the priests. From the palace which was the chief seat of this pestilence the taint had diffused itself through every office and through every rank in every office, and had every where produced feebleness and disorganization. So rapid was the progress of the decay that, within eight years after the time ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... directed the national policy in shipping matters was Robert Lansing, then counsellor of the Department. It is somewhat difficult to appraise Mr. Lansing justly, for in his conduct of his office there was not the slightest taint of malice. His methods were tactless, the phrasing of his notes lacked deftness and courtesy, his literary style was crude and irritating; but Mr. Lansing was not anti-British, he was not pro-German; he was nothing more nor less than ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... precedent of Uzziah the leper (twenty-sixth chapter of the second book of Chronicles), who was buried in the field of the Sepulchres of the Kings, not in the sepulchres themselves. The Cagots pleaded that they were healthy and able-bodied; with no taint of leprosy near them. They were met by the strong argument so difficult to be refuted, which I quoted before. Leprosy was of two kinds, perceptible and imperceptible. If the Cagots were suffering from the latter kind, who could tell whether they were free from it or ...
— An Accursed Race • Elizabeth Gaskell
... wrongfulness. Provoked, however, to try its strength against the feeble assaults of the new friends of freedom, finding all its demands readily yielded to, and itself victorious in every conflict, it soon threw off its false professions of modesty, pronounced itself free from every taint of wrong-doing, claimed to be the very corner stone and basis of free institutions themselves, the condition sine qua non of all successful experiment in republican and democratic organizations, and became boldly and ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol IV, Issue VI, December 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... thou hast nature in thee, bear it not; Let not the royal bed of Denmark be A couch for luxury[113] and damned incest. But, howsoever thou pursu'st this act, Taint not thy mind, nor let thy soul contrive Against thy mother aught: leave her to Heaven, And to those thorns that in her bosom lodge, To prick and sting her. Fare thee well at once! The glow-worm shows the matin to be near, ...
— Hamlet • William Shakespeare
... intimate. Everywhere, there can be no doubt, the ranks of prostitution contain a considerable proportion of women who were, at the very outset, in some slight degree feeble-minded, mentally and morally a little blunted through some taint ...
— The Task of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis
... to estimate at their full value, to say the least. He was very well liked by women, and in turn considered himself irresistible. He was very impressionable to feminine charms, was at heart a libertine, and, as he grew older, became a debauchee whose memory will taint France for centuries ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... officials, whose one idea was how to get rich and get home. The inspectors who were sent out either failed in their duty and joined the official gang of thieves, or else resigned in disgust. Worse still, because this taint was at the very source, the royal government in France was already beset with that entanglement of weakness and corruption which lasted throughout the whole century between the decline of Louis XIV and the meteoric ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... called one of the men from the inside of the frame, "I s'pose 'taint worth carrying any of this stuff—Jackson'll have enough without it?" The words were explained to Nettie's horror by a jug in the man's hands, which ...
— The Carpenter's Daughter • Anna Bartlett Warner
... She says it is hopeless, that her will and nerve are undermined, her courage contaminated.... Hour after hour I sat with her; she made me tell her about her grandfather—about what I knew of the—the taint in her family." ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... saw the shining faces and tearful eyes round her, her own eyes filled with tears. These people—most of them—had known and loved her since she was a child, and loved her still without envy or any taint. Her father was standing near, and with smiling face she caught from his hand the handkerchief with which he was mopping his eyes, and kissed ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... ones of Kedar and the exterminated Canaanites will not then be heard one by one, and no longer be mingled up indiscriminately in an overwhelming national judgment; that the pleas of evil education and example, of hereditary taint and common usage, will be then thrown aside as vain excuse; and that eventual justice will not with facility explain every riddle in the moral government of God. But in the case of soulless extinguished animals, there is, there can be no compensation, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... ghostly descent. Again, similar gods, as we show, exist where ghosts of chiefs are not worshipped, and as far as evidence goes never were worshipped, because there is no evidence of the existence at any time of such chiefs. The American highest gods may then be equally free from the taint ...
— Myth, Ritual, and Religion, Vol. 1 • Andrew Lang
... unscrupulous means by which Boris raised himself to the throne, after he had destroyed the last representatives of the direct line of Rurik, which, in all the vicissitudes of Russian fortune, had hitherto held the chief place in the nation—the taint of guilt which poisoned and polluted a mind otherwise powerful, and not without some virtues, and made him at length a suspicious and cruel tyrant, who, having alienated the good-will of the nation, was unable to oppose the pretensions of an impostor, and swallowed poison to escape the tortures ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 55, No. 340, February, 1844 • Various
... Bow-legs, squat, huge in the shoulder, long-armed, flat-skulled, of a yellowish clay color, with protruding jaws, and gaping, pit-like, upturned nostrils to their wide, bridgeless noses. Grom's own nose wrinkled in disgust as the sour taint of them breathed up ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... killed and et one of his sheep, then he paid me up and took his ram back. If I had a thousand boys I wouldn't name narry dang one of them Elhannon. I got another little case what comes up next fall in the Bell Circit Court, 'taint much. I low ter pay a good young lawyer about twenty five bucks to git me off. 'Bout a month ago I shot Caleb Spencer as dead as a kit mackrel. I was going over Salt Trace to the mill on the river. When I got on top of the divide he raised up from behind a log about a hundred ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt
... human being. It was contended, that having been predestined from the beginning as the Woman, through whom the divine nature was made manifest on earth, she must be presumed to be exempt from all sin, even from that original taint inherited from Adam. Through the first Eve, we had all died; through the second Eve, we had all been "made alive." It was argued that God had never suffered his earthly temple to be profaned; had even promulgated in person severe ordinances to ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... done in Nicholson's estimation when he took over the leadership of the Movable Column was to purge it thoroughly of any taint of disaffection. Two native regiments were suspected, and he resolved on disarming these at once. On the morning of the 25th of June, while the column was halting on the high road leading to Delhi, the British regiments, with the guns, were manoeuvred ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... recalled to mind, And, for the stripling taken to her bed, To deem the dame less culpable inclined: Less of herself than sex the fault he read, Which to one man could never be confined: And thought, if in one taint all women shared, At least his had not with ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... a point upon it, they're nasty. We are greater at raising cabbages than we are at sprouting cigar tobacco. Under these circumstances the free trader (he's a smoker, or if he isn't, his aunt or sister is) says we want Havana cigars to enter our lips without the taint of revenue. That's ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 7, May 14, 1870 • Various
... likely. I had a young man's differences with my cousin, as lads will fall out, but there was the making of a fine fellow in him. But it was the wife, bringing in that Greek taint, worse even than the Italian, so that there's no believing a word out of any ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is the fashion to call them here, and even among the banking community, but never among women of condition, whose deportment in France, whatever may be their morals, is usually marked by gentility of air, and a perfectly good tone of manner, always excepting that small taint of roueism to which I have already alluded, and which certainly must have come ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... in which they are grown: "layers from the same clean flower would come part of them clean and part foul, even when subjected to precisely the same treatment; and frequently one flower alone appears influenced by the taint, the remainder coming perfectly clean."[863] This running of the parti-coloured flowers apparently is a case of reversion by buds to the original uniform ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... area was not more than twelve square feet; where the air was foul, and the bilges reeked with a pestilential stench; where the purser's store-room near gave out the smell of rancid butter and poisonous cheese; where the musty taint of old ropes came to them, there was ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... a taint of the same folly, pure as she esteems herself, when she studiously adorns her person only to be seen by men, to excite respectful sighs, and all the idle homage of what is called innocent gallantry. Did women really respect virtue for its own ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... and the gadding Vine o'regrown, And all their echoes mourn. The Willows, and the Hazle Copses green, Shall now no more be seen, Fanning their joyous Leaves to thy soft layes. As killing as the Canker to the Rose, Or Taint-worm to the weanling Herds that graze, Or Frost to Flowers, that their gay wardrop wear, When first the White thorn blows; Such, Lycidas, thy loss to Shepherds ear. Where were ye Nymphs when the remorseless deep Clos'd o're the head of your ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... can earmark certain coins as tainted is an unpractical individualist superstition. None the less the fact that all our money is tainted gives a very severe shock to earnest young souls when some dramatic instance of the taint first makes them conscious of it. When an enthusiastic young clergyman of the Established Church first realizes that the Ecclesiastical Commissioners receive the rents of sporting public houses, brothels, and sweating dens; or that the most generous contributor at his last charity sermon was ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... the King of the celestials he stood alone, holding the duty of protection even to a dog higher than divine command and joy of heaven. And then he showed that the lesson had worked out in his purification, and that the heart was clean from the slightest taint of weakness. Oh, but men say, Shri Krishna counselled the telling of a lie! My brothers, can you not see beneath the illusion? What is there in this world that the Supreme does not do? There is no life but His, no Self but His, nothing save His life through all His universe; and every act is His ...
— Avataras • Annie Besant
... Unlike Lady Hester Stanhope, whose fantastic and half-insane notions of rulership and superiority have been so often recorded for our amazement, Lady Duff Gordon kept the simple frankness of heart and desire to be of service to her fellow-creatures without a thought of self or a taint of vanity in her intercourse with them. Not for lack of flattery or of real enthusiastic gratitude on their part. It is known that when at Thebes, on more than one of her journeys, the women raised the "cry of joy" as she passed along, and the people flung branches ...
— Letters from Egypt • Lucie Duff Gordon
... daytime, a man was descried, no matter at what distance. Lobo's habit of permitting the pack to eat only that which they themselves had killed, was in numerous cases their salvation, and the keenness of his scent to detect the taint of human hands or the poison ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... our means of cure, we must recognize the necessity of studying the aetiology of insanity, including that damnosa haereditas, which is the cause of causes in so large a number of the cases coming under our treatment. But what induced the ancestral taint? It behoves us to pay more and more attention to those laws of inheritance in general to which Mr. Hutchinson has recently directed attention in his suggestive lectures ...
— Chapters in the History of the Insane in the British Isles • Daniel Hack Tuke
... contend with. The Iron Brigade had a different head-gear from the rest of the army and were recognized at once by their old antagonists. Some of the latter were heard to exclaim: "There are those d——d black-hatted fellows again! 'Taint no militia. It's the Army ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... nor foul dishonour could their truthful utterance taint, And they cursed Duhsasan's action, when they heard ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... chief quality of this remarkable speaker was his persuasiveness, and he had the air of being too prudent to offend even an opponent unnecessarily. His language, though natural and easy, was choice and refined. He was evidently a man who had read, and not a little; and there was no taint of vulgarity, scarcely a provincialism, in ...
— Endymion • Benjamin Disraeli
... character was, that he respected and admired his sister Amy. The feeling had never induced him to spare her a moment's uneasiness, or to put himself to any restraint or inconvenience on her account; but with that Marshalsea taint upon his love, he loved her. The same rank Marshalsea flavour was to be recognised in his distinctly perceiving that she sacrificed her life to her father, and in his having no idea that she had done anything ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... and saint! Red rose and white in the garden; There is on you no earthly taint: And the bird sings over ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... leave to avoid the general MELEE, and to breathe the night air, which we find grateful and reviving. Phew! but it was hot and thick, we don't want to breathe it again. It is astonishing that people get used to it, and like it too! But it leaves its taint upon them, for it permeates their clothing; they carry it about with them, and any one who gets a whiff of it gets some idea of the breath of a common lodging-house. And its moral breath has its effect, ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... his high image stamp'd on my poor worth Towards one so low and lost thy pity move: Medusa spells have made me as a rock Distilling a vain flood; Virgin! my harass'd heart With pure and pious tears do thou fulfil, That its last sigh at least may be devout, And free from earthly taint, As was my earliest vow ere ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch
... imaginings of a romantic girl, all that he had taken seriously only a school-girl's foolish dream! Instead of combating it, instead of reasoning with her, instead of trying to interest her in other things, he had even helped on her illusions. He had treated her as if the taint of her mother's worldliness and knowledge of evil was in her pure young flesh. He had recognized her as the daughter of an adventuress, and not as his ward, appealing to his chivalry through her very ignorance—it might be ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... would have been out of drawing from standpoints of ancient art. One must rescue Richard's head; it was not that nubbin of a head which goes with the Farnese one. Moreover, it showed wisest balance from base to brow; with the face free of beard and mustache, while the yellow hair owned no taint of curl—altogether an American head on Farnese ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... her offence Must be of such unnatural degree, That monsters it; or you for vouch'd affection Fall into taint. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... morning the summons came to go forth to further adventures. Accompanied by three deputies, but free of the Henkel handcuffs, we passed the gates and trod the sunny pavements. Not a cloud in the blue sky, nor a taint upon the pure wings of the free air. None that saw us pass suspected our invisible fetters. Yet to me at least the thought that had ministered to me in the actual courtroom and prison, that the fetters were a dream and freedom ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... were so far decomposed as not to be capable of removal. The aspect of the river was as much changed as that of the city. Numbers of bodies were thrown into it, and, floating up with the tide, were left to taint the air on its banks, while strange, ill-omened fowl, attracted thither by their instinct, preyed upon them. Below the bridge, all captains of ships moored in the Pool, or off Wapping, held as little communication ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... brightest ornaments of the court of Louis XIV. His chosen friends, in his declining years, were Madame de Sevigne, one of the most accomplished women of the age, and Madame de Lafayette, who said of him, "He gave me intellect, and I reformed his heart." But if the taint was removed from his heart, it continued in the understanding. His famous "Maxims," published in 1665, gained for the author a lasting reputation, not less for the perfection of his style, than for the boldness of his paradoxes. ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... appliances, put the means of education easily within the reach of every workman, make promotion from the ranks, in the Army, in the Navy, in all business concerns, practicable and natural, and the lingering discolouration of the serf taint will vanish from the workman's mind. The days of mystic individualism have passed, few people nowadays will agree to that strange creed that we must deal with economic conditions as though they were inflexible laws. Economic conditions are made and compact ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... would have been entirely different. But for any one to seek to persuade us that these Twelve Verses, which exactly constitute one of the Church's most famous Lections, are every one of them spurious:—that the fatal taint begins with the first verse, and only ends with the last:—this is a demand on our simplicity which, in a less solemn subject, would only provoke a smile. We are constrained to testify astonishment ...
— The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark • John Burgon
... development to be able to find support in religious hypocrisy. So that while in former days a man who professed the religion of the Church could take part in all the crimes of the state, and profit by them, and still regard himself as free from any taint of sin, so long as he fulfilled the external observances of his creed, nowadays all who do not believe in the Christianity of the Church, find similar well-founded irrefutable reasons in science for regarding themselves as blameless and even highly moral in spite of their participation in the ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... earnestly. "Do not look so grave. No one knows, or values thy sterling piety half so tenderly and reverentially as I do. But this is no common case. Were Marie one of those base and grovelling wretches, those accursed unbelievers, who taint our fair realm with their abhorred rites—think of nothing but gold and usury, and how best to cheat their fellows; hating us almost as intensely as we hate them—why, she should abide by the fate she has drawn upon herself. But the wife of my noble Morales, one who has associated ...
— The Vale of Cedars • Grace Aguilar
... over the prairie. At the words of his master he growled and contracted the muscles of his lips, as if half disposed to threaten with the remnants of his teeth. The younger dog, who was resting after the chase of the morning, also made some signs that his nose detected a taint in the air, and then the two resumed their slumbers, as if ...
— The Prairie • J. Fenimore Cooper
... of some, and of his sister among them, marred the grace and beauty of his features. Yet, as he was wont himself to say, when one thinks that each poor mortal is heir to a legacy of every evil trait or bodily taint of so vast a line of ancestors, lucky indeed is the man who does not find that Nature has scored up some long-owing ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was at the prospect of deliverance from all his misery through the kindly agency of death, it was characteristic of him that, even now, at the supreme moment of his impending deliverance, his self-respect imperiously demanded of him that at all costs must he eschew even the faintest taint of so cowardly an act as that of suicide; if death were really close at hand—as it certainly appeared to be—well and good; it was what he was hoping for, and would be thrice welcome. Nevertheless, he felt it incumbent upon himself that he should take ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... of the distemper which was the best means to prevent it; and this too is an evidence of it, and brings me back to what I only hinted at before, but must speak more fully to here, namely, that men went about apparently well many days after they had the taint of the disease in their vitals, and after their spirits were so seized as that they could never escape it, and that all the while they did so they were dangerous to others; I say, this proves that so it was; for such people infected the very towns they went through, as well as the families ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... had been removing the high pews from a church in Brighton, and putting in open benches in their place. Everyone knew what that meant; everyone knew that a high pew was one of the bulwarks of Protestantism, and that an open bench had upon it the taint of Rome. But Manning hastened to explain: 'My dear friend,' he wrote, 'I did not exchange pews for open benches, but got the pews (the same in number) moved from the nave of the church to the walls of the side aisles, so that the whole church has a regular arrangement of open benches, which (irregularly) ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey
... what was meant by "fah tee, fah tee;" to which his lordship replied—"Hout, he canna speak; he means fau too, fau too." Thus one Scotticism was held in terror by those who used a different Scotticism: as at Inverary, the wife of the chief writer of the place, seeking to secure her guest from the taint of inferior society, intimated to him, but somewhat confidentially, that Mrs. W. (the rival writer's wife) was quite a vulgar body, so much so as to ask any one leaving the room to "snib the door," ...
— Reminiscences of Scottish Life and Character • Edward Bannerman Ramsay
... the more extravagant and offensive parallel which may serve as a set-off against that which was drawn by English Royalists between the death of Charles I. and the Crucifixion. Among other fables, it was believed that the President's family had fled from Kentucky to Indiana to escape the taint of Slavery. Thomas Lincoln, the father of Abraham, was migratory enough, but the course of his migrations was not determined by high moral motives, and we may safely affirm that had he ever found himself among the fleshpots of Egypt, he would have stayed there, however deep the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... patient toil on his part did at first engender in my mind suspicion that some doubting thoughts urged him to assume his independence against any accident that might befall the estate; but now I believe 'twas nothing but a love of work and of his art, and that his mind was free from any taint of misgiving, as regards his wife's honesty. 'Tis likely enough, that spite her caution, many a word and sign escaped Moll, which an enemy would have quickly seized on to prove her culpable; but we do never ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... far better affirm his state of mind by his dress, than by any written words. Lying on the bed, cleanly shaved, wearing evening clothes, silk socks, patent leather shoes and white gloves? No, that would be vulgar, and all taint of vulgarity must be avoided. He must represent, even in a state of symbol, the young man, who having drunk of life to repletion, and finding that he can but repeat the same love draughts, says: "It is far too great a ...
— Mike Fletcher - A Novel • George (George Augustus) Moore
... husbands might love them better; indicating that indulgence is not man's sole concern, even though he be a barbarian; that one reason he seeks the opposite sex is his desire for fair daughters and brave sons—a love in which there is no taint of lust. Hugo, to whom the human heart was as a printed page, has given us an admirable portrait of "the way of a man with a maid" in the courtship of Marius and Cosette. Youth and ardor and opportunity, yet no ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... The gloomy taint that was in the Murdstone blood, darkened the Murdstone religion, which was austere and wrathful. I have thought, since, that its assuming that character was a necessary consequence of Mr. Murdstone's firmness, which wouldn't ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... with the weight of my approaching feet. I'll make the inspired threshold of his court Sweat with the weather of my horrid steps, Before I enter; yet, I will appear Like calm securitie, befor a ruin. A politician must, like lightning, melt The very marrow, and not taint the skin; His wayes must not be seen through, the superficies Of the green centre must not taste his feet, When hell is plowed up with the wounding tracts, And all his ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... periods. He even expressed some anxiety lest doubts should begin to be entertained as to the perfect clemency of the King's character. "Here is so much confiscation and bloodshed going on," said he, "that some taint of cruelty or avarice may chance to bespatter the robe of his Majesty." He also confessed that he had occasionally read in history of greater benignity than was now exercised against the poor Netherlanders. Had the learned Frisian arrived at these humane conclusions at a somewhat ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... cross soft amethyst, And on her hair a glory, like a saint: She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest, Save wings, for heaven: Porphyro grew faint: She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint. ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... Lord, our souls would be Still more and more conformed to thee! Would lose the pride, the taint of sin, That burns these fevered veins within? And learn of thee, the lowly One, And, like thee, all our journey run, Above the world, and all its mirth, Yet weeping ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... wretches to my care; First let them each be broken on the rack, Then, with what life remains, impaled, and left To writhe at leisure round the bloody stake; There let them hang, and taint the southern wind. The partners of their crime ...
— Cato - A Tragedy, in Five Acts • Joseph Addison
... Con., that's of no use, I should know myself for a liar all the time. I shall never quit liquor; I can't and I tell you," he whispered this fiercely, "they know that I can't, and they know why I can't. Oh! you need not recoil; we are not the first family that has inherited a taint; and I am the one unfortunate in whom that taint has broken forth. Let me tell you a secret; since my first potation, my mother has never once remonstrated with me; never once upbraided; my proud, high ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... all the way to the Lakeville lake. I never knew my beast's pace on the Kingston road what it was through that track, all the rustling and scuttling of the beasts and birds sounding round us, the glare gaining on us, and the scent of smoke beginning to taint the wind. There was Randolf's clearing at last, lonesome and still as ever, and a light in the window. Never was it so hard to pull in a horse; however, I did so. He was still up, reading by a pine torch, and in five minutes more the woman and her children were upon the horse, making for the ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the long pipe which runs by the bone should be taken out, being apt to taint, as likewise the kernels ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... indicating that some convulsion had disturbed the general order of nature at this place. We had passed a portage above it, and after two long portages below it we encamped. Near the last was a small stream so strongly impregnated with sulphur, as to taint the air to a great distance around it. We saw two brown bears on the hills in the ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... two years and had a wife and two children to take care of and I never cleared forty dollars a month. I've been a lifetime working myself up to what I am and you jump into the game, inexperienced, green as a cucumber, and want to hog the persimmons at the start. 'Taint fair, 'taint right; I'm an honest man; I want to treat everybody right. You're taking advantage of me. It's the principle of the thing ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... twice to die! others shall die once; but thou, besides that death that remains for thee, common to all men, hast in thy lifetime visited the shades of death. Thee Scylla, thee Charybdis, expect. Thee the deathful Sirens lie in wait for, that taint the minds of whoever listen to them with their sweet singing. Whosoever shall but hear the call of any Siren, he will so despise both wife and children through their sorceries that the stream of his affection never again shall set homewards, ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... better and more Catholic education; that, in fine, he, Dr. Dilman, if Paul consented, would take the younger, Eugene, with him into the city, where his education could be attended to, and where he, at least, might be saved from the influence of the barbarous mannerism and irreligious taint of these country "common schools." His reverence the doctor furthermore added, that Mr. Prying had no objection to the arrangement he proposed, and that he had conquered the repugnance that Mrs. Prying had to the separation of the brothers by the very flattering ...
— The Cross and the Shamrock • Hugh Quigley
... sprung from due degrees Of sense and spirit sweetly mix'd. Her modesty, her chiefest grace, The cestus clasping Venus' side, How potent to deject the face Of him who would affront its pride! Wrong dares not in her presence speak, Nor spotted thought its taint disclose Under the protest of a cheek Outbragging Nature's boast the rose. In mind and manners how discreet; How artless in her very art; How candid in discourse; how sweet The concord of her lips and heart; How simple and how ...
— The Angel in the House • Coventry Patmore
... an open good-humoured face, and was very kind-hearted; but was subject to peculiar fits of insanity, during which he did wild and foolish things for the mere love of notoriety. He had two natures—one bright and good, the other sullen and criminal. A taint of madness ran in the family—came down from drunken and unprincipled fathers of dead generations; under different conditions, it might have developed into genius in one ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... a big, broad-chested, muscular man, whose neck rose like a mortised beam out of his shoulders, straight with the back of his head. His face was handsome in a bold, shrewd mold, but dark as if his blood carried the taint of a baser race. He went about always dressed in a long frock coat, with no vest to obscure the spread of his white shirt front; low collar, with narrow black tie done in exact bow; broad-brimmed white sombrero tilted back from his forehead, a cigar that always seemed ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... Russell the fall of Sumter, he stated that civil war had at last begun. The North he believed to be very much more powerful than the South, the South more "eager" and united as yet, but, he added, "the taint of slavery will render the cause of the South loathsome to the civilized world." It was true that "commercial intercourse with the cotton States is of vital importance to manufacturing nations[124]...." but Lyons was now facing an actual situation rather than a possible one, ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... are few and far between. In the trial for the rehabilitation of the Maid of Orleans, the story of her deeds in the field was not of much importance to the commissioners. What they principally desired to ascertain was the fact that no taint of heresy could attach to the life of the heroine. It was for this reason that all those persons who could throw any light upon Joan's early days and the actions of her childhood had been collected to give ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... men and women and useful citizens, it is not their education which is to blame, but the inborn sinfulness of their corrupt and fallen natures. Such an education is regarded by those who advocate it as pre-eminently useful. There is no nonsense about it, no cant of idealism, no taint of socialism. It keeps the "lower orders" in their places, and forbids them to dream of rising above "that state of life unto which it" has pleased "God to call them." As it is a reductio ad absurdum of the conventional type of education, my objection to it is that it makes the best possible ...
— What Is and What Might Be - A Study of Education in General and Elementary Education in Particular • Edmond Holmes
... organizations, the Unionist Free Food League and the Unionist Free Trade Club. In the subsequent developments the duke played a dignified but somewhat silent part, and the Unionist rout in 1906 was not unaffected by his open hostility to any taint of compromise with the tariff reform movement. But in the autumn of 1907 his health gave way, and grave symptoms of cardiac weakness necessitated his abstaining from public effort and spending ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... (a.u. 933)] [Sidenote:—1—] This [Commodus] was not naturally wicked, but was originally as free from taint as any man ever was. His great simplicity, however, and likewise his cowardice made him a slave of his companions and it was through them that he first, out of ignorance, missed the better life and then was attracted into licentiousness ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... find her locked, this moment, in your son's Incestuous embrace. Believe your king. Now go; you stand amazed; you stare at me With searching eye, because of my gray hairs. Unhappy man, reflect. Queens never taint Their virtue thus: doubt it, and you ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... strange as the fact may appear, is still more completely spoiled for the purpose which it seemed expressly made for, than the word Thing. Being is, by custom, exactly synonymous with substance; except that it is free from a slight taint of a second ambiguity; being implied impartially to matter and to mind, while substance, though originally and in strictness applicable to both, is apt to suggest in preference the idea of matter. Attributes are never called ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... Ef he seed the Scarlet Woman about in his part o' the country, he'd lay by an' h'ist her, an' you'd say, 'Well done!' an' I don't say you'd be wrong. But jest you stop an' ax hes motives, an' you'll find 'taint religion. Lor' bless 'ee, sir, a bull's got no more use for religion than a toad for side-pockets. 'Tes obstinacy—that's what 'tes. You tells me a jackass es obstinate. Well, an' that's true in a way; and so's a hog. Ef ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... her of it to escape me with impunity. I knew that the motive of securing the just recognition of my wife in the birthplace from which she had been driven out as an impostor, and of publicly erasing the lie that still profaned her mother's tombstone, was far purer, in its freedom from all taint of evil passion, than the vindictive motive which had mingled itself with my purpose from the first. And yet I cannot honestly say that my own moral convictions were strong enough to decide the struggle in me by themselves. They were helped ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... well of him," replied his firm-minded niece; "and even I admit that I love him, as far as a girl of such a cold constitution as mine may; but I tell you, uncle, that if I discovered a taint of vice or want of principle in his character, I could ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... crowning virtue that Shakespeare demands in rulers. But the Shakespearean code is innocent of any taint of sentimentality, and mercifulness is far from being the sovereign's sole qualification or primal test of fitness. More especially are kings and judges bound by their responsibilities and their duties to ...
— Shakespeare and the Modern Stage - with Other Essays • Sir Sidney Lee
... says Brother Beans, "but I think I'll let you in on it. The name of our noble organization is 'Grue's Overseas Grouches,' and our humble object is to rebuke the only taint of Prussianism which we have personally encountered in an otherwise perfectly good man's army. When we've done ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... from her lowly seat by her precious book-case and came round and looked at Rae Malgregor rather oddly. "Yes," faltered Helene Churchill. "What did you go into nursing for?" The faintest possible taint of ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... said the doctor emphatically. "Her father and mother were both sound and well-balanced. I know the history of the family through three generations, and there's no hint of any taint. Twenty-five years ago Holladay, who was then just working to the top in Wall Street, drove himself too hard—it was when the market went all to pieces over that Central Pacific deal—and had a touch of apoplexia. It was just a touch, but I made him take a long vacation, which he spent ...
— The Holladay Case - A Tale • Burton E. Stevenson
... circumstance at once and for ever becomes a hero, a martyr, a man to be excused, to be prayed for, to be worshipped. No matter how black his offence, the touch of the constabulary washes him whiter than snow, purifies him from every earthly taint, surrounds him with a halo of sanctity. Those whom he has injured will not bear witness against him, because their temerity might cost them their lives, the loss of their property, the esteem of their fellow-men. What this means we shall shortly ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... had ever dared. His women are never young, foolish, timid girls—they are Amazons; and his men are the kind that lead nations out of captivity. The soft, the pretty, the yielding, were far from him. There is never a suggestion of taint or double meaning; all is frank, open, generous, honest and fearless. His figures ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... in the critic's chair, And wrote, to advance his Maker's praise, Comments on rhymes, and notes on plays— A judge of genius, though, confest, With not one spark of genius blest: Among the first of critics placed, Though free from every taint of taste. ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... do, my son. But I must not let thee linger longer here; for although I myself hold that the whole and sound are not affected by the taint, there be leeches of repute who swear 'tis death to abide ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... showed that for each one five families in that house had applied for charity within a given time. There were those that had as many as fifteen of the ominous marks, showing that seventy-five families had asked aid from the one house. To find a tenement free from the taint one had to search long and with care. Upon the disease maps the scourge of tuberculosis lay like a black pall over the double-decker districts. A year later the State Commission, that continued the work then ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... country, to find such men among her avowed defenders. Oaths and obscenity made even more hateful the rough narratives in which each strove to prove himself more hardened and abandoned than the last speaker. Blair's soul recoiled with horror from the taint of such companionship; yet for him there was no escape. Among these coarse rovers he was forced to eat and sleep, to live and labor, while many weeks ...
— The Boy Patriot • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... reflections were of a different character: "The very air breathes sin to-day," he cried; "oh that I did not find the taint of the city in these works of God! Alas! sweet Nature, the child of the Almighty, is made to do the fiend's work, and does it better than the town. O ye beautiful trees and fair flowers, O bright sun and balmy air, what ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... York. It is needless to say that this conviction is the completest triumph which Freedom has yet gained in our country against her adversary. It indicates more clearly even than any event of the war, that Southern social influences are yielding, and that ere long we shall be free from all their taint. Like the defeat of Fernando Wood, like the breaking up of the Peace Party, like the rapidly progressing crusade against old political corruption, it shows that there is a reformation afoot which will work wonders, and prove to the world that the mass of corruption in this country, so ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... shook his head deprecatingly. "Don't seem lak I evah able to rickermembah dat boy's name, nohow. His grampa' 'uz a Hynds, likewise his ma, but she 'sisted on marryin' er furriner, an' de boy takes atter de furriners 'stead er we-all. 'Taint de po' boy's fault, but ol' Mis' Scarlett hated 'im wuss 'n pizen. De only notice she take er de boy is ter warrant 'im fo' trispassin'. Dat 's how come folkses ter say—" ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... heart within. Whenever, from sickness or misfortune, a comrade stood in need of sympathy, Jackson was the first to offer it, and he would devote himself to his help with a tenderness so womanly that it sometimes excited ridicule. Sensitive he was not, for of vanity he had not the slightest taint; but of tact and sensibility he possessed more than his share. If he was careless of what others thought of him, he thought much of them. Though no one made more light of pain on his own account, no one could have more carefully avoided giving pain to others, except when duty ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... business and interests, as well as in his recreative enjoyments. The household affairs were under her skilful guidance. She conducted them with economy, and yet with generous liberality, free from the least taint of ostentation or extravagance. The home fireside was a scene of cheerfulness. And most of our family have been blest with this sunny gift. Indeed, a merrier family circle I have never seen. There were ...
— James Nasmyth's Autobiography • James Nasmyth
... this argument. Humor was one of her saving qualities which, as Whittier says, "kept her philanthropy free from any taint of fanaticism." It contributed greatly to her cheerfulness. Of her fame, she says playfully: "In a literary point of view I know I have only a local ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... unwavering Prompter and Guide. In the submission of our wills to God and the chastening of our spirits He is the great Co-worker with us. In the bearing of burdens and the enduring of trial and sorrow He joins hands with us to lead us on. In the purifying of every power from the taint of sin He ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... its beauty is being recognized by all who have read it. It contains the race memory of Ireland, its imaginations and thoughts for two thousand years. Must that be obliterated? Must national character be sterilized of all taint of its peculiar beauty? Must Ireland have no character of its own but be servilely imitative of its neighbor in all things and be nothing of itself? It is objected that the study of Irish history, Irish literature and the national culture generates hostility to the Empire. ...
— Imaginations and Reveries • (A.E.) George William Russell
... his horse to a dead stop, and speaking in an excited manner; 'I doan't b'lieve it, 'taint 't all like ye; yer a d—d seceshener—thet comes uv yer bringin'-up; but ye've a soul bigger'n a meetin'-house, and ye cudn't hev put thet slim, weakly gal ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No. 2, August, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... the afternoon some sick Inniskilling Fusiliers were admitted, and for some time seemed dazed at the kind treatment they were receiving, and appeared half under the impression they were in Heaven. "What's this chummy?" queried one. "Imperial Yeomanry Hospital" was the reply. "Thank Gawd 'taint the R.A.M.C." grunted the Tommy, turning over on his side with a sigh of relief. At about ten that night we had to make room in our tent for a dozen wounded men from Thursday's fight. Ninety were being brought into Rietfontein and the I.Y. people ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... Saxons. "The slave," says Green, "became part of the live stock of the estate, to be willed away at death with the horse or the ass, whose pedigree was kept as carefully as his own. His children were bondmen, like himself; even the freeman's children by a slave-mother inherited the mother's taint. 'Mine is the calf that is born of my cow,' ran the English proverb." In the same passage he points out that the number of the serfs was being continually augmented from various concurrent causes—war, crime, debt, and poverty all assisting to drive men into a condition of perpetual bondage.[16] ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... of our adventures thus far, I find it impossible. How, then, make it real to others? To tell of aerial adventure one needs a new language, or, at least, a parcel of new adjectives, sparkling with bright and vivid meaning, as crisp and fresh as just-minted bank-notes. They should have no taint of flatness or insipidity. They should show not the faintest trace of wear. With them, one might hope, now and then, to startle the imagination, to set it running in channels which are strange and delightful to it. For there is something new under the ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... Byron! why compel me to deplore Talents designed for choice poetic lore, Deigning to varnish scenes, that shun the day, With guilty lustre, and with amorous lay? Forbear to taint the Virgin's spotless mind, In Power though mighty, be in Mercy kind, Bid the chaste Muse diffuse her hallowed light, So shall thy Page enkindle pure delight, Enhance thy native worth, and proudly twine, With Britain's Honors, those ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... the girl who has gone astray is put out of sight, out of mind if possible, at any rate out of speech, as though she had never existed, and that this ferocity comes not only from hatred of the sin, put in part also from a dread of the taint which the sin brings with it. Very low as is the degradation to which a girl is brought when she falls through love or vanity, or perhaps from a longing for luxurious ease, still much lower is that to ...
— Autobiography of Anthony Trollope • Anthony Trollope
... I as free from all other ills that 'flesh is heir to,' as I certainly am of the taint of catalepsy, I might indeed congratulate myself upon an immunity which would obviate the dire necessity of ever meeting ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... as five. I was struck with the quiet and self-possession with which each man delivered his opinion, as well as with the language used. The accent was uniformly provincial, that of Hubbard included, having a strong and unpleasant taint of the dialect of New England in it; and some of the expressions savoured a little of the stilts of the newspapers; but, on the whole, the language was sufficiently accurate and surprisingly good, ...
— The Redskins; or, Indian and Injin, Volume 1. - Being the Conclusion of the Littlepage Manuscripts • James Fenimore Cooper
... in here!" she said, looking about her. Cerissa, with the usual apologies, had taken her into the kitchen to dry her skirts. There was a slight taint of steaming shoe leather, left by Chauncey when driven forth. Otherwise the kitchen was perfection,—the family room of an old Dutch farmhouse, built when stone and hardwood lumber were cheap,—thick walls; deep, low window-seats; beams showing on the ceiling; a modern cooking-stove, ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... an' things wot ain't," he began. "We ain't none o' us ever got nowheres bein' crooked. I been figurin' that I still got about twenty thousan' o' that bunch o' green I pulled out o' that express car, planted in places where 'taint doin' nobody no good. I guess ef I do ut careful I kin send ut back to the company, a little at a time, an' they'd never know where ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... be unfair not to take note of the malarious atmosphere in which he grew up. The constitution of his mind was thus early infected with a feverish taint that made him shiveringly sensitive to a temperature which hardier natures found bracing. To him this rough world was but too literally a rack. Good-humored Mother Nature commonly imbeds the nerves of her children in a padding of self-conceit that serves as a buffer against the ordinary ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... Thornton had been so well off that "widow's thirds" would have placed her in comfortable circumstances. As it was, the whole of his property went to her only surviving son, a youth who had inherited, with some of his father's good looks, all his bad principles; and in addition a taint—we may suppose—of the penal atmosphere in which he was born. But there was not a shadow of doubt about his being the person named in the will. Perhaps, if it had been worded "my lawful ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... coming to himself, he prostrated himself at my feet in acceptance of the relationship and did me reverence. When he rose his eyes were full of tears ... O little brother mine! I am fast going to my death—let me take all your sin away with me. May no taint from me ever ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... terrified, flash of fancy, knew to be lying, an almost insupportable blot upon all that was fair and seemly, in the stained and mouldered coffin. Yet there was a place for that difficult horror too in the scheme of things, though the thought seemed almost to taint the ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... late espoused saint Brought to me like Alcestis from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from Death by force, though pale and faint. Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint Purification in the Old Law did save, And such as yet once more I trust to have Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind. Her face was veiled; yet to my ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... surpasses all the other boys in everything, and but repeats his triumphs later when he goes to Amherst College. His mother lives upon the victories which he despises; but at last she yields to the taint which was in her own blood as well as her husband's, and destroys herself. The son, who was aware of her suicidal tendency, and had once overheard her combating it in prayer, curses the God who would not listen to her and help her, and rejects ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... towards my kind friends the savages. I have wished to illustrate the customs and character of a people very much calumniated, amongst whom I have found strong and devoted friendship free from every taint of jealousy ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... authority of religion. Neither the throne nor the senate-house, the secret conclave nor the popular assembly, can shield one from the force of that primary law of human action—thou shalt not sin against thine own soul. Purity of purpose and sincerity of conduct must preserve the citizen from the taint of evil, or he will become corrupt, and if he do not disgust, will ...
— The Religion of Politics • Ezra S. Gannett
... not as you like. 'Taint half the fun here that it used to be. I didn't think I cared so ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... we had under our care a patient in the last stages of locomotor ataxy, who for years had been suffering the tortures of the damned. There had never been a taint of specific disease in her system, but four different times in her life she had been salivated by calomel (a common laxative containing mercury). This dreadful poison was given to her in large doses for the cure of liver ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... dim silver thou dost look, I do behold thy face, though blurred and faint. Oh joy! no flaw in me thy grace will brook, But still refine: slow shall the silver pass From bright to brighter, till, sans spot or taint, Love, well content, shall see no speck of brass, And I his perfect face shall ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... of half a dozen notes, each treading on its own heels, in those odious tunes, which ram themselves into our memory, nay, I might say, mix themselves up with our very blood, so that one cannot get rid of the taint for many a woful day after,—this to me is the very trance of madness: and if I could ever bring myself to think dancing endurable, it would be dancing ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... the gate for them, raising his hat and smiling as they came. His face witnessed to the wonder worked on him. The colour showed clean, purged of his taint. His eyes were candid and pure under brows smoothed ...
— The Flaw in the Crystal • May Sinclair
... ice wrench free, crash on with a hollow din; Men of the wilderness were we, freed from the taint of sin. The mighty river snatched us up and it bore us swift along; The days were bright, and the morning light was sweet with jewelled song. We poled and lined up nameless streams, portaged o'er hill and plain; We burnt our boat to save the nails, and built our boat again; We guessed ...
— Ballads of a Cheechako • Robert W. Service
... is a taint of blood—of treachery—about this whole affair that sickens me. It terrifies me when I think of what lies ahead. I—I think I have already tasted death, and the taste is still bitter in the mouth. I must get ...
— Sunrise • William Black
... me innocent in the presence of Nebertcher,[1] because I have done that which is right in Tamera (Egypt), neither blaspheming God, nor imputing evil (?) to the king in his day. Homage to you, O ye gods, who live in your Hall of Maati, who have no taint of sin in you, who live upon truth, who feed upon truth before Horus, the dweller in his disk. Deliver me from Baba, who liveth upon the entrails of the mighty ones, on the day of the Great Judgment. Let me come to you, for I have not committed offences ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... being a good democrat and holding office under a democratic administration, had deemed it wise to abbreviate his first name, thereby removing all taint of republicanism. He reduced Abraham to an initial, but, despite his supreme struggle for dignity, was forced by public indolence to submit to a sharp curtailment of his middle name. ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... make the work most needed and fraught with the greatest usefulness to the community as a whole. There should be no extravagance, and the believers in the need of irrigation will most benefit their cause by seeing to it that it is free from the least taint of excessive or reckless ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... flattery. Why should this woman of whom they were speaking love him so dearly? She was nothing to him. She was highly born, greatly gifted, wealthy, and a married woman, whose character, as he well knew, was beyond the taint of suspicion, though she had been driven by the hard sullenness of her husband to refuse to live under his roof. Phineas Finn and Lady Laura Kennedy had not seen each other for two years, and when they had parted, though they ...
— Phineas Redux • Anthony Trollope
... heard by the ears of educated people nor uttered by their lips: it circulates among the classes which create it; and the size of this dictionary is therefore not necessarily appalling to a Frenchman's eyes: it does not represent the corruption of the language, because slang does not taint the speech of those classes who control and make the standard speech and literature of the nation. If a dictionary of English slang were published now, how many young ladies and gentlemen of the educated classes, either in England or America, could profess honest and absolute ignorance ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... assertion of the Rights of Woman, I do not think that Mrs. Morley would ever have conceived the possibility of consenting that the richest and prettiest and cleverest girl in the States could become the wife of a son of hers if the girl had the taint of negro blood, even though shown nowhere save the slight distinguishing hue of her finger-nails. So had Isaura's merits been threefold what they were and she had been the wealthy heiress of a retail grocer, this ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from the No'th to run this property for money—that's square and fair business; THAT any fool here can understand—it's No'th'n style; it don't interfere with these fools' family affairs; it don't bring into their blood any No'th'n taint; it don't divide their clannishness; it don't separate father and son, sister and brother; and even if yo' got a foothold here and settled down, they know they can always outvote yo' five to one! But let these same fools know that yo' 're courtin' a So'th'n girl known to ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... so," said Max deliberately. "She was responsible from first to last. She knew of the taint in her veins. He did ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... abhor that spurious liberality which is liberal only with what is not its own; and which reminds one of nothing so much as the conduct of leprous persons who are said to be for ever seeking to communicate and extend their own unhappy taint to others. I allude to that sham liberality which under pretence of extending the common standing ground of Christian men, is in reality attenuating it until it proves incapable of bearing the weight ...
— Inspiration and Interpretation - Seven Sermons Preached Before the University of Oxford • John Burgon
... been sitting, on combat alert, all these months, and, if they'd only known, they could have gone to Xochitl and looted it clean long ago. The Gram party were outraged. Angus of Wardshaven had been bad enough, with the hereditary taint of the Mad Baron of Blackcliffe, and Queen Evita and her rapacious family, but even he was preferable to a murderous villain—some even called him a fiend in ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... man's career Wound up, as making inharmonious jars In her creation whose meek wraith we know. The more that he, turned man of mere traditions, Now profits naught. For the large potencies Instilled into his idiosyncrasy— To throne fair Liberty in Privilege' room— Are taking taint, and sink to common plots For his ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... but to my mind this detestable music itself, this twirling and whirling and pirouetting of half a dozen notes, each treading on its own heels, in those odious tunes, which ram themselves into our memory, nay, I might say, mix themselves up with our very blood, so that one cannot get rid of the taint for many a woful day after,—this to me is the very trance of madness: and if I could ever bring myself to think dancing endurable, it would be dancing ...
— The Old Man of the Mountain, The Lovecharm and Pietro of Abano - Tales from the German of Tieck • Ludwig Tieck
... is in here!" she said, looking about her. Cerissa, with the usual apologies, had taken her into the kitchen to dry her skirts. There was a slight taint of steaming shoe leather, left by Chauncey when driven forth. Otherwise the kitchen was perfection,—the family room of an old Dutch farmhouse, built when stone and hardwood lumber were cheap,—thick walls; deep, low window-seats; ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... exactly say that they are doing it in a mean way, sir; but of course soldiers hate thieves, and so the merest taint of a suspicion serves to make some of the men feel rather shy about having anything unnecessary ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... enough of judges:—such things are in their line of business. Romescos must needs turn the conversation. "Well, taking it how I can entertain ye to most anything, I'll give ye a story on the secrets of how I used to run off Ingin remnants of the old tribes. 'Taint but a few years ago, ye know, when ther was a lot of Ingin and white, mixed stuff-some called it beautiful-down in Beaufort district. It was temptin' though, I reckon, and made a feller feel just as if he was runnin' it off to sell, every time it come in his way. Ye see, most on't was gal ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... should do so, for just the very reason that he took their confidence as a matter of course, knowing that his loyalty would always be above suspicion. He had a great capacity for loyalty. There was no taint in it of self-interest, nor of snobbishness. He believed, for instance, in the divine right of kings; and from what he let fall we could see that he had given the most remarkable devotion not only to every cause ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... the visitor with due solemnity, "I assure you that whatever else I may be, I am as free from the taint of this unmentionable attribute as a babe unborn. Isabel, you will bear me ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... order and in its policy of peace. For two hundred years England had been almost constantly at war, and to war without had been added discord and misrule within. The violence and anarchy which had always clung like a taint to the baronage grew more and more unbearable as the nation moved forward to a more settled peacefulness and industry. At the very time however when this movement became most pronounced under Edward the Third, the tendency of the nobles to violence received a new impulse from the war with France. ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... office to make way for the supremacy of Bute. Thinned as it was by the desertion of Grenville and Townshend, as well as of the Bedford faction, it still claimed an exclusive right to the name of the Whigs. Rockingham was honest of purpose, he was free from all taint of the corruption of men like Newcastle, and he was inclined to a pure and lofty view of the nature and end of government. But he was young, timid, and of small abilities, and he shared to the full the dislike of the great ...
— History of the English People, Volume VII (of 8) - The Revolution, 1683-1760; Modern England, 1760-1767 • John Richard Green
... or yet by aid of images that coalesce out of the evolving memory of them, but outside of everything actual It is not merely that the dream itself is one of ideal purity; the wave of impulse is pure, and flows without taint of media that seem almost to know ...
— Recollections of Dante Gabriel Rossetti - 1883 • T. Hall Caine
... feel the heart-beat of Nature and her beauty in perfect harmony with all that is best within us, we must be silent, undisturbed, preferably alone. This is not flowery sentiment—it is what every true lover of old and lovely Nature would feel in Western China, yet still unspoiled by the taint of man's absorbing stream of civilization. And in the stress of modern life, and the progress of man's monopolization of the earth on which he lives, it is beautiful to some of us, of whom it may be said the highest state of inward happiness comes from solitary meditation in unperturbed loneliness ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... some action along with other individuals of the same type; and here Donatello was apt, rather than to draw his meed of profit, to incur loss by descending to the obvious—witness his bas-reliefs at Siena, Florence, and Padua. Masaccio was untouched by this taint. Types, in themselves of the manliest, he presents with a sense for the materially significant which makes us realise to the utmost their power and dignity; and the spiritual significance thus gained he uses to give the highest import to the event he is portraying; this import, ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson
... neither could he sleep by night nor would he lift up his eyes from the ground, nor stir out of his house, nor commune with his friends, but turned from them in silence as if the breath of his shame would taint them. The Count was a mighty man in arms and so powerful that he had a thousand friends among the mountains. Rodrigo, young as he was, considered this power as nothing when he thought of the wrong done to his father, and determined to take his own revenge. His father, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... as there was, a light but bitter air drawing irregularly down out of the north-west, blew directly from the man to the herd, which was too far off, however, to catch the ominous taint and take alarm. Pete's first care was to work around behind the herd till this danger should be quite eliminated. For a time his hunger was forgotten in the interest of the hunt; but presently, as he toiled ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... (neither of which is difficult to subdue by a little rational treatment), opthalmia, and umbilical hernia, and sometimes, but not frequently, inguinal hernia, are the principal diseases. The opthalmia I suspected as originating from taint, probably having been primarily carried from the coast, as it was not so frequently met with as to warrant the idea of its being either a contagion or the effects of poisonous sands or winds, as supposed to exist. The ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... acquaintances from the bar-rooms and the saloons of the city. Soon that young man begins to waver in the battle of temptation, and soon his soul goes down. In a few months, or few years, he has fallen. He is morally dead. He is a mere corpse of what he once was. The harpies of sin snuff up the taint and come on the field. His garments gradually give out. He has pawned his watch. His health is failing him. His credit perishes. He is too poor to stay in the city, and he is too poor to pay his way home to the country. Down! down! Why do the low fellows of ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage
... chamber low, Neath the daisies and the dew, Can you hear me? Can you know All the good I owe to you? You, whose spirit dwells alway Free from earthly taint and thrall! You who taught me that sweet day God's dear love is ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... the dead carcase might not taint the valley, I had it buried deep in the ground, about a score of yards from the encampment. From such a slight cause ensued a tremendous uproar from Kingaru—chief of the village—who, with his brother-chiefs of neighbouring villages, numbering ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... and twenty pages of pure Ralph without any taint of Waddington. It seemed to be part of Mr. Waddington's book, and yet no part of it, for it was inconceivable that it should belong to anything but itself. Ralph didn't ramble; he went straight for the things he had seen. He saw the Cotswolds round Wyck-on-the-Hill, he ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... a life begot Thousands of lives ago did he sin That he is now by all forgot, Even by Lord Gautama? Oh, what sin, that the lowest shun His very name as a thing of shame— A sound to taint The winds that faint From the high bells ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... eccentricity, thereby compelling an attention which might otherwise have strayed past his studio. In appearance he was the ordinary cleanly young Englishman, except, perhaps, that his eyes rather suggested a library edition of the Arabian Nights; his clothes matched his appearance and showed no taint of the sartorial disorder by which the bourgeois of the garden-city and the Latin Quarter anxiously seeks to proclaim his kinship with art and thought. His eccentricity took the form of flying in the face of some of the prevailing social currents of the day, but as a reactionary, never as a reformer. ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... tropics dulls memory, and time heats only in the heart. The world is a great place, Philippa, and there are corners where the sordid crime of this ghastly butchery has scarcely been heard of, where the horror and the taint of it are as though they never existed, where the sun and moon are still unashamed, and the grey monsters ride ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the insidious, fetid force as best she might. She was not evil by nature. She had been well grounded in principles of righteousness. Nevertheless, though she maintained the integrity of her character, that character suffered from the taint. There developed over the girl's original sensibility a shell of hardness, which in time would surely come to make her less scrupulous in her reckoning of right ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... striped carnations, and says it cannot be accounted for by the compost in which they are grown: "layers from the same clean flower would come part of them clean and part foul, even when subjected to precisely the same treatment; and frequently one flower alone appears influenced by the taint, the remainder coming perfectly clean."[863] This running of the parti-coloured flowers apparently is a case of reversion by buds to the original uniform ...
— The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, Vol. I. • Charles Darwin
... self-same God is our helper. He pities us. He has mercy upon us, and guides every event of our careers. He is near to them who adore Him. To understand Him, without a single taint of our mortal, finite sense of sin, sickness, or death, is to approach Him and ...
— Unity of Good • Mary Baker Eddy
... wholly the judicial quality, who were vainglorious and extravagant, who had, in short, the mind of an exuberant barbarian; but you instantly forget their intellectual defects in the presence of their abounding physical and moral energy, their freedom from any taint of personal corruption, their whole-souled desire and effort for the public good. Were not such heroes, impossible as they would have been in any other civilized country, perfectly illuminative of your national state ...
— The American Mind - The E. T. Earl Lectures • Bliss Perry
... maintain the high ideals for which all of them have fought, to preserve the soldier comradeship and carry it over into civilian life as an element of broad helpfulness while keeping the record of the army free from the taint of selfish aims. It was also wisely intended to forestall by the creation of one big genuinely representative, nonpartisan and democratic body, the formation of numerous smaller organizations in various places by men intent on exploiting the soldier sentiment and the soldier vote for other ...
— The Story of The American Legion • George Seay Wheat
... my own head, if I perish here," said the figure; and, observing Earnscliff meditating to lay hold on him, he added, "And your blood be upon yours, if you touch but the skirt of my garments, to infect me with the taint ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... to expatiate on the popular songs of Scotland. "They are a part of our national inheritance," said he, "and something that we may truly call our own. They have no foreign taint; they have the pure breath of the heather and the mountain breeze. All genuine legitimate races that have descended from the ancient Britons; such as the Scotch, the Welsh, and the Irish, have national airs. The English have none, because they are not natives ...
— Abbotsford and Newstead Abbey • Washington Irving
... removal hard rubbing and beating (for such is, according to some commentators, the force of the word); that he may be "cleansed"—the technical word for the priestly cleansing of the leper, and declaring him clear of the taint. He also, with similar recurrence to the Mosaic symbols, prays that he may be "purged with hyssop." There is a pathetic appropriateness in the petition, for not only lepers, but those who had become defiled by contact ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... a creature even more crafty than herself. She glanced about keenly, peering under the trees—because one could never judge, merely by the direction of the trail, where one of those dangerous creatures was going. She stood almost erect on her haunches and sniffed the air for the slightest taint of danger. Then she sniffed at the tracks. The man-smell was strong upon them, and comparatively, but not dangerously, fresh. Reassured on this point, she decided to follow the man and find out what he was doing. It was only when she did not know what he was about that she so dreaded him. Given the ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the wand'rer to the Saviour's fold; That were an action worthy of a saint; But not in malice let the crime be told, Nor publish to the world the evil taint. ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... alone who can "see," far more, who can enjoy "God." Even if he did reveal himself now, these eyes could never endure His intolerable brightness. But then, with a heart purified from corruption—a world where the taint of sin and the power of temptation never enters—the soul again a bright mirror, reflecting the lost image of the Godhead—all the affections devoted to their original high destiny—the love of God the motive principle, the ruling passion—the glory of God the undivided object and aim—the will ...
— The Faithful Promiser • John Ross Macduff
... three are inseparably connected, and to understand one we must understand all. The reason is that Shelley is one of the most subjective of writers. It would be hard to name a poet who has kept his art more free from all taint of representation of the real, making it nor an instrument for creating something life-like, but a more and more intimate echo or emanation of his own spirit. In studying his writings we shall see how ...
— Shelley • Sydney Waterlow
... I didn't," said Mr. Simlins. "How's a man to find five hundred and fifty people all well? 'Taint nature. ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... ignorant, by this isolation. I have no child; but now, as I look on these lovely children of a human birth, what low and neutralizing cares they bring with them to the mother! The children of the muse come quicker, and have not on them the taint of ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... I bet Leander that I could make you mad, an' he bet his new jack-knife that I couldn't. I'm goin' to chew it up. It's orful thin, 'taint no good anyhow. You won't miss it, P'liney,' and crushing the letter into a small wad he put it ...
— A Princess in Calico • Edith Ferguson Black
... Soon we began to notice that these poisonous vapours were most pungent in the vicinity of certain enormous cactus-like growths which we encountered here and there; but these huge plants looked so picturesque and beautiful that we found it hard to believe that they could taint the air so frightfully. ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... Americans who have lived, none is securer of lasting remembrance than Rutherford B. Hayes, who was born in Delaware, October 4, 1822. He was a great lawyer, a great soldier, a great statesman, a great philanthropist, a man without taint or stain. He had to suffer the doubt thrown by his enemies upon his right to the high office they had themselves conceded to him, but he was never wounded in his own conscience or in the love of the people. He was three times governor of Ohio, and when he became President ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... woman here with the new soul, Like my own Psyche—fresh upon her lips Alit the visionary butterfly, 290 Waiting my word to enter and make bright, Or flutter off and leave all blank as first. This body had no soul before, but slept Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free From taint or foul with stain, as outward things 295 Fastened their image on its passiveness; Now, it will wake, feel, live—or die again! Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff Be Art—and further, to evoke a soul From form be nothing? This new soul ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... restrain his wit in this particular direction has done some injury to his memory. Not that his fancy had any taint of uncleanness. It was open and cheerful as the sunlight; and as the sunlight played brightly over all things without fastidious discrimination. There was a rich, and healthy humanity about him which manifested itself in an impartial, all-embracing delight in the glow and ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... tell you all I kin, but I wants to tell it right; wait now, I don' wanna make no mistakes and I don' wanna lie on nobody—I ain' mad now and I know taint no use to lie, I takin' my time. I done prayed an' got all de malice out o' my heart and I ain' gonna tell no lie fer um and I ain' gonna tell no lie on um. I ain' never seed no slaves sold by Marster Carr, he wuz allus tellin' me he wuz gonna sell me but he never did—he ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... personal ends, and the adoption of political measures at the bidding of wounded vanity, and to gratify blind hatred of a race, is possible still, and it becomes all Christian men to use their influence that the public acts of their nation shall be clear of that taint. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... how trimly Thou sett'st thy chatty sail! For me alone all dimly Seemeth the sun to fail. Young FRANK he frowneth grimly, And thou turn'st haughty pale. 'Tis not the taint of "City," For here be scores who sport Their Mayfair manners pretty In Cop-the-Needle Court. Ah, chill me not so coolly, A Croesus though I be— The one who loveth truly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, March 4, 1893 • Various
... of my crime stolen—with plotting in darkness, to hide my crime and blind your eyes in determining my guilt or innocence. That knife was mine, I repeat. It was possible for me to rejoin Mr. Conway, and do him to death by a blow with it. Now, retire, gentlemen! Bring in your verdict! Thank God! no taint of real dishonor will rest upon a Davenant, and I can appear before my Maker as I stand ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... engineers who had laid down their lives for the dams. He pictured again the drowned and mangled workmen at the cost of whose lives the Makon tunnel had been driven. A slow, bitter anger had risen in him against Freet. It seemed to Jim a fearful thing that one crooked man could taint such faithfulness and sacrifice as he had known, could blind intelligent men to the marvel of engineering work that marked the progress of the Reclamation Service through the arid country. But when Jim's words ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... plaintive effusions ascribed by Conde to the royal poets of Cordova. The compositions of the golden age of the Abassides, and of the preceding period, do not seem to have been infected with the taint of exaggeration, so offensive to a European, which distinguishes the later productions in ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott
... to time when finally other members became interested in nut culture. Mr. John Engle of the Marietta Nurseries advised me to plant seed from this particular tree and raise seedling trees for sale. I finally did on a small scale only. But I soon found in the young seedlings a taint of black walnut blood, which discouraged me for a further continuance. Later I had correspondence with J. F. Jones, then of Monticello, Fla., who had specialized in the propagation of all nut trees. In 1903 scions were sent to him, and returned as budded trees in ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... the whole history of the world. Now and then, in the days when slavery still existed in the Southern States of America, mulatto and quadroon slaves might have been found who in point of appearance and accomplishments were scarcely different from their owners. But there was always a taint, or what was reckoned as a taint, of negro blood in the men and women so situated. In Rome it must have been common to see men, possibly better born (for Greek might even be counted better than Roman descent), and probably better educated than their masters, ...
— Roman life in the days of Cicero • Alfred J[ohn] Church
... provides for the cleansing of that part of our nature that clings to the things of life which in themselves are not sinful but are God-given blessings. Our unsanctified affections must also become purified from every taint of depravity. That this may be accomplished, it becomes necessary that the heart yield up to the death every cherished object, even though it be a God-given blessing; it must be yielded up and laid upon the altar as a "burnt ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... Chateau barked vehemently, as if the very air bore some ominous taint; but La Corriveau knew she was safe: they were shut up in the courtyard, and could not trace her to the tower. A harsh voice or two and the sound of whips presently silenced the barking dogs, ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... garnished for the dollar-distributing visitor from over the Atlantic, and of being less genuine than they really are. However that may be, the moment you are out of these show-streets of Chester, there is a singular lack of charm in the environment. The taint of commerce and the smoke of the north hangs visibly on the horizon. Its immediate surroundings are modern and garish to a degree that by no means assists in the fiction that Chester is the unadulterated old-country ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... person of skill. Too much hardihood, my valiant soldier, is in soberness allied to over-daring. It was only natural that thou shouldst feel a becoming pride in thy late position; yet, let it but taint thee with vanity, and the effect will be little short of madness. Why, thou hast looked boldly in the face of a Princess born in the purple, before whom my own eyes, though well used to such spectacles, are never raised beyond the ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... our Northern States (R. 332). Much yet remained to be done to carry into full effect what had been established in principle, but everywhere democracy had won its fight, and the American public school, supported by general taxation, freed from the pauper-school taint, free and equally open to all, under the direction of representatives of the people, free from sectarian control, and complete from the primary school through the high school, and in the Western States through the university ...
— THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION • ELLWOOD P. CUBBERLEY
... he saw what was expected of him. So he faltered: "No, I am not a Belgian." "And you are not an Englishman, eh?" According to formula he answered: "No, I am not an Englishman!" but I sensed a bit more of emphasis in the disavowal of any English taint to his blood. ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... down. They're white, an—it's beginnin' to git dark! Why don't Moran come? I'd ruther have him, than them—an' now there's another one of 'em—to raise out of the ashes of a fire! I'd ort to camp, but if I keep a pluggin' along mebbe I kin git to the Injun village. 'Taint fur, now—acrost this flat an' then dip down onto the river—What's that!" The man halted abruptly and stared. "It's one of 'em now!" he faltered, with tongue and lips that felt stiff. "An' it's ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... and boon Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest, And on her silver cross soft amethyst, And on her hair a glory, like a saint: She seem'd a splendid angel, newly drest, Save wings, for heaven: Porphyro grew faint: She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint. Eve of St. Agnes. ...
— A Day with Keats • May (Clarissa Gillington) Byron
... standard-bearer of a faith to which we all were born but which she alone knew how to hold aloft with an unflinching hope! She had perhaps more glow and less serenity in her soul than Antonia, but she was an uncompromising Puritan of patriotism with no taint of the slightest worldliness in her thoughts. I was not the only one in love with her; but it was I who had to hear oftenest her scathing criticism of my levities—very much like poor Decoud—or stand the brunt of her austere, unanswerable invective. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... breath of a flower. She loves, and her lover is likewise bewitched. In trying to break the spell, she drinks an antidote which kills her. The point of interest in both stories is the subtile connection, in the first, between the beauty of Georgiana and the taint of the birth-mark; and, in the second, the loveliness of Beatrice and the poison ...
— Literary and Social Essays • George William Curtis
... while to explain how it is that, to a physicist unsmitten with any taint of solipsism, a well-elaborated scheme which is consistent with already known facts necessarily seems to correspond, or have close affinity, with the truth. It is the result of experience of a mathematical theorem concerning unique distributions. ...
— Life and Matter - A Criticism of Professor Haeckel's 'Riddle of the Universe' • Oliver Lodge
... impossible. How, then, make it real to others? To tell of aerial adventure one needs a new language, or, at least, a parcel of new adjectives, sparkling with bright and vivid meaning, as crisp and fresh as just-minted bank-notes. They should have no taint of flatness or insipidity. They should show not the faintest trace of wear. With them, one might hope, now and then, to startle the imagination, to set it running in channels which are strange and ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... over the scenes of her life in which the wounded man had played his part. She remembered every look of the now closed eyes, and every expression of his well-loved features. She called to mind his words of hope, and the carefully-laid plans for his advancement. Nor was there any taint of his selfishness in her recollection of these things. Everything about him, to her, was good and true. She loved him with all the passionate intensity of one who had only just attained to perfect womanhood. He had been to her ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... as a wonderful one. By my Yoga-power, therefore, I shall enter the body of my preceptor's lady. I shall stay within her and yet not touch her person, like a drop of water on a lotus-leaf which lies on it and yet does not drench it at all. If I be free from the taint of passion, I cannot incur any fault by doing what I wish to do. As a traveller, in course of his sojourn, takes up his residence (for a while) in any empty mansion he finds, I shall, after the same manner, reside this day within the body of my preceptor's lady Verily, with ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... influences.[279] When a demon is known to have entered into a human being, producing sickness or madness, exorcism must be resorted to; magicians, prophets, and saints are able by ceremonies or by prayer to expel the intruder and restore the afflicted to health. Ritual taint (which is supernatural), incurred, for example, by touching a dead body, is removed by sprinkling ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... crossed— As holy statues sit—and first began To meditate this deep disease of life, What its far source and whence its remedy. So vast a pity filled him, such wide love For living things, such passion to heal pain, That by their stress his princely spirit passed To ecstasy, and, purged from mortal taint Of sense and self, the boy attained thereat Dhyana, ...
— The Light of Asia • Sir Edwin Arnold
... lament over his dishonour. And he took no pleasure in his food, neither could he sleep by night, nor would he lift up his eyes from the ground, nor stir out of his house, nor commune with his friends, but turned from them in silence as if the breath of his shame would taint them. Rodrigo was yet but a youth, and the Count was a mighty man in arms, one who gave his voice first in the Cortes, and was held to be the best in the war, and so powerful that he had a thousand ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... remembered Rodrigo's innuendo, the linking of her name with Maximilian's. She was so brave, and so headstrong, so lovably headstrong, and her beauty was so fresh and soft! Yet he could not but think of that taint in what nature had made so pure. Of a sudden there was a something wrong, something ugly and hideously wrong in life. And the country boy, the trooper, the man of blood-letting, what you will, was filled with helpless rage against it; and next against himself, because the girlish waist could ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... continue to see them a little; Not that I like them so much, or care a bajocco for Vernon, But I am slow at Italian, have not many English acquaintance, And I am asked, in short, and am not good at excuses. Middle-class people these, bankers very likely, not wholly Pure of the taint of the shop; will at table d'hote and restaurant Have their shilling's worth, their penny's pennyworth even: Neither man's aristocracy this, nor God's, God knoweth! Yet they are fairly descended, they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... can whisper,—intimates that he can put the "Captain" (he'd promote you to be "Admiral" on the spot if he thought that thereby he might flatter you into buying) on to the "lay" of some cigars—"smuggled," he breathes from behind a black and horny paw, whose condition alone would taint the finest Havanna that ever graced the lips of king or duke—the like of which may be found in no tobacconist's establishment in the United Kingdom. There have been young men, greatly daring, who have been ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... the hereditary taint being transmuted in him into an instinctive appetite for blood, the young and fresh blood from the gashed throat of a woman, the first comer, the passer-by in the street: a horrible malady against which he struggled, but which took possession of him again in the ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... in a state of mute languor; then a violent fever took possession of her. When the physician who had been sent for arrived, M. Langis accompanied him into the chamber of the sick girl. She was delirious: seated upright, she kept continually passing her hand over her brow; she sought to efface the taint of a kiss she had received one moonlight night, and the impression in her hair of the flapping of a bat's wings that had caught in her hood. These two things were confounded in her memory. From time to time she said: "Where is my ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... tongue Hath dar'd to taint my name with slander? Thy Selim lives; nay, more, he soon shall reign, If thou consent ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... of roses Where rose never grew! Great drops on the bunch grass. But not of the dew! A taint in the sweet air For wild bees to shun! A stain that shall never Bleach out in ...
— The Price of the Prairie - A Story of Kansas • Margaret Hill McCarter
... all along the shore. We got to watching on the headlands; my men and me knew the people were short of supplies and had to pinch themselves. It ought to read in the Bible, 'Man cannot live by fish alone,' if they'd told the truth of things; 'taint bread that wears the worst on you! First part of the time, old Gaffett, that I lived with, seemed speechless, and I didn't know what to make of him, nor he of me, I dare say; but as we got acquainted, I found ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... my late-espoused Saint Brought to me like Alkestis from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint. Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint Purification in the Old Law did save; And such, as yet once more, I trust to have Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind: Her face was veiled, yet to my fancied sight Love, sweetness, goodness, in her person ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... at Colle di Val d'Elsa in 1269, and their commander, Provenzano Salvani (whom Dante afterwards met in Purgatory), taken and slain. In the following year this city too was purged of the Ghibeline taint, and a few Florentine citizens who were caught were, after a reference to Charles, duly beheaded. Pisa held out somewhat longer, and was able to expel its Guelfs in 1275, among them the famous Count Ugolino de' Gherardeschi, ...
— Dante: His Times and His Work • Arthur John Butler
... send not hence my bark, Through wintry winds and billows dark; I come with humble heart to share Thy morn and evening-prayer; Nor mine the feet, oh! holy Saint, The brightness of thy sod to taint." ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... a mere name already done for us that we may say, boldly, and this is our First Theorem: that all Bromides are bromidic in every manifestation of their being. But a better comprehension of the term, and one which will perhaps remove the taint of malediction, will be attained if we examine in detail a few essential bromidic tendencies. The adjective is used more in pity than in anger or disgust. The Bromide can't possibly help being bromidic—though, on the other hand, he wouldn't ...
— Are You A Bromide? • Gelett Burgess
... awful results. All that she had hitherto seen of "irregular living" bore the stamp of betrayal and disease, a thing more grossly criminal than anything else in the social body. She did not know how that body was permeated, and how no class and no ordinary standard of morality was free from the taint. ...
— King John of Jingalo - The Story of a Monarch in Difficulties • Laurence Housman
... was out in the kitchen. "Now you all go your ways," she began. "'Taint nothing to clear off the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... will say something and the hens will listen; then answer him back, 'yes'. One day I heard a turkey hen say, 'we are poor, we are poor'. The old turkey gobbler said, 'well, who in the hell can help it.' Yes sir, they talk just like we do, but 'taint everybody can ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... knowledge. It would widen his horizon. Then, and not a minute sooner, to the University, where he would go not as a child but a man capable of enjoying its real advantages, attend lectures with profit, acquire manners instead of mannerisms and a University tone instead of a University taint. What do ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... to whom avarice was unknown. You never fixed a scandalous tariff for the sale of his benefits; you chose to take your reward in public esteem, not in riches. Therefore it was that this most righteous ruler chose you to be honoured by his glorious friendship, because he saw you to be free from all taint of corrupt vices. How often did he fix your place among his white-haired counsellors; inasmuch as they, by the experience of years, had not come up to the point from which you had started! He found that he could safely praise your excellent disposition, open-handed in bestowing benefits, ...
— Theodoric the Goth - Barbarian Champion of Civilisation • Thomas Hodgkin
... cannon-bone below them short and thin; the pasterns long and sloping; her hoofs round, dark, shiny, and well set on. Her mane was a shade darker than her coat, fine and thin, as a thoroughbred's always is whose blood is without taint or cross. Her ear was thin, sharply pointed, delicately curved, nearly black around the borders, and as tremulous as the leaves of an aspen. Her neck rose from the withers to the head in perfect curvature, hard, devoid of fat, and well cut up under the chops. Her nostrils ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... having been a witness to their extraordinary biting power, I knew the fate that must necessarily befall a couple of ordinary hounds when overtaken by half a dozen full-grown wolves. On such occasions we do not spend much time in grief over a loss of any kind, "it taint according to mountain law," ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... taint of the same folly, pure as she esteems herself, when she studiously adorns her person only to be seen by men, to excite respectful sighs, and all the idle homage of what is called innocent gallantry. ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... correcter. Would to heaven, Sir, That syn of pride and insolence you speake of, That pufft up greatnes blowne from others follyes Were not too neere akin to your great Lordship And lay not in your bosom, your most deere one. You taint me, Sir, with syns concerne my manners,— If I have such Ile studdy to correct 'em; But, should I taint you, I should charge ye deeper: The cure of those would make ye shrinck and shake, ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... go into strictly professional details together," said he soothingly. "If, for example, I were to say that you have interstitial keratitis, how would you be the wiser? There are indications of a strumous diathesis. In broad terms, I may say that you have a constitutional and hereditary taint." ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Years passed; the child grew to manhood, and having received a good common-school education, and learned the shoemaker's trade, he married an estimable young white woman, and had a family of five or six children. He had not the slightest knowledge of the taint of African blood in his veins, and no one in the neighborhood knew that he was the son of an octoroon slave woman. He made a comfortable living for his family, was a good citizen, a member of the Methodist Church, and was much respected by all who knew him. In course of time his father, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 3, 1918 • Various
... falsa Poenitentia, the authorship of which is unknown]: "Our Lord never healed anyone without delivering him wholly; for He wholly healed the man on the Sabbath, since He delivered his body from all disease, and his soul from all taint." Now the remnants of sin belong to the disease of sin. Therefore it does not seem possible for any remnants of sin to remain when ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... interesting, showing as it does the marriage of a normal man with, first a normal woman, and subsequently with feeble-minded women. The taint of the feeble mind is inevitable. Whereas the grandchildren by his second marriage appear normal there is always the danger of their progeny being blighted by the taint that is in their blood. The horror of the ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Vol. 3 (of 4) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague
... social equality which is one of the special features of Italian life. Nothing is more unlike the social jealousy of the Frenchman, or the surly incivility with which a Lancashire operative thinks proper to show the world that he is as good a man as his master. In either case one feels the taint of a mere spirit of envious levelling, and a latent confession that the levelling process has still in reality to be accomplished. But the ordinary Italian has nothing of the leveller about him. The little town is proud of its Marchese and of the great palazzo that has entertained a King. ...
— Stray Studies from England and Italy • John Richard Green
... mind," said the other; "it always grows on the rocks everywhere. I don't know what it is, and what's more, I don't care. 'Taint worth looking at. Come!" ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... HER,"—lead her "into the world!"—the dreary, dark world, so unfitted to receive such brightness,—she had come to him clad in all the sacred weakness of womanhood; and it was his proud privilege to guard and shelter her from evil,— from the evil in others, but chiefly from the evil in himself. No taint must touch that spotless life with which God had entrusted him!—sorrow might come—nay, MUST come, since, so long as humanity errs, so long must angels grieve,—sorrow, but not sin! A grand, awed sense of responsibility filled him,—a responsibility that he accepted with passionate ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... not shrink from the society of his body, as regards the nature of the body, in fact in this respect he was loth to be deprived thereof, according to 2 Cor. 5:4: "We would not be unclothed, but clothed over." He did, however, wish to escape from the taint of concupiscence, which remains in the body, and from the corruption of the body which weighs down the soul, so as to hinder it from seeing God. Hence he says expressly: "From the body ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... the American colonies. The felons were, however, too limited in numbers to make any serious inroad upon the morals or tranquillity of the settlers. Many of the convicts were men sentenced for political crimes, but free from any social taint; the laboring population, therefore, did not regard them with contempt, nor shrink from their society. It may be held, therefore, that this partial and peculiar system of transportation introduced no distinct element into the constitution of the ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... as Jimmy disrespectfully called the head of his family, loathed the stage. It was his one dread that some day the blueness of his blood might run the risk of taint by being even remotely connected with ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... sorry, for sorrow was an evil, a passing to lesser perfection, diminished vitality. Let him rather rejoice that the real work of his life—his Ethica, which he was working out on pure geometrical principles—would have no taint of personality, would be without his name, and would not even be published till death had removed the last possibility of personal interest in its fortunes. "For," as he was teaching in the book itself, "those who desire to aid others by counsel or deed to the common enjoyment of the ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... causes, for the origins of that transformation in the life of the nation which has resulted in the conscious ideal of the Britain of to-day. The "separation" from Rome fifty years after Bosworth had no conscious imperial purpose, but it rescued the rising empire of England from the taint of medievalism which sapped the empires of Spain, of the Bourbons, and of the Hapsburgs. The Reformation in England owes much of its character amongst the people at large, apart from the government, above all in the heroic age of the Reformation in England—the Puritan ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... ways religions promise to transfer the soul to better conditions. A supernaturally favoured kingdom is to be established for posterity upon earth, or for all the faithful in heaven, or the soul is to be freed by repeated purgations from all taint and sorrow, or it is to be lost in the absolute, or it is to become an influence and an object of adoration in the places it once haunted or wherever the activities it once loved may be carried on by future generations of its kindred. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... that I had been forced to do before I could hide their two bodies from my sight in the sea-depths beneath the tangled weed. And so, presently, I scrambled to my feet, thinking to get back to the Hurst Castle again—where there was no taint of blood to bring up haunting visions and where, though it seemed a long while past to me, I had been in the company of ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... no one supposed that a great military nation would exhibit all the vices of military organization without those redeeming virtues which, God knows, are needed to redeem warlike operations from the taint of shame. We have been confronted with an exhibition of ruthlessness and outrage enforced upon the weak, enforced upon women and children. We have been confronted with repeated breaches of the law of enlightened warfare, practices analogous to those which in private life are regarded ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War from the Beginning to March 1915, Vol 1, No. 2 - Who Began the War, and Why? • Various
... Ellen never spoke like that. For the first time she echoed him and her mother. Something like terror came over him at the sound of that familiar note of his own life from this younger one. He seemed to realize dimly that a taint of his nature had descended ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... upon a level with great sinners. But the disease is the same—in breaking one commandment, the whole law is violated; and, however in some the moral leprosy does not make such fearful ravages as in others, the slightest taint conveys moral, spiritual, and eternal death. ALL, whether young or old, great or small, must be saved by grace, or fall into perdition. The difference between the taint of sin, and its awfully developed leprosy, is given. Who so ready to fly to the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... criticism.[130] Brilliant attainments in so many departments were commended yet more to the admiration of beholders by a modest and unassuming deportment, by morals above reproach, and by a disinterested nature in which there was no taint of avarice. The sincerity of his unselfish love of knowledge was said to be attested by the liberality with which he renounced the entire income of his small patrimony in ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... protect property from such violence,—the commonwealth then is become totally perverted from its purposes; neither God nor man will long endure it; nor will it long endure itself. In that case, there is an unnatural infection, a pestilential taint, fermenting in the constitution of society, which fever and convulsions of some kind or other must throw off, or in which the vital powers, worsted in an unequal struggle, are pushed back upon themselves, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. III. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... other such rich qualities, I need not decipher; only it rests for me to conclude in one word, that she is innocent. If then, fortune, who triumphs in a variety of miseries, hath presented some envious person (as minister of her intended stratagem) to taint Rosalynde with any surmise of treason, let him be brought to her face, and confirm his accusation by witnesses; which proved, let her die, and Alinda will execute the massacre. If none can avouch any confirmed ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... smoke,—would be likely to keep better. In fact, fish thus preserved,—as is often done with herrings, ling, codfish, mackerel, and haddock,—will remain good for months without suffering the slightest taint of decomposition. It was an excellent idea; and, Ben having communicated it to the others, it was at once determined that it should be ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... that roaring sound came to tell him that battle, vast, gigantic, on a scale the world had never seen before, was joined, and the volume of the cannon fire, beyond a doubt, was growing. It pulsed heavily, and either he or his fancy noticed a steady jarring motion. A faint acrid taint crept into the air and he felt it in his nose and throat. He coughed now and then, and he observed that men around him coughed also. But, on the whole, the army was singularly still, the soldiers straining eye or ear to see something or hear ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... she had, that her mind still had some misgivings about the big leap she had made in the Protestant-Papist way. Finding Anton Ulrich still continue Protestant, she wrote to him out of Spain:—"Why, O honored Grandpapa, have you not done as you promised? Ah, there must be a taint of mortal sin in it, after all!" Upon which the absurdly situated old Gentleman did change his religion; and is marked as a Convert in all manner of Genealogies and Histories;—truly an old literary gentleman ducal and serene, restored to the bosom of the Church in a ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... could always do best on his cobbler's stool. He found it difficult to realize what had taken place; but when, at last, he fairly grasped the fact that he was now a rich man, mingled feelings of joy and dread filled his breast. There was little taint of selfishness in "Cobbler" Horn's joy. It was no gratification to him to be relieved of the necessity to work. Nor was he fascinated with the prospect of luxury. His joy arose chiefly from the thought of the amount of good he would now be able ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... and Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs. Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... trod that path through the mesquite to Sylvia's back door in the days which were ended. But he was different from the others. He was a man who was lavish with money—but he expected you to pick it up out of the dust. He was of violent moods; and he had that audacity—that taint of insanity, perhaps—which enables some men to maintain the reputation of bad men, of "killers," in every frontier. When Fectnor had come he had seemed to assume the right of prior possession, and others had yielded to him without question. Indeed, it was usually known when the man was in town, ...
— Children of the Desert • Louis Dodge
... you do? Is murder your intent?—While I have life I fear you not!—And think you that brutality can taint the dead? Nay, think you that, were you endowed with the superior force which the vain name of man supposes, and could accomplish the basest purpose of your heart, I would falsely take guilt to myself; or imagine ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... I'se comin'," said a voice from behind the golden-rose bushes, and out stepped Aunt Lucy in a new turban, making a curtsey to me. "La, Marse Richard!" said she, "to think you'se growed to be a fine gemman! 'Taint but t'other day you was kissin' ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... heart doth faint When I the life recall Of her who lived so free from taint, So virtuous deemed by all,— That in herself was so complete I think that she was ta'en By God to deck his paradise, And with his saints to reign, Whom while on earth each one did prize The fairest ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... ondertook to whistle, but it made such an onnateral screech, that the chaplain thought old Davy had come aboard; and he told the skipper he guessed he'd take his trick at prayin'. 'Why,' says the skipper, 'we've got on well enough without, ever since we left the Hague, hadn't we better omit it now?' ''Taint possible,' says the parson. Now you all know you can't larn seamanship to a parson or passenger—and the bloody fool knelt down with his face to wind'ard. 'Hillo!' says the skipper, 'you'd better fill away, and come round afore the wind, hadn't you?' ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... at lovely Nohant, and there found the rest and quiet which got nerves back to the norm and allowed him to go on with his work. So passed the years away. Of this we are very sure—no taint exists on the record of Chopin excepting possibly his relationship with George Sand. That he endeavored to win her full heart's love, for the purpose of honorable marriage, Mr. Hadow is fully convinced. But when his suit failed, after an eight years' ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... of the children of Adam, the soul of Mary was never subject to sin, even in the first moment of its infusion into the body. She alone was exempt from the original taint. This immunity of Mary from original sin is exclusively due to the merits of Christ, as the Church expressly declares. She needed a Redeemer as well as the rest of the human race and therefore was "redeemed, but in a more ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... know how far the scrupulousness of chaste souls will carry them, will not feel surprised that, after the example of many other saints, he had put in practice such severe mortification, to shield himself from the slightest taint on his purity. His lively and agreeable turn of mind are apparent in the way in which he taunted his body when suffering from extreme cold; this also shows how much self-possession he had under the severest trials, and by what sentiment he was ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... wounded and unconscious on the open field. In a poor light the litter bearers might search within a few rods of him and never see him; but where the faulty eyesight fails the nose of the dog sniffs the human taint in the air, and the dog makes the work of rescue thorough and complete. At ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our free-State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed ...
— Abraham Lincoln, A History, Volume 2 • John George Nicolay and John Hay
... the wild rose blooms with a strange abundance. There is a beauty in the blossoms too of an almost exotic kind, a taint of deeper pink that shocks the Puritan flowers. Two hundred generations ago (generations, I mean, of roses) this was a village street; there was a floral decadence when they left their simple life and the roses came from the wilderness to ...
— Fifty-One Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... what the statue stood for. Here was one, made for life, activity, and joy, who yet found himself baffled, thwarted, shut out from the paradise that seemed to open all about him; it was the face of one who had found satiety in pleasure, and sorrow in the very heart of joy. There was no taint of grossness or of luxury in the face, but rather a strength, an intellectual force, a firm lucidity of thought. I confess that the sight moved me very strangely. I felt a thrill of the deepest compassion, a ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... she protested. "'Taint no sech thing. I ain't got sich a long appetite as date. Fifteen miles! Lan'a massa! ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... Maurice, and Trench. He drank deeply of the spirit of Coleridge, of whom he was ever proud to call himself a "pupil," and who, in connection with Wordsworth, was the instrumentality by which he and others "were preserved from the noxious taint of Byron."[152] ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... which was dimly revealed the man. It was as though his personality was merely a nexus to the things he stood for and had done, so that he appeared to Evelyn less a human entity than a symbol. But at least Bessie Dane was interested and the fine atmosphere of the table was without a taint. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... interlude of love, of passion, in her life could neither tint nor taint the cool, normal sequence of her days. All that life held for a woman of her caste—all save that—was hers when she stretched out her hand for it—hers by right of succession, of descent; hers by warrant unquestioned, by the unuttered text of the ukase to ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... hope there are not. No! all these come from the gracious spirit of humanity—the spirit of Christ and of God. Pray to him, that he may take possession of all your thoughts, feelings, and desires, and purge you from every taint of selfishness. Give up your hearts to him; and grieve not, by any selfishness, passion, or hardness of your own, his gracious instructions: but let him teach you, and guide you, and purge you, and sanctify you, till you come to the stature of a perfect man, to the fulness of the measure of Christ, ...
— Discipline and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley
... but their eyes, especially those of the women, are full of expression, sometimes sparkling with fire, and sometimes melting with softness; their teeth also are, almost without exception, most beautifully even and white, and their breath perfectly without taint.[3] ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... out in his chair, when he heard the waggon drive away a few minutes later. He did not like Mrs. Hastings, and had a suspicion that she had no great regard for him, but he was conscious of a somewhat grim satisfaction. There was, though it seldom came to the surface, a taint of crude brutality in his nature, and it was active now. When Agatha had first come out the change in her had been a shock to him, and it would not have cost him very much to let her go. Since then, however, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... manner if not in the substance of his thinking, to achieve the polished urbanity of those Englishmen who made a point of being scholars without a touch of pedantry, and men of virtue without the taint of prejudice. ...
— Beginnings of the American People • Carl Lotus Becker
... division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, than an ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... hair on her neck stood up. Behind her came others. I gave the low growl of a lion— the cry he makes when he is angry at being disturbed. She threw up her head and sniffed the air. Then she growled in her throat, for there was no taint of lion in the air, but the taint of man! Her white eyes found me out where I sat in a low tree, and there was death in them. So I gathered the air in my lungs and shouted. A man's shout is as much dreaded as the lion's roar. The dogs jumped up, but ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... it rests for me to conclude in one word, that she is innocent. If then, fortune, who triumphs in a variety of miseries, hath presented some envious person (as minister of her intended stratagem) to taint Rosalynde with any surmise of treason, let him be brought to her face, and confirm his accusation by witnesses; which proved, let her die, and Alinda will execute the massacre. If none can avouch any confirmed relation of her intent, use justice, my lord, it is the glory of a king, and ...
— Rosalynde - or, Euphues' Golden Legacy • Thomas Lodge
... our landlady, who seems to be a very intelligent woman, of a superior class to most landladies, came into our parlor, while I was out, and talked about the present race of Byrons and Lovelaces, who have often been at this house. There seems to be a taint in the Byron blood which makes those who inherit it wicked, mad, and miserable. Even Colonel Wildman comes in for a share of this ill luck, for he has almost ruined himself by his expenditure on the estate, and by his lavish hospitality, especially to the ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... man, with a facetious gesture. "See? The fight came through these here woods, here. 'Taint been much over twenty-four hours, I reckon, since every one o' them-ah sort o' shut-up-fan-shape sort o' fish-traps had a gray-jacket in it layin' flat down an' firin' through the rails, sort o' random-like, only not much so." His manner of speech seemed a sort of harlequin ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... solemn, weary, sad-eyed man, Whose care-worn face and wandering eyes would scan,— His features wasted in the lingering strife With the pale foe that drains the student's life? Where my old friend, the scholar, teacher, saint, Whose creed, some hinted, showed a speck of taint; He broached his own opinion, which is not Lightly to be forgiven or forgot; Some riddle's point,—I scarce remember now,— Homoi-, perhaps, where they said homo-ou. (If the unlettered greatly wish to know Where lies the difference ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... looked at him; he stood pale and strengthless, his eyes fixed on the corner—at the same moment something dark and shapeless seemed to slip past the group, and there came to the nostrils of Father Thomas a strange sharp smell, as of the sea, only that there was a taint within it, like the ...
— Paul the Minstrel and Other Stories - Reprinted from The Hill of Trouble and The Isles of Sunset • Arthur Christopher Benson
... looking downward as before. "But that I always was—a slave, and the daughter of a slave. Your child, though unknown and unacknowledged, better that it died than lived my life over again, cursed with the proud Anglo-Saxon blood, debased by the African taint, that, if it exists but in the slightest degree, ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... wand'rer to the Saviour's fold; That were an action worthy of a saint; But not in malice let the crime be told, Nor publish to the world the evil taint. ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... formula of the Church clings even to the mummery of the atheists. Not long ago in Madrid a man and woman who belonged to some fantastic order which rejected religion and law had a child born to them in the course of things, and determined that it should begin life free from the taint of superstition. It should not be christened, it should be named, in the Name of Reason. But they could not break loose from the idea of baptism. They poured a bottle of water on the shivering nape of the poor little neophyte, and its frail ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... loves dogs, and hawks, and his wife well; he has a good riding face, and he can sit a great horse; he will taint a staff well at tile; when he is mounted he looks like the sign of the George, that's all I know; save, that instead of a dragon, he will brandish against a tree, and break his sword as confidently upon the knotty bark, as the other did upon ...
— Every Man Out Of His Humour • Ben Jonson
... some form of polytheism more or less pronounced, and either secret or declared. Even the Jews, the nation the most conspicuous for its supposed uncompromising adherence to a monotheistic creed, cannot claim absolute freedom from taint in this respect; for in the country places, far from the centre of worship, the people were constantly following after strange gods; and even some of their most notable worthies were ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... the common clay, And thy hands be not free From the taint of the soil, thou hast made thy spoil The greater shame ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... lips: it circulates among the classes which create it; and the size of this dictionary is therefore not necessarily appalling to a Frenchman's eyes: it does not represent the corruption of the language, because slang does not taint the speech of those classes who control and make the standard speech and literature of the nation. If a dictionary of English slang were published now, how many young ladies and gentlemen of the educated classes, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various
... endlessly of a way out. For me what was there? There was no one to rob—I wasn't clever enough. There was no way I could earn money, honestly or dishonestly. And for her, buried in that Derbyshire village amongst the collieries, where there was scarcely a person who hadn't the taint of the place upon them—what chance was there for her? There was nothing she could do, either. I knew in my heart that we were both ready for evil things, if by evil things we could make our escape. And we couldn't. So we tried to lose ourselves in the only fields left for ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... little business: oceans of gossip, flirting, swagger, and spite to every ounce of reality. Moreover, her refined and Puritan spirit revolted against the people who hunted: she thought of them all as bubbles, brilliant apparently, but liable to burst at any moment and leave nothing behind them but a taint of vulgarity. ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... outcome of ambition and greed, rendered all the more odious by the cloak of philanthropy which she had hitherto worn. The time has not come when an exhaustive and decisive verdict can be given on this charge. Few movements have been free from all taint of meanness; but it is clearly unjust to rail against a great Power, because, at the end of a war which entailed frightful losses and a serious though temporary loss of prestige, it determined to exact from the enemy the only form of indemnity which was forthcoming, ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... and set guards and send telegraph descriptions of him in all directions. 'Taint likely he can get clean away. He'll be a marked ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... bringing home her husband in a state of beastly intoxication, and for this reason, independently of her knowledge of his vile and heartless disposition, and infamous character, she detested him. After entering, he looked about him, and even with the taint light of the rush she could mark that his unnatural and revolting features were lit up ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... strong will. From their mother, the disease that slew Emily and Anne in the prime of their youth and made Charlotte always delicate and ailing. In both cases the boy, Patrick Branwell, was very slightly affected; but he too died young, from excesses that suggest a taint of insanity in ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... Sabbath-gathering? That must be the cousin of Elsie's who wants to marry her, they say. A dangerous-looking fellow for a rival, if one took a fancy to the dark girl! And who is she, and what?—by what demon is she haunted, by what taint is she blighted, by what curse is she followed, by what destiny is she marked, that her strange beauty has such a terror in it, and that hardly one shall dare to love her, and her eye glitters ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... told simply what they knew. We got the real story of Miss Cavell, cruelly done to death by "field-gray" officers. We got full descriptions of the system of deporting the civil population—a system which amounted to enslavement, with a taint of "white slavery" thrown in. When the Belgian workmen were suddenly called from their homes, herded before the German commandant, and sent away, they knew not whither, to work for their oppressor, as they were entrained they sang the "Marseillaise." ...
— Fighting For Peace • Henry Van Dyke
... exhibit her as an elderly, but not an aged matron; a dignified, mild, and gracious creature; one selected to high honour by the Searcher of hearts, who, looking down on hers, had beheld it pure from any secret taint of selfishness, even as her conduct ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... masquerade of the elements,—the novel disguises our nearest friends put on! Here is another rain and another dew, water that will not flow, nor spill, nor receive the taint of an unclean vessel. And if we see truly, the same old beneficence and willingness to serve ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... room over thar an' that good fire, oh! my," and the old man buried his face in his hands and wept like a child, then looking up, he said, "Ef I cud only ahad my chilun in thar; 'pears de Lord Himself might ahelped me a minnit sooner—but dey is gone, all done gone, an' 'taint no use." ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... joke, I could see that he was still unhappy, and I have no doubt that he has that pullet on his conscience yet, unless he has paid for it. He was of a race which elsewhere has so immemorially plundered hen-roosts that chickens are as free to it as the air it breathes, without any conceivable taint of private ownership. But the spirit of New England had so deeply entered into him that the imbecile broiler of another, slain by pure accident and by its own contributory negligence, was saddening him, while I was off in my ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... trees are in a bearing state, they are subject to a disease called tache. This is a black taint, or stain, which attacks the trees, encircling them below, and kills them. The mode of preservation is to make, in the beginning, a slight notch that shall pierce the bark. But if the taint is extensive, it is ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... came to tell him that battle, vast, gigantic, on a scale the world had never seen before, was joined, and the volume of the cannon fire, beyond a doubt, was growing. It pulsed heavily, and either he or his fancy noticed a steady jarring motion. A faint acrid taint crept into the air and he felt it in his nose and throat. He coughed now and then, and he observed that men around him coughed also. But, on the whole, the army was singularly still, the soldiers straining eye or ear to see something or hear ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the other boys in everything, and but repeats his triumphs later when he goes to Amherst College. His mother lives upon the victories which he despises; but at last she yields to the taint which was in her own blood as well as her husband's, and destroys herself. The son, who was aware of her suicidal tendency, and had once overheard her combating it in prayer, curses the God who would not listen to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 122, December, 1867 • Various
... unwillingly, to the discredit of the Weymouth pine,—a symptom of some ancestral taint, perhaps,—that it suffers less than most trees from being thus encroached upon. Yet it does not entirely escape. True, it leans neither to left nor right, its trunk is seldom contorted; if it grow at all it must grow straight toward the ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... world. It might be now on its way only to change that fate once more. The cause, too, was a noble one. It was sustained by no aggression, perfidy, or desire of change. It was to protect a friendly nation, and to sustain an inspired cause. There was no taint of cruelty or crime to degrade the soldiership of England. We were acting in the character which had already exalted her name as protectors of the weak and punishers of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 347, September, 1844 • Various
... to me much in her praise that she did not exult in our taint and degradation, as some white philosophers used to do in the opposite idea that a part of the human family were cursed to lasting blackness and slavery in Ham and his children, but even told us of a remarkable approach to whiteness in many of her own ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... which are needed for directing a weaker race. You can't help them by abstract thought or by graceful art, but only by that moral sense which will hold the scales of Justice even, and keep itself free from every taint of corruption. That is how we rule India. We came there by a kind of natural law, like air rushing into a vacuum. All over the world, against our direct interests and our deliberate intentions, we are drawn into the same thing. And it will happen to you also. The pressure of destiny ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... my chaste name, no wrong unto my husband, No suit that may concern my wedlock's breach, I yield unto it; but To pass the bounds of modesty and chastity, Sooner[19] will I bequeath myself again Unto this grave, and never part from hence, Than taint my soul ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... laughed. "'Taint no use sendin' no answer," said he; "I couldn't find that Dago again. They're all so much alike. He said he was goin' away on a ship. You see it was yesterday he gave me that letter. I 'spect he'll be a long way out to sea before I ...
— A Bicycle of Cathay • Frank R. Stockton
... Rosebud, young and gay, Blooming in thy early May, Never may'st thou, lovely flower, Chilly shrink in sleety shower! Never Boreas' hoary path, Never Eurus' pois'nous breath, Never baleful stellar lights, Taint thee with untimely blights! Never, never reptile thief Riot on thy virgin leaf! Nor even Sol too fiercely view Thy ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... him to each position of trust until it made him head of the Government. And it was to this noble quality of his character that he owed his death. Corruption had grown up in connection with the offices of State, and Garfield's last mission was to purge the Government of this taint. He was resolved to set his face against "the waste of time and the obstruction to public business caused by the greedy crowd of office-seekers." And he also announced that "rigid honesty and faithful service would be required from every ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... habits long after youth had left her. I was said to be the image of what she was when she rivalled Madame de Hautefort in the affections of the late King. You must consider, sweetheart, that he was the most moral of men, and that with him love meant a passion as free from sensual taint as the preferences of a sylph. I think my good grandmother loved me all the better for this fancied resemblance. She would arrange her jewels about my hair and bosom, as she had worn them when Buckingham came wooing for his master; and then she would bid her page ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... immoralities, propagated among them by his vile example, might, too probably, bring down a curse upon them? And, after all, who knows but that my own sinful compliances with a man, who might think himself entitled to my obedience, might taint my own morals, and make me, instead of a reformer, an imitator of him?—For who can touch pitch, and not ...
— Clarissa, Volume 7 • Samuel Richardson
... between the theologian and the naturalist is not fundamental, and evolution may be as profoundly and as particularly theistic as it is increasingly probable. The taint of atheism which, in Dr. Hodge's view, leavens the whole lump, is not inherent in the original grain of Darwinism—in the principles posited—but has somehow been introduced in the subsequent treatment. Possibly, when found, it may be eliminated. ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray
... If in my knowledge of THE secret I do what I can to spare an innocent girl (especially, remembering your own reference to her when you told my story to the assembled guests at Chesney Wold) from the taint of my impending shame, I act upon a resolution I have taken. Nothing in the world, and no one in the world, could shake it or could move me." This she says with great deliberation and distinctness and with no more outward passion than himself. As for him, he methodically ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... will be useless. And now, Reason, you are to remember, as of course you do, for Reason forgets nothing, that you are to think neither of brothers or of sisters. You are entirely to drop your feelings as Agatha, and to be pure Reason undefiled by mortal taint. You are to say, whether, were you, Reason, placed as I am now, you would marry this unreasonable young man as soon as he gets to Chatillon, which means tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that at the very latest. Now, Reason, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... Biblical literature and criticism.[130] Brilliant attainments in so many departments were commended yet more to the admiration of beholders by a modest and unassuming deportment, by morals above reproach, and by a disinterested nature in which there was no taint of avarice. The sincerity of his unselfish love of knowledge was said to be attested by the liberality with which he renounced the entire income of his small patrimony in ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... the new soul, Like my own Psyche—fresh upon her lips Alit the visionary butterfly, 290 Waiting my word to enter and make bright, Or flutter off and leave all blank as first. This body had no soul before, but slept Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free From taint or foul with stain, as outward things 295 Fastened their image on its passiveness; Now, it will wake, feel, live—or die again! Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff Be Art—and further, to evoke a soul From form be nothing? This new soul ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... trying to get the message that Nels was working with so obviously. Presently an almost noiseless chuckle came from the man, and he touched Nels' shoulder as if to say that he had it too. The thing had come unexpectedly—the faintest possible taint of ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... green turban; receive a stipend from the treasury; are judged only by their chief; and, however debased by fortune or character, still assert the proud preeminence of their birth. A family of three hundred persons, the pure and orthodox branch of the caliph Hassan, is preserved without taint or suspicion in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and still retains, after the revolutions of twelve centuries, the custody of the temple, and the sovereignty of their native land. The fame and merit of Mahomet would ennoble a plebeian ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... that transformation in the life of the nation which has resulted in the conscious ideal of the Britain of to-day. The "separation" from Rome fifty years after Bosworth had no conscious imperial purpose, but it rescued the rising empire of England from the taint of medievalism which sapped the empires of Spain, of the Bourbons, and of the Hapsburgs. The Reformation in England owes much of its character amongst the people at large, apart from the government, above all in the heroic age of the Reformation ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... dear Aged Saint, Whose eyeballs upward roll, I trust you have no worldly taint Upon your ...
— Children of Our Town • Carolyn Wells
... tall for their age, but with the slender make of their foreign ancestry; and, though their fair rosy complexions were brightened by mountain mists and winds, their rapidly darkening hair, and large liquid brown eyes, told of their Italian blood. Their grandmother looked on their colouring as a taint, and Christina herself had hoped to see their father's simple, kindly blue eyes revive in his boys; but she could hardly have desired anything different from the dancing, kindling, or earnest glances that used to flash from under their long black lashes when they were nestling in her ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... share of judgment in the purchase of winter stock, Martin Poyser was as hard and implacable as the north-east wind. Luke Britton could not make a remark, even on the weather, but Martin Poyser detected in it a taint of that unsoundness and general ignorance which was palpable in all his farming operations. He hated to see the fellow lift the pewter pint to his mouth in the bar of the Royal George on market-day, and the mere sight of ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... and a bat passed so close that the wind of it stirred his hair. He spat the taint of it from his mouth, and returning to the house, seated himself at the table and ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... the wife Be the one woman in the world? Love's sensitive tendrils sicken, curl'd Round folly's former stay; for 'tis The doom of all unsanction'd bliss To mock some good that, gain'd, keeps still The taint ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... with all that is best within us, we must be silent, undisturbed, preferably alone. This is not flowery sentiment—it is what every true lover of old and lovely Nature would feel in Western China, yet still unspoiled by the taint of man's absorbing stream of civilization. And in the stress of modern life, and the progress of man's monopolization of the earth on which he lives, it is beautiful to some of us, of whom it may be said the highest state of inward happiness comes from ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... deliverance from all his misery through the kindly agency of death, it was characteristic of him that, even now, at the supreme moment of his impending deliverance, his self-respect imperiously demanded of him that at all costs must he eschew even the faintest taint of so cowardly an act as that of suicide; if death were really close at hand—as it certainly appeared to be—well and good; it was what he was hoping for, and would be thrice welcome. Nevertheless, he felt it incumbent ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... up, as making inharmonious jars In her creation whose meek wraith we know. The more that he, turned man of mere traditions, Now profits naught. For the large potencies Instilled into his idiosyncrasy— To throne fair Liberty in Privilege' room— Are taking taint, and sink to common plots ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... below, Arnold Dampierre, was with him. He was a man three or four years Cuthbert's junior, handsome, grave-eyed, and slightly built; he was a native of Louisiana, and his dark complexion showed a taint of Mulatto blood in ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... "Why, why, why am I as I am? Why can't I care for the suitable? Why can't I like the gift held out to me? Why doesn't my soul age with my body? Why must I continue to be lonely just because of the taint in my nature which forbids me to find companionship in one who finds perfect companionship in me? Why—to sum up—am I condemned eternally to ...
— December Love • Robert Hichens
... importance to the maintenance of the Constitution and the Union is the duty of preserving the Government free from the taint or even the suspicion of corruption. Public virtue is the vital spirit of republics, and history proves that when this has decayed and the love of money has usurped its place, although the forms of free government ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... distributing letters, Dam would never answer to the name he thinks he has eternally disgraced, and disgrace it further by dragging it in the mire of the ranks. How can people be such snobs? Isn't a good private a better man than a bad officer? Why should there be any 'taint' about serving your country in ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... and most useful to the fox hunter, for he cleans out the earths. Mr. E. Dunn, late master of the Old Berkshire, tells me that they are of great service in this way, as they dig and enlarge the earths, and so prevent the taint of mange clinging to the sides if a mangy fox has ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... men can grieve For what is lost. Then wandered off a pace To seek new life in lands across the sea; He left thee here, thy life was wild and free. Long years ago came tidings of his death, Born sadly on the wind's taint whispering breath. He was a peer, the last of all his race, His Saxon strength was written on thy face. Yet in thy veins thy mother's Southern blood Is bounding with its warm, impetuous flood. Enough; my words are wandering; a will He left that may thy heart with ...
— Love or Fame; and Other Poems • Fannie Isabelle Sherrick
... by the sovereign voters themselves. We cannot afford to intrust the selection of these delegates to the President or to Congress. The members of our delegation should not be discredited by any flavour of presidential favouritism or by any taint ...
— In His Image • William Jennings Bryan
... am de mos' discombobulationest eveh was nohow. Yass, sah. Dey's been su'thin' happen aft. Yass, sah. Ah ain't gwine tell no boy, nohow. No, sah. 'Taint dis nigger would go tell a boy dat Mistah Hamlin he have a riot with Mistah Cap'n Falk, no sah. Ah ain't gwine tell no boy dat Mistah Hamlin, he say dat Mistah Cap'n Falk he ain't holdin' to de right co'se, no, sah; nor ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... to paint thee— Growing up toward thy teens; No corruption near to taint thee Passing through ...
— The Emigrant Mechanic and Other Tales In Verse - Together With Numerous Songs Upon Canadian Subjects • Thomas Cowherd
... First there was an overture; then several scenes from "Lucia di Lammermoor,"—that great Shakspearian drama, whose dread catastrophe of Death and Doom leaves in the memory of the hearer a heavenly sorrow unmixed with earthly taint. It was the master-work of two poets, Scott and Donizetti, who had conceived it at the best period of their lives, when they were in all the vigor of manhood, and when mind and fancy had become ripened by experience. It was formed in one of those supreme instants, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 92, June, 1865 • Various
... more! my heart doth faint When I the life recall Of her who lived so free from taint, So virtuous deemed by all,— That in herself was so complete I think that she was ta'en By God to deck his paradise, And with his saints to reign, Whom while on earth each one did prize The fairest thing ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... had done him harm rather than good in his ill-advised, and, perhaps, SELFISH attempts to help him. I have said that Gilroy's parting warning rankled in his breast, but not ignobly. It wounded the surface of his sensitive nature, but could not taint or corrupt the pure, wholesome blood of the gentleman beneath it. For in Gilroy's warning he saw only his own shortcomings. A strange fatality had marked his friendships. He had been no help to Jim; he had brought no happiness to Susy or Mrs. Peyton, whose disagreement his visit ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte
... And Patrick obeyed the voice of the angel; and early in the morning he found those men, and by his preaching he converted them unto the faith, and being converted, he baptized them in that fountain, and when baptized, he purified them from the leprous taint of either man. And this miracle when published abroad, was accounted a fair presage and a present sanction of the future city. And the angel, at the prayers of Patrick, removed far from thence an ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... every great question. Everybody does everything to please wimmen, and if they kick on anything that settles it. But I must go and umpire that game between Pa, and the hired girl, and the goat. Say, can't you come over and see the baby? 'Taint bigger than a small satchel," and the boy waited till the grocery man went to draw some vinegar, when he slipped out and put up a sign written on a shingle with ...
— The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy - Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883 • George W. Peck
... is a world where souls are free, Where tyrants taint not nature's bliss; If death that bright world's opening be, Oh, who would live a ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... thought old Davy had come aboard; and he told the skipper he guessed he'd take his trick at prayin'. 'Why,' says the skipper, 'we've got on well enough without, ever since we left the Hague, hadn't we better omit it now?' ''Taint possible,' says the parson. Now you all know you can't larn seamanship to a parson or passenger—and the bloody fool knelt down with his face to wind'ard. 'Hillo!' says the skipper, 'you'd better fill away, and come round afore the ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... of my eye. Suspicion has been cast upon Mrs. Corbin, and that suspicion I have good reason for believing well founded. If you associate with her—if you are seen upon the street with her, your fair fame will receive a taint. This I cannot permit.' ...
— Home Scenes, and Home Influence - A Series of Tales and Sketches • T. S. Arthur
... from the beginning, sullenly and with reluctance by Learoyd, and suspiciously by Ortheris, who held to it that no man not in the Army could fraternise with a red-coat. 'Like to like,' said he. 'I'm a bloomin' sodger—he's a bloomin' civilian. 'Taint natural—that's all.' ...
— Soldier Stories • Rudyard Kipling
... said sharply. "Why will you persist in thinking that there is something peculiar and unclean about this money?—some imagined taint upon your title to it? Don't you understand that it is yours in precisely the same definite and honest way that the money ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... wealthy leisure class with a passion for affairs had cultivated enthusiastically that fine art which is the pride of all aristocratic societies, the service of the State as a profession high and exclusive, free from vulgar taint. In South Carolina all things conspired to uphold and strengthen the sense of the State as an object of veneration, as something over and above the mere social order, as the sacred embodiment of ...
— The Day of the Confederacy - A Chronicle of the Embattled South, Volume 30 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson
... heavy loss. He bore his misfortune with fortitude, and still had a competency ample for him, when there came a torrent of ill-fortune—the loss of his beloved wife, and the failure of his sons, under circumstances that bore the distressing stamp of insanity in one of them, a taint of madness that was in the blood which had been so prolific of genius. He suffered where he was strongest and weakest—in his love and ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... hard-working mother who was burdened with a sick child. He would sit for an hour together telling an agricultural labourer of the queer farming he had seen abroad; and he had stood godfather—by proxy—to half the yellow-headed urchins within ten miles' radius of Jocelyn's Bock. No taint of vice or dissipation had ever sullied the brightness of his pleasant life. No wretched country girl had ever cursed his name before she cast herself into the sullen waters of a lonely mill-stream. People ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... for them. He felt degraded by the mere thought of their degradation. With his mother and sister, he took refuge in the heartfelt prayers which they used to say every evening after the day of deceptions and private humiliations, which to their innocence seemed to be a taint, of which they dared not tell each other. But, in contact with the latent spirit of atheism which is in the air of Paris, Olivier's faith was beginning to crumble away, without his knowledge, like whitewash trickling down a wall under the beating of the rain. He ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs. Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... wheel-course of her government deciphers them to the admiration of posterity; for it was full of magnanimity, tempered with justice, piety, and pity, and, to speak truth, noted but with one act of stain, or taint, all her deprivations, either of life or liberty, being legal and necessitated. She was learned, her sex and time considered, beyond common belief; for letters about this time, or somewhat before, did but begin to be of esteem and in fashion, the former ages being overcast with the mists and fogs ...
— Travels in England and Fragmenta Regalia • Paul Hentzner and Sir Robert Naunton
... identical portrait worn by his sister which had so unintentionally been exposed to his view? Why, too, had he evinced so much anxiety to remove from his mind all unfavourable impressions in regard to his mother? Why have been so energetic in his caution not to suffer a taint of impurity to attach to her memory? Why should he have supposed the possibility of such impression, unless there had been sufficient cause for it? In what, moreover, originated his triumphant expression of feature, when, on that occasion, he reminded ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... observed, seemed in a greater hurry than the others, and he beckoned to him a slim, swarthy-skinned youth who answered to the euphonious name of Sam Pretty Cow, who was three-quarters Indian and forgiven the taint for the ability to ride anything he ever tried to ride, rope anything he ever swung his loop at, and for his unfailing good humor which set ...
— Rim o' the World • B. M. Bower
... quarters without an inquiry as to the cause of the proceedings. He made no friends, and though his surliness repelled us, he made few enemies. Indeed, he was rather a favorite, since he was a genuine character; his gruffness had no taint of selfish greed in it; he minded his own business strictly, and wanted others to do the same. When he first came into the company, it is true, he gained the enmity of nearly everybody in it, but an incident occurred which turned ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... perils of the community. This is not always a willful breach of duty on the part of the father, but usually comes from ignorance as to how to broach this subject to the boy. A great many growing lives would be saved from moral taint and become a blessing instead of a curse if the father discharged his whole duty to his growing son, by putting at his disposal the knowledge which is necessary to an understanding of the functions of the ...
— The Boy and the Sunday School - A Manual of Principle and Method for the Work of the Sunday - School with Teen Age Boys • John L. Alexander
... occupied, so to speak, in 'oughting.' Just imagine the kind of life It would be—without pleasure, without business, without knowledge, without anything at all analogous to what we call good, purged wholly and completely of all that might taint the purity of the moral sense, of philanthropy, of friendship, of love, even, I suppose, of the love of virtue, a life simply of obligation, without anything to be ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... lad's morbid constitution or condition, which reveals that strange, apathetic obstinacy, that vis inertiae which was the spring even of his most decided actions in after life, and which at the same time raises grave doubts in my mind whether there may not have been an actual taint of insanity in this extraordinary being, is the incident of his having submitted, rather than give in after some misdemeanour, to being confined to his room in the Academy for nearly three months at a stretch. Alfieri ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... is an' things wot ain't," he began. "We ain't none o' us ever got nowheres bein' crooked. I been figurin' that I still got about twenty thousan' o' that bunch o' green I pulled out o' that express car, planted in places where 'taint doin' nobody no good. I guess ef I do ut careful I kin send ut back to the company, a little at a time, an' they'd never know where ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... as the United States, her constitution, and her institutions, there was necessarily some danger of a taint of political partisanship. I trust, however, I may he considered to have redeemed the pledge I made of writing "free from political bias," when I have found favour in the pages of two publications so opposite in their politics as the Westminster ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... acquired sexual anomalies is only relative and gradual, so that it is necessary to avoid opposing one against the other. When an anomaly arrives spontaneously in the first sexual glimmer of the child's mind during its development, it is obvious that it is the expression of a profound hereditary taint, the result of blastophthoria or of unfortunate combinations of ancestral energies which have been associated by the conjugation of the two procreative germs. In such a case it is comparatively easy to prove that this ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... father. In sad and bitter truth, he did not care for her. His marriage with Mary Anne Kepp had been the one grateful impulse of his life; and even the sentiment which had prompted that marriage had been by no means free from the taint of selfishness. But he had been quite unprepared to find that this grand sacrifice of his life should involve another sacrifice in the maintenance of a daughter he did not want; and he was very much inclined to quarrel with the destiny that had ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... for relief, Without whom they could get neither claret nor beef: Yet their wine and their victuals, those curmudgeon lubbards Lock up from my sight in cellars and cupboards. That I have an ill eye, they wickedly think, And taint all their meat, and sour all their drink. But, thirdly and lastly, it must be allow'd, I alone can inspire the poetical crowd: This is gratefully own'd by each boy in the College, Whom, if I inspire, it is not to my knowledge. This every pretender in rhyme ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... And as for Catharine, I laugh. It is true that I kissed her cheeks. I had been drinking, and the wine was still in my head. I had left you. My heart was light and happy. I would have kissed a spaniel, had a spaniel crossed my path instead of a Catharine. There was no more taint to those kisses I gave to her than to those you have often thoughtlessly given to the flowers in your garden. I loved you truly; I love you still. Catharine is a poor pretext. There is something you have not told me. Say truthfully that your belief is that I was secretly paying court to that ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... has a taint of the same folly, pure as she esteems herself, when she studiously adorns her person only to be seen by men, to excite respectful sighs, and all the idle homage of what is called innocent gallantry. Did women really respect ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... dissuade the king himself from it, upon the importunity of any, either for their friends or themselves. If it should prevail, it perverts justice; but if the judge be so just, and of so undaunted a courage (as he ought to be) as not to be inclined thereby, yet it always leaves a taint of suspicions and prejudice behind it." It is probable that Villiers at this time had really a sense of the duties attaching to his position[24] and was willing to be guided by a man of approved wisdom. It was not long before an opportunity occurred for showing his ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... our story. There were times—once or twice to-night, for instance—when she ceased doing even her unconscious work. Assuredly, somewhere back in her life, something had gone amiss with this silly, helpful creature, and left a taint on her brain. The hearty, pretty smile would go suddenly from her face, something foreign looking out of it, instead, as if a pestilent thought had got into her soul; she would rise uneasily, going to the window, looking out, her forehead leaning on the glass, her body ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... however intelligent and alert, who wishes to enjoy a masterpiece, and is content simply to enjoy it. It does not really matter how close to anything else something which possesses independent goodness is; the very utmost technical originality, the most spotless purity from the faintest taint of suggestion, will not suffice to confer merit on what does not otherwise possess it. Whether, as I rather think, Fielding pursued the plan he had formed ab incepto, or whether he cavalierly neglected ...
— Joseph Andrews Vol. 1 • Henry Fielding
... charity in the world where all shall know, even as they are known? Men, too—alas! how fast their number grows—whom I have known, have loved, and lost too soon; and all gleaming out of the gloom, as every image of the dead should do, in pure white marble, as if purged from earthly taint? To ...
— Lectures Delivered in America in 1874 • Charles Kingsley
... not hence my bark, Through wintry winds and billows dark; I come with humble heart to share Thy morn and evening-prayer; Nor mine the feet, oh! holy Saint, The brightness of thy sod to taint." ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger
... which he has not affixed his name; his extenuation of incontinence in the master of a family, and the gloss he put on the crime of covetousness; which last error was not confined to his conversation, but mingled itself with his writings, though no one could well be freer from any taint of the vice in his own life. Many a man may have indulged his inclinations to evil, with much less compunction, while he has imagined himself sheltered under the sanction of the moralist who watches one side of the entrance into the nave ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... collects of him in whom the sexual instinct has been permitted to taint the whole life with illicit thoughts and deeds, stultifying the intellect, deadening the sensibilities, ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... tendency to fall. If he makes no parade of definite aesthetic principles, it is clear that throughout he had such principles, and that they were principles of a very good kind. He had a wide knowledge of foreign literature without any taint of "Xenomania," sufficient scholarship (despite the unlucky false quantity of Janua, which he overlooked) in the older languages, and a thorough knowledge and love of English literature. His style is, to me at any rate, peculiarly attractive. Contrasted with the more brightly ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury
... and unphilosophical taint, which marked the earliest heavenward cries of terrified man, has clung to the petitions which he offers up at this hour for material favours and blessings. At the close of a prolonged drought, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York compose a prayer for rain, and as a drought cannot last ...
— Morality as a Religion - An exposition of some first principles • W. R. Washington Sullivan
... cherish. She takes pleasure in the society of Dalton,—what right have you to say her—nay? His character indeed is not altogether such as you could wish; but will it not be selfish to tell her even this? Will it not be even worse, and show taint of a lurking suspicion, which you know would wound her grievously? You struggle with your distrust by meeting him more kindly than ever; yet at times there will steal over you a sadness, which that dear Madge detects, and sorrowing in her turn, tries ...
— Dream Life - A Fable Of The Seasons • Donald G. Mitchell
... streaming through the windows showed in high light bandaged heads or arms and faces haggard with victory. Wine had been spilled, and in the air there was yet the savor of blood. About each man just breathed some taint of savagery that was not yet beaten back after yesterday's wild outburst and breaking of the bars. In some it took the form of the sleek stillness of the tiger; others were loud-voiced, restless, biting at their nails. Only to a few was it given to bear triumph soberly, with room for other thoughts; ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... agreements. The choice between the old and the new ways had to be definite and final. It had to be made at the very beginning of the negotiations. It was made. Secrecy was adopted. Thus diplomacy, in spite of the announced intention to reform its practices, has retained the evil taint which makes it out of harmony with the spirit of good faith and of open dealing which is characteristic of the best thought of the present epoch. There is little to show that diplomacy has been raised to a higher plane or has won a better reputation in the world at large than it possessed ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing
... Professor Fish may be free from taint in this regard; but many historians of to-day are, I fear, imbued with that most dangerous tincture of historical cant which lays it down as a maxim that contemporary history ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... nothing further. Perhaps he was a little ashamed of himself in the face of Mr. Gibney's simple faith in his own ability; perhaps in his veins, all unknown, there flowed a taint of the heroic blood of some forgotten sea-dog. Be that as it may, something did swell in his breast when Mr. Gibney spoke of the flag and his scorning to hide behind it, and Scraggs's snaggle teeth ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... the forgery or the robbery to save from want. "The brilliant position she had longed for, the imagined freedom she would create for herself in marriage"—these "had come to her hunger like food, with the taint of sacrilege upon it," which she "snatched with terror." Grandcourt "fulfilled his side of the bargain by giving her the rank and luxuries she coveted." Matrimony as a bargain never had and never will have ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... of ground): "I've got my garden into pretty good heart at last, and if so be as there warn't quite so many sparrs and greybirds and roberts and one thing and t'other, I dunno but what I might get a tidy lot of sass. But there! 'taint no use what ye do as long as there's so ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... Ancestors beside Varuna, god of the sky and the deep. He sits below a tree, playing on a flute and drinking the Soma drink which gives immortality. When the descendants of Yama reached Paradise they assumed shining forms "refined and from all taint ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... peas!" repeated she. "I s'pose you don't reckon on eating that every day here, no, nor on Sundays, no, not even at Christmas. 'Taint such as we in the Punch-Bowl as can stuff ourselves on ducks and green peas. Green peas and ducks we may grow—but we sells 'em ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... the theory that passion is a snare and a pollution is to render it impossible to love with purity and self-abandonment. Poor Philip, endowed at birth with a nature of instinctive delicacy, could not free himself from the taint of his training; yet he shrank as from hot iron from the blasphemy of connecting any shadow of earthliness with the woman who had become his ideal. His only resource was to take refuge in repeating to himself that he did not love Mrs. Fenton; but even in denying it ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... curse the old murderer that shot her, must have a heart like the old murderer's who committed the deed. Do not say: "The man was honest throughout his life and avoided evil and believed in a God, and did not permit the least taint upon his honor." If you do, they will not believe you. Say: He looked like a wolf; do not say: His beard was white when he committed the crime. If you do, no one will give you anything; none will believe that one can be so old and yet such an abandoned ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... Modestinus l. penult ss. ad legem Pomp. de parricid. cited by Mr. Ray. Here might come in (or be nam'd at least) wild-cornel, or dog-wood, good to make mill-cogs, pestles, bobins for bone-lace, spokes for wheels, &c. the best skewers for butchers, because it does not taint the flesh, and is of so very hard a substance, as to make wedges to cleave and rive other wood with, instead of iron. (But of this, see chap. II. book II.) And lastly, the viburnum, or way-faring-tree, growing also plentifully in every corner, makes pins for the yoaks of oxen; and superstitious ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... times. After the last skimming add half a dozen whole cloves, a dozen whole alspice, a pod of red pepper, a few whole grains of black pepper, and if you like, a young onion or a stalk of celery. Personally I do not like either onion or celery—moreover they taint the fat one may save from the pot. Let the water boil hard for half a minute, no longer, then slack heat till it barely simmers. Keep it simmering, filling up the pot as the water in it boils away, until the ham is tender throughout. The time depends on several ...
— Dishes & Beverages of the Old South • Martha McCulloch Williams
... Edith, emphatically. "Poor Grant! He can't be very happy with Ninitta. She never can get the taint of ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates
... done by, and give you a friendly warning, such as I'd have anybody do by a child of mine, if they was around the world. For my part, I always consider it a safe plan to wait and see what other people think about them, before I make up to anybody myself. 'Taint expected that a woman that's got a character to lose should commit herself in the eyes of the world. Remember, too, that on account of your being in a public capacity, so to speak, you'd ought to be more particular about your morals. It's expected that you will do your best to set a good example ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... Oh, stop, stop. Let us have no more of that horrible cant. Mr Praed: if there are really only those two gospels in the world, we had better all kill ourselves; for the same taint is in both, through ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... languor; then a violent fever took possession of her. When the physician who had been sent for arrived, M. Langis accompanied him into the chamber of the sick girl. She was delirious: seated upright, she kept continually passing her hand over her brow; she sought to efface the taint of a kiss she had received one moonlight night, and the impression in her hair of the flapping of a bat's wings that had caught in her hood. These two things were confounded in her memory. From time to time she said: "Where is my portrait? Give ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... making inharmonious jars In her creation whose meek wraith we know. The more that he, turned man of mere traditions, Now profits naught. For the large potencies Instilled into his idiosyncrasy— To throne fair Liberty in Privilege' room— Are taking taint, and sink to common ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... a finely-shaped dark head and the most perfectly-fitting clothes. He had been deep in a review, but at the sight of the wearied giant in the corner he had forgotten his interest in the "Entomology of the Riviera." He looked something of the artist or the man of letters, but in truth he had no taint of Bohemianism about him, being a very respectable person and a rising politician. His name was Arthur Mordaunt, but because it was the fashion at the time for a certain class of people to address each other in monosyllables, his friends ...
— The Half-Hearted • John Buchan
... at school, a very devoted friendship with a younger boy; such friendships like the [Greek: eispnelas] and the [Greek: aitas] of Sparta, when they are truly chivalrous and absolutely pure, are above all other loves, noble, refining, true; passion at white heat without taint, confidence of so intimate a kind as can not even exist between husband and wife, trust such as can not be shadowed, are its characteristics. I speak from my own experience, and others will, I know, at heart confirm me, when I say that these things ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... by Clotho's own spindle, my questions are free from all sophistic taint. How it has come about, I know not; but one word has brought up another, and the end of it is—there is no use in sacrifice. Let us begin again. I will put you a few more questions; answer me frankly, but think ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... They laughed at such a thought; and whilst they laughed, she did it. Henceforth the single redress for the English of this capital oversight, but which never could have redressed it effectually, was—to vitiate and taint the coronation of Charles VII. as the work of a witch. That policy, and not malice, (as M. Michelet is so happy to believe,) was the moving principle in the subsequent prosecution of Joanna. Unless they unhinged the force of the first coronation in ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... you jest calls on pore Old Mizzou an' he mingles in them troubles immediate. You must have that cayuse an' go scoutin' in th' hills, yo' shore must! Ol' man Davidson'll do th' work fer ye, but ye shore must scout. 'Taint healthy not t' git exercise on a cayuse. It shorely ain't! An' you must git t' know these yar hills, you must. They is beautiful an' picturesque, and is full of scenery. When you goes back East, you wants to know all about ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... comfort's sake! He would beat his weary, empty hands Upon the table, would hold up strands Of silver and gold, and ask her why She scorned the best which he could buy. He would pray as to some high-niched saint, That she would cure him of the taint Of failure. He would clutch the wall With his bleeding fingers, if she should fall He could catch, and hold her, and make her live! With sobs he would ask her to forgive All he had done. And broken, spent, He would call himself ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... case of morality; though even there, I would not advise you to a pharisaical pomp of virtue. But I will recommend to you a most scrupulous tenderness for your moral character, and the utmost care not to say or do the least thing that may ever so slightly taint it. Show yourself, upon all occasions, the advocate, the friend, but not the bully of virtue. Colonel Chartres, whom you have certainly heard of (who was, I believe, the most notorious blasted rascal ...
— The PG Edition of Chesterfield's Letters to His Son • The Earl of Chesterfield
... and freckled fair, With two left legs, and Judas-colored hair, And frowsy pores that taint the ambient air." ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... and bitter truth, he did not care for her. His marriage with Mary Anne Kepp had been the one grateful impulse of his life; and even the sentiment which had prompted that marriage had been by no means free from the taint of selfishness. But he had been quite unprepared to find that this grand sacrifice of his life should involve another sacrifice in the maintenance of a daughter he did not want; and he was very much inclined ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... mother of the pack. She was creeping up. Her lips were wet; the hair on her neck stood up. Behind her came others. I gave the low growl of a lion— the cry he makes when he is angry at being disturbed. She threw up her head and sniffed the air. Then she growled in her throat, for there was no taint of lion in the air, but the taint of man! Her white eyes found me out where I sat in a low tree, and there was death in them. So I gathered the air in my lungs and shouted. A man's shout is as much dreaded as the lion's ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... and only one, who did not. Klusky the Jew; Klusky the pariah. They said he worked just to be ornery and different from the rest, he hated them so. They enjoyed baiting him to witness his fury. It sated that taint of Roman cruelty inherent in the man of ignorance. He was all the amusement they had, for it wasn't policy to stir up the two others—they might slop over and clean up the village. So they continued to goad him as they had done since leaving 'Frisco. They gibed ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... for the world's hard encounter,—most pure and innocent, sincere and loving at present, but rather with the qualities of childhood than of manhood, with little strength or perseverance, so that the very dread of taint or wear made it almost a relief to think of his freshness and sweetness being secured for ever. Even when she thought of his father, and shrank from such grief for him, she could not but see a hope that this affliction might soften the heart closed up by the first and far worse sorrow, ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... results: 86 infants with hereditary taint of syphilis have been at the nursery. Of 6 fed exclusively on cow's milk, only 1 survived and the other 5 died. Forty-two were suckled by goats, of which 8 lived, 34 are dead, which is equal to a mortality of 80.9 per ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 392, July 7, 1883 • Various
... reputation in the world. The situation of a woman separated from her husband is undoubtedly very different from that of a man who has left his wife. He, with lordly dignity, has shaken off a clog; and the allowing her food and raiment is thought sufficient to secure his reputation from taint. And, should she have been inconsiderate, he will be celebrated for his generosity and forbearance. Such is the respect paid to the master-key of property! A woman, on the contrary, resigning what is termed her natural protector (though he never was so but in name), ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... lower classes it soon becomes degraded to, or amalgamated with, some form of polytheism more or less pronounced, and either secret or declared. Even the Jews, the nation the most conspicuous for its supposed uncompromising adherence to a monotheistic creed, cannot claim absolute freedom from taint in this respect; for in the country places, far from the centre of worship, the people were constantly following after strange gods; and even some of their most notable worthies were liable to ...
— Elizabethan Demonology • Thomas Alfred Spalding
... to the Marchese Rivardi. Lady Kingswood merited the description thus given of her, for she was distinctly a dear old English lady, and her title was the least thing about her, especially in her own opinion. There was no taint of snobbery in her simple, kindly disposition, and when her late husband, a distinguished military officer, had been knighted for special and splendid service in the war, she had only deplored that the ruin of his health and disablement by wounds, prevented him ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... twenty pages of pure Ralph without any taint of Waddington. It seemed to be part of Mr. Waddington's book, and yet no part of it, for it was inconceivable that it should belong to anything but itself. Ralph didn't ramble; he went straight for the things he had seen. He saw the Cotswolds ...
— Mr. Waddington of Wyck • May Sinclair
... be made alive"—if only we unite ourselves to Him by faith. God will remit the death penalty to all who are "in Christ" and "justified by faith"; that is, we shall all rise from the dead as He rose. Apparently Paul's belief was that no one would ever have died but for the sin of Adam, a taint which has affected all Adam's descendants. Death in his ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... have been as honest and courageous a man as ever lived. We will go further, and say that, though passionate and often wrong-headed, he was a singularly fair controversialist, candid, generous, too high-spirited to take mean advantages even in the most exciting disputes, and pure from all taint of personal malevolence. It must also be admitted that his opinions on ecclesiastical and political affairs, though in themselves absurd and pernicious, eminently qualified him to be the reformer of our lighter literature. The libertinism of ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... morning, however, she awakened with a keen reaction. Her head ached. She had a sense of taint over her. She was virtue rampant again, as on the day she had first visited the old lodge ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... in the moral purity of the Christian Scriptures as contrasted with the so-called sacred books of all other religions. That which is simply human will naturally be expected to show the moral taint of lapsed humanity. The waters cannot rise higher than the fountain-head, nor can one gather figs from thistles. In our social intercourse with men we sooner or later find out their true moral level. And so in what is written, the exact ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... borough elections of a century and a half ago. Let us fix on one man who will stand for civic purity, virtue and honor, no matter what his party. Let us elect a United States senator who is above reproach, above the taint of gaining a victory by the downfall of his fellow men! In the next ballot, let us each vote as ...
— A Man of Two Countries • Alice Harriman
... important, the commission found that in their daily operations, military installations were "generally free from the taint of racial discrimination."[20-79] It confirmed the general assessments of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith and the American Veterans Committee among others, pointing out that black and white servicemen not only worked side by side, but also mingled in off-duty hours.[20-80] In sum, ...
— Integration of the Armed Forces, 1940-1965 • Morris J. MacGregor Jr.
... Corot, in every detail of whose every work, one may almost say, its informing, co-ordinating, elevating influence is distinctly to be perceived; but it is always present as a factor, as a force dignifying and relieving from all touch, all taint of the commonness that is so often inseparably associated with art whose absorption in nature is listlessly unthinking instead of enthusiastic and alert. In Rousseau, too, in a word, we have the classic strain, as at least a psychological element, and note as one source of his power ...
— French Art - Classic and Contemporary Painting and Sculpture • W. C. Brownell
... weak or silly. Life is real again, and the useless and cumbersome and mischievous have to die. They ought to die. They ought to be willing to die. It's a sort of disloyalty, after all, to live and taint the race. And they can't be happy. Moreover, dying's none so dreadful; it's the funking makes it bad. And in all those places we shall gather. Our district will be London. And we may even be able to ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... cannot change his duty, or ours. He is helping us to struggle for that which is our own; but he would mar his generosity if he put a taint on that which he is endeavouring ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... I am inclined to think that consumptions, so common in England, are, in part, owing to the great use of animal food. But the disease most common to this country is the scurvy. One finds a dash of it in almost every family, and in some the taint is very deep. A disease so general must have a general cause, and there is none so obvious as the great quantity of animal food which is devoured. As a proof that scurvy arises from this cause, we are in possession of no remedy for that disease equal to the free use of fresh vegetables. ...
— Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages • William Andrus Alcott
... whose care and conduct you enjoy these blessings? I wonder not at the censure which so frequently falls on those in my station; but I wonder that those in my station so frequently deserve it. What strange perverseness of nature! What wanton delight in mischief must taint his composition, who prefers dangers, difficulty, and disgrace, by doing evil, to safety, ease, and honor, by doing good! who refuses happiness in the other world, and heaven in this, for misery there and hell ...
— From This World to the Next • Henry Fielding
... as a mere human being. It was contended, that having been predestined from the beginning as the Woman, through whom the divine nature was made manifest on earth, she must be presumed to be exempt from all sin, even from that original taint inherited from Adam. Through the first Eve, we had all died; through the second Eve, we had all been "made alive." It was argued that God had never suffered his earthly temple to be profaned; had even promulgated ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... trait, and has many good ones. He meets the duties of life in an ordinary, satisfactory way, and with little effort on his part I know of another man who externally presents nearly the same aspect to society, who is quiet and unobtrusive in his daily life, and yet he is fighting hereditary taint and habit with a daily heroism, such as no soldier in the war can surpass. He is not conventional, although he appears to be so. He is a knight who is not afraid to face demons. Genuine strength and originality of character do not consist in saying ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... Our sole art being to leave nothing out That renders art offensive. Not for us Madonnas leaning from their starry thrones Ineffable, nor any heaven-wrought dream Of sculptor or of poet; we prefer Such nightmare visions as in morbid brains Take shape and substance, thoughts that taint the air And make all life unlovely. Will it last? Beauty alone endures from age to age, From age to age endures, handmaid of God. Poets who walk with her on earth go hence Bearing a talisman. You bury one, With his hushed music, ...
— The Sisters' Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... time will come when society, more enlightened, and therefore more reasonable, will acknowledge that noble feelings, honour, and heroism can be found in every condition of life as easily as in a class, the blood of which is not always exempt from the taint of a misalliance. ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... things. It meant love and companionship, but it also meant, should mean, children. Had he the right to go ahead and live his life fully and happily? Was there any chance that, out of the years behind him, there would come some forgotten thing, some taint or incident, to spoil the carefully woven ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... dried in the blaze and smoke,—would be likely to keep better. In fact, fish thus preserved,—as is often done with herrings, ling, codfish, mackerel, and haddock,—will remain good for months without suffering the slightest taint of decomposition. It was an excellent idea; and, Ben having communicated it to the others, it was at once determined that it ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... made that be a propagation of the distemper which was the best means to prevent it; and this too is an evidence of it, and brings me back to what I only hinted at before, but must speak more fully to here, namely, that men went about apparently well many days after they had the taint of the disease in their vitals, and after their spirits were so seized as that they could never escape it, and that all the while they did so they were dangerous to others; I say, this proves that so it was; for such people infected the very towns they ...
— A Journal of the Plague Year • Daniel Defoe
... barbarity he practised I can scarcely conceive; unless it proceeded from that natural taint of cruelty which so often distinguishes man above all other animals when his power becomes uncontrolled. The propensity was probably strengthened in him from the indemnities of martial law, and by those visions of promotion whereby violent partizans ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 559, July 28, 1832 • Various
... Edinburgh. I said it did not appear to be stirring much at present, and that everything in Scotland seemed a little slow to an American; that he could have no idea of push or enterprise until he visited a city like Chicago. He retorted that, happily, Edinburgh was peculiarly free from the taint of the ledger and the counting-house; that it was Weimar without a ...
— Penelope's Progress - Being Such Extracts from the Commonplace Book of Penelope Hamilton As Relate to Her Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... and afterwards two or three times a week for a month; then take it down and rub it all over with hickory ashes, which is an effectual remedy against the fly or skipper. When the weather is unusually warm at the time of salting your pork, more care is requisite to preserve it from taint. When it is cut up, if it seems warm, lay it on boards, or on the bare ground, till it is sufficiently cool for salting; examine the meat tubs or casks frequently, and if there is an appearance of mould, strew salt ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... hev to rattle On them kittle-drums o' yourn,— 'Taint a knowin' kind o' cattle Thet is ketched with mouldy corn; Put in stiff, you fifer feller, Let folks see how spry you be,— Guess you'll toot till you are yeller 'Fore you git ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... Must be of such unnatural degree, That monsters it: or your fore-vouch'd affection Fall into taint] ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... here, but you will need our votes when you seek to place new and important limitations upon a Constitution with which we are now satisfied. I will answer for one State, and tell you that she will not listen to a proposition that comes to her with a taint of suspicion about it. If you will not allow her representatives to participate in the examination and discussion of these propositions here, her people will reject them without discussion, if they are ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... Brigade had a different head-gear from the rest of the army and were recognized at once by their old antagonists. Some of the latter were heard to exclaim: "There are those d——d black-hatted fellows again! 'Taint no militia. It's the ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... herb which cleaner ground would never bear. The grain which becomes our bread grows best when its roots are spread in unseen corruption; and so perfect is the chemistry of nature, that the yellow ears of harvest retain absolutely no taint of the putrescence whence they sprung. Thus easily and perfectly the Lord brings lessons of holiness from examples of sin. He pauses not to apologize or explain: majestically the instruction advances, like the processes of nature, until the ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... go. The men who go leave hostages behind them. The friendship of years causes Yalois to make him the adviser of his wife in property matters. He makes him his own representative. "Thank Heaven!" cries Valois, "my wife's property is safe. No taint from me can attach to her birthright. It ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... warm enough. But it was dark, and squalid, and it reeked with the taint which only the centuries can impart. These things impressed themselves never so much upon Keeko as now, while she sat over the ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... rose: I picked it with my hand, and, you see, a drop of my blood is on it; when you can give me a rose with a drop of your blood on it as free from taint as the stain mine makes, I shall have an answer that will not be ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... modest toiler, Touched with no egoist taint, To Duty sworn, the face of the Despoiler Made him not fear ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 17, 1891 • Various
... explains the apparent helplessness of the officers. The men on their part went about the business quietly, and even rated some of their former officers as midshipmen, in special token of esteem. At the Nore, however, and in Duncan's squadron at Yarmouth, the mutiny was marked by bloodshed and taint of disloyalty, little surprising in view of the disaffected Irish, ex-criminals, impressed merchant sailors, and other unruly elements in the crews. In the end 18 men were put to death and many ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... lodgings, on the second floor of a house in Quartier Latin. The occupant of the room below, Arnold Dampierre, was with him. He was a man three or four years Cuthbert's junior, handsome, grave-eyed, and slightly built; he was a native of Louisiana, and his dark complexion showed a taint of ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... VI., but our truth and faith. I expected, mother and daughter mine, as you used to write to me, that through you these should be spread among the infidels by means of divine grace, and declared and helped among us, defended when we should see a taint appear, from those who have been or were contaminated. Now I see quite the contrary appear in you, through the evil counsel which has been given you for my sins. You have received it as one merciless toward your salvation; and I see that there will be no human creature who can restore your loss, ...
— Letters of Catherine Benincasa • Catherine Benincasa
... water blinded Ibrahim the Weeper. And there the foreign blood of my poor brother showed forth. He could not escape the taint and was weak. At the last moment he had wavered and, like a fool, ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... afraid—that this purpose originated in my sense of the contrast there would be between me and Joe, if we went to the coach together. I had pretended with myself that there was nothing of this taint in the arrangement; but when I went up to my little room on this last night, I felt compelled to admit that it might be so, and had an impulse upon me to go down again and entreat Joe to walk with me in the morning. ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... And here you see before you a man—who has also suffered a misfortune—the victim of an unconscious impulse—and who has had to stand two years of hard labor for it. Only by some great scientific achievement can this man wipe off the taint that has become attached to him without any fault of his own—but in order to arrive at some such achievement, he must have money—a lot of money—and money this minute! Don't you think that the other one, the unpunished one, would bring a little better balance into these unequal ...
— Plays by August Strindberg, Second series • August Strindberg
... swells The chime of old St. Mary's bells, Which still resound in Katie's ears As sweet as when in distant years She heard them peal with jocund din A merry English Christmas in! We pass the abbey's ruined arch, And statelier grows my Katie's march, As round her, wearied with the taint Of Transatlantic pine and paint, She sees a thousand tokens cast Of England's venerable Past! Our reverent footsteps lastly claims The younger chapel of St. James, Which, though, as English records ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... levs and bloin of men's hatts; in short, jest "fre as are" out dores. But o sextant, in our church its scarce as piety, scarce as bank bills wen agints beg for mischuns, Wich some say purty often (taint nothin to me, Wat I give aint nothin to nobody), but o sextant, u shut 500 mens wimmen and children, Speshally the latter, up in a tite place, Some has bad breths, none aint 2 swete, some is fevery, some is scrofilus, some has bad teeth, And some haint none, and some aint over clean; ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... what could be called popularity remained in England to the writers of France, and he felt himself "entitled to treat as an imbecile conceit the pretence" that a French school of thought survived in Great Britain. Such was the Podsnappery of the hour in its vigilance against moral and religious taint. ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... there was that bad Tressilian blood—notoriously bad, and never more flagrantly displayed than in the case of the late Ralph Tressilian. It was impossible that Oliver should have escaped the taint of it; nor could Sir John perceive any signs that he had done so. He displayed the traditional Tressilian turbulence. He was passionate and brutal, and the pirate's trade to which he had now set his hand was of all trades the one ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... race dependent, then by fraud and faithlessness, by cruelty and debauchery, were utterly destroying it. And finally, that by closing her eyes to the facts, because of her love for Levine, she was herself sharing the general taint. ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... living in a tainted atmosphere," he said to Marian. "We all are. I fight against the taint but how can I hope to avoid the consequences if I persist in breathing it, in absorbing it at every pore ...
— The Great God Success • John Graham (David Graham Phillips)
... door of the tent, he holding back the flap that she might enter. The valley was already in shadow, and there was no sunlight to play on her hair, but her face and figure in the mellow dusk seemed entirely winsome and adorable. There was no taint of Y.D.'s millions in the admiration that Transley bent upon her.... Of course, as an adjunct, the millions were ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... from her knees after close examination of the muddy trail, she became aware of the slightest taint in the night air—stood with delicate nostrils quivering—advanced, still conscious of the taint, listening, ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... it will be useless. And now, Reason, you are to remember, as of course you do, for Reason forgets nothing, that you are to think neither of brothers or of sisters. You are entirely to drop your feelings as Agatha, and to be pure Reason undefiled by mortal taint. You are to say, whether, were you, Reason, placed as I am now, you would marry this unreasonable young man as soon as he gets to Chatillon, which means tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that at the very latest. Now, Reason, speak, and ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... the dread, unmitigated pest Man after man, and day succeeding day, With taint voracious; like the herds they fell Of bellowing beeves, or flocks of timorous sheep: On funeral, funeral hence forever piled. E'en he who fled the afflicted, urged by love Of life too fond, and trembling for his fate, Repented soon severely, ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... that soft olive complexion which so generally gives to young men an appearance of aristocratic breeding. His hair, which was never allowed to become long, was nearly black, and was soft and silky without that taint of grease which is so common with silken-headed darlings. His eyes were long, brown in colour, and were made beautiful by the perfect arch of the perfect eyebrow. But perhaps the glory of the face was ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... which also provides for the cleansing of that part of our nature that clings to the things of life which in themselves are not sinful but are God-given blessings. Our unsanctified affections must also become purified from every taint of depravity. That this may be accomplished, it becomes necessary that the heart yield up to the death every cherished object, even though it be a God-given blessing; it must be yielded up and laid upon the altar as a "burnt offering." The affections cannot be purified ...
— Sanctification • J. W. Byers
... some sick Inniskilling Fusiliers were admitted, and for some time seemed dazed at the kind treatment they were receiving, and appeared half under the impression they were in Heaven. "What's this chummy?" queried one. "Imperial Yeomanry Hospital" was the reply. "Thank Gawd 'taint the R.A.M.C." grunted the Tommy, turning over on his side with a sigh of relief. At about ten that night we had to make room in our tent for a dozen wounded men from Thursday's fight. Ninety were being brought into Rietfontein and the I.Y. people were taking half. ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... is, as a pure melody in the scale with harmonic interpretation of instrumental rather than true vocal suggestion. His tunes are pathetic, melodious, and of truly national and popular character, the best of them almost unaccountably free from the indefinable secular taint that such qualities are apt to introduce, and which the bad following of his example did very quickly introduce in the hands of less sensitive artists. They ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... hate ingratitude more in a man, Than lying, vainness, babbling, drunkenness, Or any taint of vice. Twelfth Night, Act iii. Sc. ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... her life in which the wounded man had played his part. She remembered every look of the now closed eyes, and every expression of his well-loved features. She called to mind his words of hope, and the carefully-laid plans for his advancement. Nor was there any taint of his selfishness in her recollection of these things. Everything about him, to her, was good and true. She loved him with all the passionate intensity of one who had only just attained to perfect womanhood. He had been to her ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... their violence, were fundamentally weak. There was always some vice or passion to interrupt the continuity of their policy—even Mary, who was not the offspring of caprice, had inherited the mental taint of the Spanish house—and before the last of the family had died, while still old men were living who, as children, had seen the monasteries, nearly all this vast treasure had found its way into the pockets of the squires. In the middle of the seventeenth century ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... Kenrick, 'have him only once Where I could take him by the throat, and measure My strength with his!'—'Tut, tut! the kind physician Who warns you of some lurking taint, to which The cautery should be applied at once, Is not, in act, if not intent, your friend More certainly than he you rave against. And you've been jealous, I suppose, at times, Of the poor runaway?'—'Ay, that I have! ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... whatever the promiscuous conversation and the racy yarns meant to his associates, they meant vastly more to Lincoln. His hours of social vagrancy really completed the process of his intellectual training. It relieved his culture from the taint of bookishness. It gave substance to his humor. It humanized his wisdom and enabled him to express it in a familiar and dramatic form. It placed at his disposal, that is, the great classic vehicle of popular expression, which is the ...
— The Promise Of American Life • Herbert David Croly
... gray. The air was still, so still. It reeked with the taint of burning. It reeked with something else. There were bodies, in varying stages of decomposition, lying about, many of them burned, many of them half eaten by the wild scavengers of the region. All were mutilated in ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... belonging to his lady, next to his heart, thus believing himself proof against evil influences. There we see already spiritual love groping for material objects in order to gain earthly support; not every man is a Dante, not every man is capable of keeping his soul free from the taint of this earthly sphere. But even the "plait-cutter," so well known to the reader of newspapers, the collector of garters, and similar desperadoes, require a relic, a fetich which they apparently worship. To the same category belongs the idolatrous cult which some men, especially ...
— The Evolution of Love • Emil Lucka
... air in the veins, having variegated colours and bitter properties, as well as acid and saline qualities, contains all sorts of bile and serum and phlegm. For all things go the wrong way, and having become corrupted, first they taint the blood itself, and then ceasing to give nourishment to the body they are carried along the veins in all directions, no longer preserving the order of their natural courses, but at war with themselves, because they receive no good from one another, and are hostile to the abiding constitution ...
— Timaeus • Plato
... affects to pay his devoirs to you in public or in private. If the latter be the case, it is the most dangerous; because a man even of the most contracted understanding has always sense or instinct enough to feel that the slightest taint in the reputation of the woman who is, or who is to be, his wife, would affect his own private peace, or his honour in the eyes of the world. A husband who has in a first marriage been, as it is said, in constant ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. III - Belinda • Maria Edgeworth
... she had married Threepwood I should have had grandchildren who would have sneaked my watch while I was dancing them on my knee! There is a taint of some sort in the whole family. Father sneaks my Cheops and sonny sneaks it from father. What a gang! And the best blood in England! If that's England's idea of good blood give me Hoboken! This settles it. I was a chump ever to come to a country like this. Property isn't safe here. I'm ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... on with our story. There were times—once or twice to-night, for instance—when she ceased doing even her unconscious work. Assuredly, somewhere back in her life, something had gone amiss with this silly, helpful creature, and left a taint on her brain. The hearty, pretty smile would go suddenly from her face, something foreign looking out of it, instead, as if a pestilent thought had got into her soul; she would rise uneasily, going to the window, looking out, her forehead leaning on the glass, her body twitching ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... reserve and dignity, his reputation as a scholar, and his reticence and isolation were frequently discussed. And there was the mystery of his color. It was a disputed question among us whether the African taint could be detected in his appearance. Ray, the comrade who had revealed it, claimed that it was plainly perceptible, while Yerrinton, the oldest student among us, declared that there was not a trace of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... and sparkled. It was a scene the she-fiends revelled in,—dear are outrage and malice, and the excitement of turbulent passions, and the savage voices of frantic men, and the thirst of blood to those everlasting furies of a mob, under whatever name we know them, in whatever time they taint with their presence,—women in whom ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... who, indeed, soon had cause to look upon Vincent as one of the most powerful of their enemies. But although he hated the heresy with all the strength of his upright soul, Vincent's charitable heart went out in pity to those who were infected with its taint, and it was with compassion rather than indignation that he would speak of St. Cyran and his adherents. Not until they had been definitely condemned by the Church did he cease his efforts to win them from ...
— Life of St. Vincent de Paul • F.A. [Frances Alice] Forbes
... generally received doctrine that the sexually inverted usually belong to families in which various nervous and mental disorders prevail, but he pointed out at the same time that it is not in all cases possible to prove that we are concerned with individuals possessing a hereditary neurotic taint. He also rejected any minute classification of sexual inverts, only recognizing psycho-sexual hermaphroditism and homosexuality. At the same time he cast doubt on the existence of acquired homosexuality, in a strict sense, except in occasional cases, and he ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... from habit, grown since the dread disease struck her, as much as fear; and the fear was but another form of the ever-thoughtful maternal love. Though they were healed in person, the taint of the scourge might be in their garments ready for communication. He had no such thought. They were before him; he had called them, they had answered. Who or what should keep them from him now? Next moment the three, ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... You'll find her locked, this moment, in your son's Incestuous embrace. Believe your king. Now go; you stand amazed; you stare at me With searching eye, because of my gray hairs. Unhappy man, reflect. Queens never taint Their virtue thus: doubt it, and ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... established; in the church the oppression of the priesthood, a heartless religious indifferentism, undignified even by attempts at philosophic speculation, propagated and encouraged; and through the poisoned channels of education the taint of infidelity transmitted to generations yet unborn. Such were the evils that followed the establishment of the French domination in the conquered provinces of Germany. Doubtless, through the all-wise dispensations of that Providence who bringeth good out of evil, this fearful revolution ...
— History of Rationalism Embracing a Survey of the Present State of Protestant Theology • John F. Hurst
... is one of the family marks of this family. I won't trouble you with the others. But you must learn to know them, Queen Esther. King Solomon knew every plant from the royal cedar to the hyssop on the wall; and I am sure a queen ought to know as much. Now the blood of the Papaveraceae has a taint also; it is apt to ...
— A Red Wallflower • Susan Warner
... and loved and suffered and hoped. When she rose from the piano to a storm of applause, and saw the shining faces and tearful eyes round her, her own eyes filled with tears. These people—most of them—had known and loved her since she was a child, and loved her still without envy or any taint. Her father was standing near, and with smiling face she caught from his hand the handkerchief with which he was mopping his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... useful to the fox hunter, for he cleans out the earths. Mr. E. Dunn, late master of the Old Berkshire, tells me that they are of great service in this way, as they dig and enlarge the earths, and so prevent the taint of mange clinging to the sides if a mangy fox has lain ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish
... a-pisoning the cerulean waves an' succumambient air.' We hadn't sailed not fifty miles more before we run agin him. Their clothes were drying all about the rigging. Hails me, the varmint does. Vesp and I, we work the printing-press together, an' so order him to looward, not to taint our Otaheitans, that stink of ile at home, but I had 'em biled before I'd buy 'em, an' now they're vilets. 'Wal now, Skinflint,' says I; 'I reckon you're come to bring me that harpoon o' mine you stole last time you ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... that they are doing it in a mean way, sir; but of course soldiers hate thieves, and so the merest taint of a suspicion serves to make some of the men feel rather shy about having anything unnecessary ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... inconsistent with domestic happiness, and yet Southey was happy at home and made his home happy; he not only loved his wife and children though he was a poet, but he loved them the better because he was a poet. He seems to have been without taint of worldliness. London with its pomps and vanities, learned coteries with their dry pedantry, rather scared than attracted him. He found his prime glory in his genius, and his chief felicity in home affections. I ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... the Gods had gathered there, Each one for his allotted share— Brahma, the ruler of the sky, Sthanu, Narayan, Lord most high, And holy Indra men might view With Maruts for his retinue; The heavenly chorister, and saint, And spirit pure from earthly taint, With one accord had sought the place The high-souled monarch's rite to grace, Then to the Gods who came to take Their proper share, the hermit spake:— "For you has Dasaratha slain The votive steed, a son to gain; Stern penance-rites the King has tried, And in firm faith ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... for the walls were fairly covered with college pennants, and all manner of things connected with athletic sports, as well as pictures that indicated a love for fishing and gunning on the part of the young occupant; but every illustration was well chosen, and free from the slightest taint of anything bordering on the vulgar or the sensational. There was not a single picture of a notorious or famous boxer; or any theatrical beauties, to be seen. Evidently Hugh's fancy ran along the lines of clean sport, ...
— The Chums of Scranton High Out for the Pennant • Donald Ferguson
... reader to the daily journals 'of that period;' while we simply add, that from soup to Paaes eggs, schnaaps, and pipes, every thing passed off with unwonted hilarity and spirit. May we live to see fifty kindred gatherings of the votaries of our patron saint! . . . 'YOU don't like smokin', 'taint likely?' asked a lank free-and-easy Yankee, as he entered a room where four or five young ladies were sewing, puffing a dank 'long-nine.' 'Well, we do not,' was the immediate reply. 'Umph!' replied the smoker, removing his cigar long enough to ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... virtues of her parents is not to be compared with her chances of inheriting their vices; especially if she happens to take after her mother. There the virtue is not conspicuous, and the vice is one enormous fact. When I think of the growth of that poisonous hereditary taint, which may come with time—when I think of passions let loose and temptations lying in ambush—I see the smooth surface of the Minister's domestic life with dangers lurking under it which make me shake in my shoes. ...
— The Legacy of Cain • Wilkie Collins
... John Engle of the Marietta Nurseries advised me to plant seed from this particular tree and raise seedling trees for sale. I finally did on a small scale only. But I soon found in the young seedlings a taint of black walnut blood, which discouraged me for a further continuance. Later I had correspondence with J. F. Jones, then of Monticello, Fla., who had specialized in the propagation of all nut trees. In 1903 scions were ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... to his chariot his swift steeds, he fastened Hector's body to be dragged behind. Twice he dragged him around the tomb of Patroclus, leaving him at length stretched in the dust. But Apollo would not permit the body to be torn or disfigured with all this abuse, but preserved it free from all taint or defilement. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... native shire, himself the noblest of his race. Men said that he was proud; but he could not look round him without having something to be proud of; that he was stern and harsh to his sailors: but it was only when he saw in them any taint of cowardice or falsehood; that he was subject, at moments, to such fearful fits of rage, that he had been seen to snatch the glasses from the table, grind them to pieces in his teeth, and swallow them: but ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... a light but bitter air drawing irregularly down out of the north-west, blew directly from the man to the herd, which was too far off, however, to catch the ominous taint and take alarm. Pete's first care was to work around behind the herd till this danger should be quite eliminated. For a time his hunger was forgotten in the interest of the hunt; but presently, as he toiled his slow way through the deep of the ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... he left unfinished what is, in some ways, the most remarkable of his works, Don Juan. Long before his death he had become the prophet and hero of a pseudo-romantic school, composed of young Englishmen dazzled by his intellectual brilliancy, and attracted rather than repelled by a certain Satanic taint in his moral sentiments. But he also won the admiration of Goethe, and the reaction against his fame in a later generation is as exaggerated as the idolatry of which he was the object under the regency. His morbid egotism, his stormy rhetoric, and his meretricious exaltation of passion, have ...
— The Political History of England - Vol XI - From Addington's Administration to the close of William - IV.'s Reign (1801-1837) • George Brodrick
... interest, as well as on grounds of interest, goes forth to the world as a separate and selfish scheme of ours; and that which we believe to be entitled to the dignity and credit of an effort on behalf of the general peace, stability, and interest of Europe actually contracts a taint of selfishness in the eyes of other nations because of the manner in which the subject of Belgian neutrality is too frequently treated in this House. If I may be allowed to speak of the motives which have actuated Her Majesty's Government in the matter, ...
— Selected Speeches on British Foreign Policy 1738-1914 • Edgar Jones
... such a commission. For the weak and uneducated to be in complete subjection to the stronger and more cultivated is in strict accordance with the divinest order; only this relation must be that of dependence and providence, without a taint of selfishness. It must be humanitary or beneficent in its aims, and not inhuman and malevolent, as is always the case when the weak are subjected to distinguish, aggrandize, and enrich those who subject them. That the freedmen may be ...
— Continental Monthly, Volume 5, Issue 4 • Various
... knew Florence early enough, I am happy to say, to have heard the change for the worse, the taint of the modern order, bitterly lamented by old haunters, admirers, lovers—those qualified to present a picture of the conditions prevailing under the good old Grand-Dukes, the two last of their line in especial, that, for its blest ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... the calm, steadfast gaze of his eyes, which looked into hers with a deep yet gentle scrutiny, and resolved ere the close of the evening to sound him concerning some of the philosophic phases of the age. Had he escaped the upas taint of skepticism? An opportunity soon occurred to favor her wishes, for, chancing to allude to his visit to Rydal Mount, while in the lake region of England, the transition to a discussion of the metaphysical tone of ...
— Beulah • Augusta J. Evans
... her 's good?" said Karen. "'Taint her eyes, nor her fingers; and if the Bible didn't say there wa'n't no such a fountain, I should think her tongue was one o' them fountains that sent out at the same place both salt ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... is a very grave danger to the country in the liberty of the press, which has a most debasing influence by printing all the sensational news, and encouraging the interest in these things in the youthful mind. It must bring a paltry taint into the glorious freedom of the true American spirit, but that will right itself. He says: "They are too darned sane to suffer a scourge when once they begin to see its fruits." And while the rest were in the observation car after tea he talked to me of happiness. ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... changed to him. Liberty is sweet and bitter. He is prematurely aged and broken down; the great future that had been before him is now for ever impossible. His still undeveloped scientific theories and discoveries have been anticipated by others. He feels the prison taint upon him; he will not see Lilian until it is removed, and he has become accustomed to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... There was no taint of gas or poison fumes. The air tasted fresh except for the faint smoke, and the birds were all in full song. Yet we all had to dismount, and to let the prisoners walk, too, because the horses were too drowsy to be trusted. ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... the garden. Her mind was so full that she did not as usual observe every twig, almost every leaf, as she passed. Nor, now that she was alone, was that religious bias, which had so much to do with her daily life, very strong within her. There was no taint of hypocrisy in her character; but yet, with the force of human disappointment heavy upon her, her heart was now hot with human anger, and mutinous with human resolves. She had proposed to herself to revenge herself upon the men of her husband's family,—upon the men who had contrived that marriage ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... or so in the successive Whistlers put before the public during that time. First of all we remember pictures of ladies pale and attenuate poring with tender interest over vermilion scarfs. The taint of realism was on them, but even in them were hints of the pensive humour that was to fetch mankind in the well-known 'arrangements' at a later time. A good deal was left to the spectator's imagination ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... has to perpetuate any constitutional weakness or other hereditary taints; and he attempts to prove this by the argument that "if crosses act by virtue of being a cross, and not by virtue of removing an hereditary taint, then the greater the difference between the two animals crossed the more beneficial will that act be." He then shows that, the wider the difference the less is the benefit, and concludes that a cross, as such, has ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... its grossest form is an ineradicable hereditary taint. Generation after generation may rise and disappear in a family once tainted with it, without displaying it, and then in a most unexpected manner it will spring up in some descendant, violent ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... ever knocked at the outer door of the brain, had been chased away with mockery. And he had no sooner admitted it now than he drove it out again. He was simply afraid of it—in terror lest any suspicion of it should reach Elizabeth. Her loyalty, her single-mindedness, her freedom from the smallest taint of intrigue—he would have answered for them with all he possessed. If, for a moment, she chose to think that he had misinterpreted her kindness, her services in any vile and vulgar way, why, he ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "these sheep have got the scab of the country; if they get to my flock and taint it I am a beggar from that moment. These sheep are sure to die, so Abner and you are to kill them. He will show you how. I can't look on and see their blood and my means spilled like water. Susan, this is ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... candidates to office, they did succeed in placing their demands to advantage before the public. Humanitarians, like Horace Mann, took up independently the fight for free public education and carried it to success. In Pennsylvania, public schools, free from the taint of charity, date since 1836. In New York City the public school system was established in 1832. The same is true of the demand for a mechanics' lien law, of the abolition of imprisonment ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... to the door of Richard's room, which Hannah had left open. Then for a moment Ethelyn hesitated. It seemed almost like a sacrilege for her feet to tread the floor of that private room, for her breath to taint the atmosphere of a spot where the new wife would come. But Mrs. Dobson led her on until she stood in the center of Richard's room, surrounded by the unmistakable paraphernalia of a man, with so many things around her to remind her of the past. Surely, this was her own ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... positive sin and negative falling short of the 'glory' (which here seems to mean, as in John v. 44, xii. 43, approbation from God). 'There is no distinction,' but all varieties of condition, character, attainment, are alike in this, that the fatal taint is upon them all. 'We have, all of us, one human heart.' We are alike in physical necessities, in primal instincts, and, most tragically of all, in the common ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... enthusiastic, and their manners have the grace and spirit which seldom belong to the development of a Northern people; but upon more familiar acquaintance the vices of the social system to which they belong will be found to have infected them with their own peculiar taint; and haughty, over-bearing irritability, effeminate indolence, reckless extravagance, and a union of profligacy and cruelty which is the immediate result of their irresponsible power over their dependents, are some of the ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... like her—thet is. She's so cur'us, Dusk is. Thar aint no gettin' at her. Ye know the gals ses as she's allers doin' fust one quare thing 'n' then another to get the boys mad at each other. But Lor', p'r'aps 'taint so! Dusk's powerful good-lookin', and gals is ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... affairs, as he did mischief by leaving such a degenerate successor as his son Commodus proved to be; but it is a common observation, that A wise father has many times a foolish son, nature so contriving it, lest the taint of wisdom, like hereditary distempers, should otherwise descend by propagation. Thus Tully's son Marcus, though bred at Athens, proved but a dull, insipid soul; and Socrates his children had (as one ingeniously expresses ...
— In Praise of Folly - Illustrated with Many Curious Cuts • Desiderius Erasmus
... only by their chief; and, however debased by fortune or character, still assert the proud preeminence of their birth. A family of three hundred persons, the pure and orthodox branch of the caliph Hassan, is preserved without taint or suspicion in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and still retains, after the revolutions of twelve centuries, the custody of the temple, and the sovereignty of their native land. The fame and merit of Mahomet would ennoble a plebeian race, and the ancient blood of the Koreish transcends ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 5 • Edward Gibbon
... mere demonstration And simple work of nomenclature, Only the day I praised, not nature, But Harvey, for the circulation. I would praise such a Christ, with pride And joy, that he, as none beside, Had taught us how to keep the mind God gave him, as God gave his kind, Freer than they from fleshly taint: I would call such a Christ our Saint, As I declare our Poet, him Whose insight makes all others dim: A thousand poets pried at life, And only one amid the strife Rose to be Shakespeare: each shall take His crown, I'd say, ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... of lofty criticism, is a form of writing which, like the higher mathematics, must be free from any taint of utility. Pure literature must perforce be a form of expression, but must not condescend ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... "report hath it that you have figured in more affairs of honor than any man of your age at court. You should be a nice judge of such gear. Join me in assuring these gentlemen that they may be reconciled, and their honor receive not the least taint; and so avert a duel which would be a scandal to the community, and a menace ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... a Navvy, bearing the taint of the brute, Unasked, uncouth, unworthy out to the world I put, Stamped with the brand of labor, the heel ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... souls to the extreme, hath always comported himself as a Spanish gentleman should. This may be a lie. But if it is true, his old association with you and yours, and some humor of courage and fidelity and gentleness that I doubt not his mother gave him, have washed out the taint. Will you not reconsider your words? Give the maiden to the man. I am an old soldier, sir, and have done you some service. I would cheerfully stake my life to maintain his honor and his gentleness at ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... entirely as their author intended them to be used. They were meant to exhibit to his countrymen the whole secret of his moral and spiritual anatomy; they were intended to prove that he was altogether free from that foul and disgraceful taint of innate dishonesty, the unspoken suspicion of which in so many quarters had so long troubled him; the open utterance of which, from the lips of a popular and respectable writer, was so absolutely intolerable to him. From that imputation ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... bought for herself. She sedulously sent up remainders till they were expressly countermanded. Less economical by nature, and hungrier by habit, Mary Ann had much trouble in restraining herself from surreptitious pickings. Her conscience was rarely worsted; still there was a taint of dishonesty in her soul, else had the stairs been less of an ethical battleground for her. Lancelot's advent only made her hungrier; somehow the thought of nibbling at his provisions was too sacrilegious to be entertained. And yet—so queerly ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... the midland and southern provinces, where the taint is deepest, are indolent and cowardly, and do not know what war means. The towns are more corrupt than the country districts. But the strength of England does not lie, as on the Continent, in towns and cities. The town population are ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... advantage of nuts over meats is that they are absolutely free from any possible taint of disease. Those delectable foods, the walnut, the pecan, the hickory nut and the almond, are never the vehicle for parasites or other infections. Nuts are not subject to tuberculosis or any other disease which may be communicated ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... that it should be the four men the most free from all taint of handicraft and all base commercialism, the four pens the most entirely devoted to art, that were arraigned before the public ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... even then, though sunk in earthly dross, Corrupted all, nor its ethereal touch Quite lost, but tasting of the fountain still. As some bright river, which has rolled along Through meads of flowery light and mines of gold, When poured at length into the dusky deep, Disdains to take at once its briny taint, Or balmy freshness, of the scenes it left. But keeps unchanged awhile the lustrous tinge, And here the old man ceased—a winged train Of nymphs and genii bore him from our eyes. The fair illusion fled! and, as I ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... open, but for what reason I never could make out. The further end of this vault opens into another great vault, which I shall presently describe. The passage is very dry, but the air has a cold "gravey" taint, very unpleasant to inhale. At the second landing there is a sort of recess, into which rubbish from the garden above is shot down through a spout or funnel. At the top of the passage is a doorway opening upon the back of a house in Mason-street. This passage or tunnel ...
— Recollections of Old Liverpool • A Nonagenarian
... from Apuleius was Plania, [14] and we gather from more than one notice in the poems that she was married [15] when Tibullus paid his addresses to her. If the form of these poems is borrowed from Alexandria, the gentle pathos and gushing feeling redeem them from all taint of artificiality. In no poet, not even in Burns, is simple, natural emotion more naturally expressed. If we cannot praise the character of the man, we must admire the graceful poet. Nothing can give a truer picture ...
— A History of Roman Literature - From the Earliest Period to the Death of Marcus Aurelius • Charles Thomas Cruttwell
... to suspect the young man of a terrible taint—Poetry; with which idle disease if he be infected, there's no hope of him in astate course. Actum est of him for a commonwealth's man, if he goto't in rhyme once. Ben Jonson's ...
— Rob Roy, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... and ceremonies of the order forbid the presence of women;" and "the law proclaiming her exclusion is as unrepealable as that of the Medes and Persians." (P. 145.) Again: "Masonry requires candidates for its honors to have been free by birth; no taint of slavery or dishonor must rest upon their origin." (P. 143.) Once more this author remarks: "A candidate for Masonry must be physically perfect. As under the Jewish economy no person who was maimed or defective in his physical organism, though of the tribe ...
— Secret Societies • David MacDill, Jonathan Blanchard, and Edward Beecher
... alone my lady had a right. He told the Frenchman that this Mrs. Taylor was distantly related to him—that she had inherited the seeds of madness from her mother, as indeed Dr. Mosgrave had informed Monsieur Val; and that she had shown some fearful tokens of the lurking taint that was latent in her mind; but that she was not to be called "mad." He begged that she might be treated with all tenderness and compassion; that she might receive all reasonable indulgences; but he impressed upon Monsieur Val, that under no circumstances was she to be ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... been so pure from the smallest taint of earthliness, it can only be because he is a Seer, that he knows of crime. Not Julian's little (no, great) angel heart and life are freer from any intention or act of wrong than his. And this is best proof to me of the absurdity of ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... Harris's picture on the front page of the Times. Here was one Controller who neither looked nor acted like a megalomaniac. That wouldn't make much difference to the PD Police; as far as the officials were concerned, the ability to project telepathically and the taint of delusions of grandeur went hand in hand. Controllers were power-mad ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)
... smiling and follow the Golden Rule far nearer than those who live by trade and are blest by civilization. Ah, that I might see such a people! The nearest I ever came was at Honolulu, and there was the taint of the Christian, alack-a-day! The White Man's Burden is the weight of the load of sin, disease, death, and misfortune he has dropped on the happy ones who never knew a Christian creed. We have given them bath tubs ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... holy monster, with his lurking spies, his villainous casuistries, his flames and devils, and red-hot pincers, and whips of steel, has been defeated by the humanity he scorned and the knowledge he feared, yet he has left a taint behind him. It is still held that it ought to be an unpleasant thing ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford
... said that the German witnesses are imaginative and enthusiastic, and their confidence ought to be distrusted. That kind of enthusiasm is at least of a quiet sort, evidently the result of profound conviction and certainly free from any taint of worldly interest, and is by no means incompatible with the most perfect conscientiousness. If they are mistaken as to the identity of the plaintiff; if there be in truth two persons about the same age bearing a strong resemblance to the family of Miller [Mueller] and having the same identical ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... anger, and at these times the coarsest and vilest expressions would stream from his lips in a voice of crystalline purity that might have belonged to some little chorister chanting the Ave Maria. He would even try to assume a hoarse roughness of tone, seek to degrade and taint that exquisite freshness of childhood which made him resemble a bambino on the Madonna's knees. The fish-wives laughed at him till they cried; and he, encouraged, could scarcely say a couple of words without rapping out an oath. But in ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... coarseness, a possibility of weakness—which in the eyes of some, and of his sister among them, marred the grace and beauty of his features. Yet, as he was wont himself to say, when one thinks that each poor mortal is heir to a legacy of every evil trait or bodily taint of so vast a line of ancestors, lucky indeed is the man who does not find that Nature has scored up some long-owing family debt upon ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... interior; and both my eyes and spirit seemed drawn from the gloomy house—from the grey-hollow filled with rayless cells, as it appeared to me—to that sky expanded before me,—a blue sea absolved from taint of cloud; the moon ascending it in solemn march; her orb seeming to look up as she left the hill-tops, from behind which she had come, far and farther below her, and aspired to the zenith, midnight dark ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... to all lovers of freedom, to all true patriots, and to the Christian and philanthropist. It also afforded a superb opportunity for the old leaders in the South, who were not entirely relieved from the taint of secession, to come out and reconsecrate themselves to the country and her flag. Hence, Southern statesmen, who were utterly opposed to Negroes or colored men having any share in ruling at home, became very enthusiastic over the aspirations of the colored Cuban patriots and soldiers. The supporters, ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... ourselves to Him by faith. God will remit the death penalty to all who are "in Christ" and "justified by faith"; that is, we shall all rise from the dead as He rose. Apparently Paul's belief was that no one would ever have died but for the sin of Adam, a taint which has affected all Adam's descendants. Death in his view was ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... him to believe that he was in little danger of injury, much less death. Kapolski, reckless, a despiser of all things American, eagerly consented to the plan, and Ugo saw a way to rid himself of a dangerous rival without the taint of suspicion besmirching his cloak. Sallaconi was an accomplished swordsman, but it would have been unwise to send him against Quentin. Ugo himself was a splendid shot and an expert with the blade, and it was not cowardice that kept him from taking the affair in his ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... the coloring of this picture may appear, it is but a taint and imperfect sketch of the original. You must remember a thousand unutterable calamities; a thousand instances of domestic as well as national anxiety and distress; which mock description. You ought to remember them; you ought to hand ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... arranged. It is not re-formation, but re-novation, or, to go deeper still, re-generation, that the world needs; not new forms, but a new life; not the culture and development of what it has in itself, but extirpation of the old by the infusion of something now and pure that has no taint of corruption, nor any contact with evil. 'Verily, I say unto you, ye must be ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... I had a young man's differences with my cousin, as lads will fall out, but there was the making of a fine fellow in him. But it was the wife, bringing in that Greek taint, worse even than the Italian, so that there's no believing a word out ...
— Beechcroft at Rockstone • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rivers on their backs. As the season advances and the water becomes chilled, they are flung in myriads on the shores, where the wolves and bears assemble to banquet on them. Often they rot in such quantities along the river banks as to taint the atmosphere. They are commonly from ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... Office— clerks and chiefs of certain bureaus, whom the land-grabbers kept on their private pay-rolls. This was a matter of public record. Fortunately for the government, however, it has generally managed to secure for the head of the Land Department able and incorruptible men to whom no taint of suspicion attached—men whom the land-grabbers ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... an American in his "Promise of American Life," pp. 89-99.] has observed, had no "embarrassing effects," because he shared so completely and genuinely the amusements and occupations of his neighborhood. No "taint of bookishness" disturbed the local fellowships which gave him opportunity to express in "familiar and dramatic form" of story and illustration his more substantial philosophy and so find for it the perfect speech. His neighbors called him by homely, affectionate ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... trapper will never succeed, unless he thoroughly enters into the habits of life and mind of wild animals. He must ever bear in mind how suspicious they are; how quickly their eye is caught by unusual traces; and, lastly, how strong and enduring a taint is left by the human touch. Our own senses do not make us aware of what it is disagreeable enough to acknowledge, that the whole species of man yields a powerful and wide-spreading emanation, that ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... generations. If two of these hybrids between the weak-minded and the strong-minded marry each other, one-quarter of the children will be feeble-minded, one-quarter thoroughbred strong-minded and the remaining half, though apparently strong-minded, will carry the taint in them just as their parents did. They are half-breeds. On the other hand, if two feeble-minded people marry, all of the children will be feeble-minded. Certainly we can and ought to forbid ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... and sobs and lamentations that rose around him, seemed far off and distant in his ear. "O eternity, eternity! I am going—I am going," he thought; and in that hour, strange to tell, not one of all his good deeds seemed good enough to lean on—all bore some taint or tinge, to his purified eye, of mortal selfishness, and seemed unholy before the ALL PURE. "I am going," he thought; "there is no time to stay, no time to alter, to balance accounts; and I know not what I am, but I know, O Jesus, what ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... have spoken. As the mother was a slave, the children were so also at their birth, but they had been manumitted by their father. One of them was being educated in Germany; and it was intended that both should spend their lives in that country, the taint in their blood being an insuperable bar to their ever acquiring social position at ...
— Continental Monthly - Volume 1 - Issue 3 • Various
... merely to those who care about Africa, or the great schemes to his zeal for which he fell a martyr, but to all who take delight in the spectacle of unbounded courage and heroic ardour, unalloyed with any taint of ferocity, ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... schools the young folk are scarcely treated as human; their individuality—if they have any to begin with—is soon lost; they are known only by a number, and they are passed into the outer world like bundles of shot rubbish. There are seamen who have never cast off the peculiar workhouse taint—and no worse shipmates ever afflicted any capable and honourable soul: for these Union weeds carry the vices of Rob the Grinder and Noah Claypole on to blue water, and show themselves to be hounds who would fawn or snarl, steal or talk saintliness, lie or sneak just as interest ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... of February, about noon, we arrived at Evansville, on the Indiana side of the river. This was the prettiest place we had yet seen; and its charms were enhanced by the assurance that it was free from the taint of slavery. The rise of this little town has been rapid. Its population is about 3,000. Three "churches," with their neat and graceful spires, rising above the other buildings, were conspicuous ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... civil from her military power. All states of the world, however great, fall at once when they use mercenary armies; and although it is a less instant form of error (because involving no national taint of cowardice), it is yet an error no less ultimately fatal—it is the error especially of modern times, of which we cannot yet know all the calamitous consequences—to take away the best blood and strength of the nation, ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... resound in Katie's ears As sweet as when in distant years She heard them peal with jocund din A merry English Christmas in! We pass the abbey's ruined arch, And statelier grows my Katie's march, As round her, wearied with the taint Of Transatlantic pine and paint, She sees a thousand tokens cast Of England's venerable Past! Our reverent footsteps lastly claims The younger chapel of St. James, Which, though, as English records run, Not old, had seen full many a sun, Ere to the ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... neither of them had the least venereal Complaint. In a few Days afterwards, two Soldiers in other Hospitals, towards the Decline of very bad Petechial Fevers, had likewise Buboes formed in the Groin, without any Suspicion of a venereal Taint. Except in these three, I did not see any critical Buboes appear in this Fever while I was with the Troops in Germany; tho' Mr. Lovet, who served as a Mate to the Hospitals, and who was at Hoxter, where ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... the better for the class he has to address. His powers are uncommon and unfettered in their play; his aim is worthy. He is fulfilling and will fulfil an important task as an educator of the people, if all be not marred by a taint of self-love and arrogance now obvious in his discourse. This taint is not surprising in one so young, who has done so much, and in order to do it has been compelled to great self-confidence and light heed of the authority ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... young in mind and in habits long after youth had left her. I was said to be the image of what she was when she rivalled Madame de Hautefort in the affections of the late King. You must consider, sweetheart, that he was the most moral of men, and that with him love meant a passion as free from sensual taint as the preferences of a sylph. I think my good grandmother loved me all the better for this fancied resemblance. She would arrange her jewels about my hair and bosom, as she had worn them when Buckingham came wooing for his master; ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... see its close. In some of his writings he affects one unpleasantly, gives an uncanny feeling; one divines the invalid as well as the mystic back of them; there is a hectic flush, perhaps a neurotic taint. Beautiful, yes, but not the beauty of health and sanity. It is the same indescribable feeling I get in reading that pathetically beautiful book, "The Road-Mender," by "Michael Fairless"—the gleam of the White Gate is seen all along ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... bottle of it," answered Tom: "I wouldn't use such rot-gut stuff, no, not for vinegar. 'Taint half so good as that red sherry you had up here oncet; that was poor weak stuff, too, but it did well to make milk punch of; it did well ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... since you ask me," was the reply, "I'd shape a course due north. We'd be in the track of craft making up and down Channel before it gets dark. If we don't fall in with any vessel, we can carry on. 'Taint so very far to land, considering the number of hands we've got in ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... duplicity on his part, he got plenty of slander. His evil genius had prompted him, not to listen seriously to the temptings of the monk, but to deal with him on his own terms. He was obliged to justify himself against public suspicion with explanations and pamphlets, but some taint of the calumny stuck by him to ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... hold it a religious duty To love and worship children's beauty; They've least the taint of earthly clod, They're freshest from the hand of God; With heavenly looks they make us sure The heaven that made them must be pure; We love them not in earthly fashion, But with a beatific passion. I chanced to, yesterday, behold ...
— Life and Literature - Over two thousand extracts from ancient and modern writers, - and classified in alphabetical order • J. Purver Richardson
... against her, but I do as I'd be done by, and give you a friendly warning, such as I'd have anybody do by a child of mine, if they was around the world. For my part, I always consider it a safe plan to wait and see what other people think about them, before I make up to anybody myself. 'Taint expected that a woman that's got a character to lose should commit herself in the eyes of the world. Remember, too, that on account of your being in a public capacity, so to speak, you'd ought to be more particular about your morals. It's expected ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... world, as the daughter of Norman Westfall, to protect her from any consequences incident to his possible discovery and enforced return to Houdania, it is impossible to say. Hating royalty as he did, he may have sought thus to shield his daughter from its taint. Why he weakened and consigned the secret to paper—how or when he hid it in an ancient candlestick in the home of Norman Westfall, remains shrouded in utter mystery. It is but one of the ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... the mangroves brown, where the mud-reef sucks and draws, Moored by the heel to his own keel to wait for the land-crab's claws! He is lazar within and lime without, ye can nose him far enow, For he carries the taint of a musky ship — the reek of the slaver's dhow!" The skipper looked at the tiering guns and the bulwarks tall and cold, And the Captains Three full courteously peered down at the gutted hold, And the Captains Three called courteously ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... it made him head of the Government. And it was to this noble quality of his character that he owed his death. Corruption had grown up in connection with the offices of State, and Garfield's last mission was to purge the Government of this taint. He was resolved to set his face against "the waste of time and the obstruction to public business caused by the greedy crowd of office-seekers." And he also announced that "rigid honesty and faithful service would be required from every ...
— The Story of Garfield - Farm-boy, Soldier, and President • William G. Rutherford
... neither Day nor Night, Knowledge or Ignorance, Vice or Virtue; but a kind of Olio of them all. Even the highest Characters have their weak-sides, and the most refin'd, their Defects and their Failures, with all the Infirmities which Flesh is heir to, and this World where we dwell is apt to taint Men with. Nay I must tell you in some Verses of mine, which never fell ...
— A Dialogue Between Dean Swift and Tho. Prior, Esq. • Anonymous
... cause we are here speaking of. This consideration of the thing itself, at a time when I thought not I the least on the subject which I am now treating of, suggested it to me. And if this be a weakness to which all men are so liable, if this be a taint which so universally infects mankind, the greater care should be taken to lay it open under its due name, thereby to excite the greater care ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... insidious, fetid force as best she might. She was not evil by nature. She had been well grounded in principles of righteousness. Nevertheless, though she maintained the integrity of her character, that character suffered from the taint. There developed over the girl's original sensibility a shell of hardness, which in time would surely come to make her less scrupulous in her ...
— Within the Law - From the Play of Bayard Veiller • Marvin Dana
... was not aware of it. Is inconstancy to women cruelty and want of principle? If so, all men must bear the brunt of the accusation with me. For men were originally barbarians, and always looked upon women as toys or slaves; the barbaric taint is not out of us yet, I assure you,—at any rate, it is not out of me. I am a pure savage; I consider the love of woman as my right; if I win it, I enjoy it as long as I please, but no longer,—and not all the forces of heaven and earth should bind me to any woman ...
— Ziska - The Problem of a Wicked Soul • Marie Corelli
... description of how he had striven to find a girl who had the strong qualities his family germ plasm seemed to have lost, mainly, I gathered, resistance to a taint much like manic depressive insanity. And as he talked, it was borne in on me that, after all, contrary to my first prejudice, there was nothing very romantic indeed about disregarding the plain teachings of science on the subject ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... translator less immediately under Wyclif's influence. The freedom with which the Bible admittedly circulated for many years, and the well-known allusion by Sir Thomas More to an English translation untouched by any taint of heresy, point also in the same direction. That the second version is really only a revision of the first can hardly be adduced as a strong argument on the other side. The ethics of literary acknowledgment ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... which had so unintentionally been exposed to his view? Why, too, had he evinced so much anxiety to remove from his mind all unfavourable impressions in regard to his mother? Why have been so energetic in his caution not to suffer a taint of impurity to attach to her memory? Why should he have supposed the possibility of such impression, unless there had been sufficient cause for it? In what, moreover, originated his triumphant expression of feature, when, on that occasion, he reminded him that HIS name was not Reginald? ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... of consumption; some phases of struma or scrofula; many forms of cachectic feebleness and impaired physical build—what are denominated delicate states of constitution—these and other types of disease are so directly or indirectly connected with the "specific" taint, it becomes impossible to be too careful in tracing it out, or in measuring the degree to which it extends in the field of morbid phenomenon, in our efforts to improve the vitality of the colored people and to enlighten them ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... of the Triumph of Death that one stays longest, trying to understand the dainty treatment of so horrible a subject. Those fair ladies riding on horseback with so brave a show of cavaliers, even they too must come at last to be just dust, is it, or like that swollen body, which seems to taint even the summer sunshine, lying there by the wayside, and come upon so unexpectedly? What love-song was that troubadour, fluttering with ribbons, singing to that little company under the orange-trees, cavaliers and ladies returned from the chase, or whiling away a summer afternoon ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... silent. At last I turned to him in the Cabinet meeting and I said, 'I should like to hear from the Attorney General on the legality of what we are doing.' Mr. Knox looked up and said, 'Mr. President, if I were you I should not have the slightest taint of ...
— The Mirrors of Washington • Anonymous
... shrewdness of your reply," rejoined Aram; "but note how far more pure and lovely are its waters in these retreats, than when washing the walls of the reeking town, receiving into its breast the taint of a thousand pollutions, vexed by the sound, and stench, and unholy perturbation of men's dwelling-place. Now it glasses only what is high or beautiful in nature—the stars or the leafy banks. The wind that ruffles it, is clothed with perfumes; the rivulet that swells it, ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Oh, 'taint bein' poor I mind," laughed Willie, now quite himself again. "It's knowin' nothin' an' bein' nothin' that discourages me. If I'd only had the chance to learn somethin' when I was a youngster I wouldn't have to be goin' it blind now ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... democracy detected in him no taint of the patronizing or supercilious, and if he was new to the backwoods, he paid his arrears of knowledge with the ready ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... Psyche—fresh upon her lips Alit the visionary butterfly, 290 Waiting my word to enter and make bright, Or flutter off and leave all blank as first. This body had no soul before, but slept Or stirred, was beauteous or ungainly, free From taint or foul with stain, as outward things 295 Fastened their image on its passiveness; Now, it will wake, feel, live—or die again! Shall to produce form out of unshaped stuff Be Art—and further, to evoke a soul From form be nothing? This new ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... with all, compact of courtesy: Real heroism is real piety: Before small truth great falsehoods shrink and faint If pots stain worse than pipkins, it were quaint To charge the pipkins with impurity: Freedom I crave: who craves not to be free? Yet life that must be feigned for, leaves a taint. Ill conduct brings repentance?—If you prate This wise to me, why prate not thus to all Philosophers and prophets, and to Christ? Not too much learning, as some arrogate, But the small brains of dullards have sufficed To make us wretched ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... it would be easy to sell the lands to the government for the benefit of the negro, by resorting to the usual methods of influencing votes, Senator Dilworthy was unwilling to have so noble a charity sullied by any taint of corruption—he was resolved that not a vote should be bought. Nobody could get anything definite from Laura about these matters, and so gossip had to feed itself chiefly upon guesses. But the effect of it all was, that Laura was considered to be very wealthy and likely to be vastly more ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 4. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... shook his head. "That cuts no ice. Hard luck, sonny, but we've got to take our medicine in this world. 'Taint no medicine for kids, though," ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... bags, ground again in the mill, then replaced in the bags, and pressed a second time. The water used in the process of making oil must be quite pure; the mill, press, bags, and vessels sweet and clean, as the least taint would ruin the quality of the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 443, June 28, 1884 • Various
... as a natural consequence of the above, limitations to the contact of persons of differing castes. If a Brahman cannot eat with a Sudra, because it supposedly brings a taint to his pure blood, no more can he, with impunity, come into personal contact with him. The touch of such is pollution to his august and pure person; and the very air the low castes breathe brings to his soul and body taint and poison. This ...
— India, Its Life and Thought • John P. Jones
... voice of the angel; and early in the morning he found those men, and by his preaching he converted them unto the faith, and being converted, he baptized them in that fountain, and when baptized, he purified them from the leprous taint of either man. And this miracle when published abroad, was accounted a fair presage and a present sanction of the future city. And the angel, at the prayers of Patrick, removed far from thence an exceeding huge stone which lay in the wayside, and which ...
— The Most Ancient Lives of Saint Patrick - Including the Life by Jocelin, Hitherto Unpublished in America, and His Extant Writings • Various
... the blood of other races. It is a well-known fact in the crossing of breeds that the best traits predominate in the result. We in this land, have gained much from the purity of those bloods; we have suffered little from the taint. ...
— Modern Eloquence: Vol III, After-Dinner Speeches P-Z • Various
... there was, a light but bitter air drawing irregularly down out of the north-west, blew directly from the man to the herd, which was too far off, however, to catch the ominous taint and take alarm. Pete's first care was to work around behind the herd till this danger should be quite eliminated. For a time his hunger was forgotten in the interest of the hunt; but presently, as he toiled his slow way through the deep of ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... said Lilac, drawing up her little figure. "I'm stronger nor what I look. 'Taint the work as I mind—" She stopped, and her eyes filled suddenly ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... that kingdom wage war on wrong, And the clash of their swords is sweet as song; Fair are the maids, and so pure from taint The flash of their eyes turns sinner to saint; There reptile is none, nor the ravening beast; There light has no shadow, no end ...
— The Legends of Saint Patrick • Aubrey de Vere
... "Shraj"oil extracted from rape seed but especially from sesame. The Persians pronounce it "Sraj" (apparently unaware that it is their own word "Shrah"juice in Arabic garb) and have coined a participle "Musayrij" e.g., B-i- musayrij, taint of sesame-oil applied especially to the Jews who very wisely prefer, in Persia and elsewhere, oil which is wholesome to butter which is not. The Moslems, however, declare that its immoderate use in cooking taints the ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton
... Continent. Next day, Dr. Mosgrave, a mental specialist, arrived from London. He was fully informed of the history of Lady Audley, examined her, and finally reported to Robert: "The lady is not mad, but she has a hereditary taint in her blood. She has the cunning of madness, with the prudence of intelligence. She is dangerous." He gave Robert a letter addressed to Monsieur Val, Villebrumeuse, Belgium, who, he said, was the proprietor and medical superintendent ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... Hal's memory. He stared at the sinister oblong of type, vaguely sensing in its covert promises the taint, yet failing to apprehend the full ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... there no taint of lesser passion, nothing of less noble emotion; only a fearless and overwhelming acknowledgment of her craving to employ the gifts with which her womanhood endowed her—love and life, ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... virtue and the moral sublime. His respectable Books on the Opera and other topics are now all forgotten, and crave not to be mentioned. To me he is not supremely beautiful, though much the gentleman in manners as in ruffles, and ingeniously logical:—rather yellow to me, in mind as in skin, and with a taint of obsolete Venetian Macassar. But to Friedrich he is thrice-dear; who loves the Sharp faceted cut of the man, and does not object to his yellow or Extinct-Macassar qualities of mind. Thanks to that wandering Baltimore ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... misshapen little scoundrel's eye, when bringing home her husband in a state of beastly intoxication, and for this reason, independently of her knowledge of his vile and heartless disposition, and infamous character, she detested him. After entering, he looked about him, and even with the taint light of the rush she could mark that his unnatural and revolting features were lit up ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... so human, and a youth of all but monastic seclusion had prepared her to love the man who aimed with frank energy at the joys of life. A taint of pedantry would have repelled her. She did not ask for high intellect or great attainments; but vivacity, courage, determination to succeed, were delightful to her senses. Her ideal would not have been a literary man at all; ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing
... purity as a mere human being. It was contended, that having been predestined from the beginning as the Woman, through whom the divine nature was made manifest on earth, she must be presumed to be exempt from all sin, even from that original taint inherited from Adam. Through the first Eve, we had all died; through the second Eve, we had all been "made alive." It was argued that God had never suffered his earthly temple to be profaned; had even ...
— Legends of the Madonna • Mrs. Jameson
... wild-hearted, pitifully ignorant. I thought that love had come to me. Girls are so eager for love. They snatch at the shadow of it.—That is what I did.—I am not trying to plead for myself.—Some things are not to be forgiven.—Somewhere in my nature there was a taint—a plague-spot.—If life is given me, I shall find it and root it out. I only ask for time to do that. But meanwhile I have done what I could. I have told you the truth. I have set you free. I have ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... set guards and send telegraph descriptions of him in all directions. 'Taint likely he can get clean away. He'll be a marked ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... and seek the food for mind and soul which gives rest and peace. Seek Christ, and through him victory over self and over sin. Do something to brighten your home life and to honor your Master. Clear your soul from the taint of vanity. Do not rejoice in conquests, either that your power to allure may be seen by other women, or for the pleasure of rousing passionate, feelings that gratify your love of excitement. It must happen, no doubt, that frank and generous women will excite ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... the man, with a facetious gesture. "See? The fight came through these here woods, here. 'Taint been much over twenty-four hours, I reckon, since every one o' them-ah sort o' shut-up-fan-shape sort o' fish-traps had a gray-jacket in it layin' flat down an' firin' through the rails, sort o' random-like, only not much so." His manner of speech seemed a sort of harlequin patchwork from the ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... Apostle did not shrink from the society of his body, as regards the nature of the body, in fact in this respect he was loth to be deprived thereof, according to 2 Cor. 5:4: "We would not be unclothed, but clothed over." He did, however, wish to escape from the taint of concupiscence, which remains in the body, and from the corruption of the body which weighs down the soul, so as to hinder it from seeing God. Hence he says expressly: "From the ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... developing a collection agency, and gradually represented the Bad Accounts Department of more and more important concerns. At thirty- five he was out of debt. They were living well—too well it proved, for his nervous health. There must have been a neurotic taint, as expressed in Aunt Fannie's asthma. Early that fall he had his first attack of hay-fever. For years he had been self-indulgent; he always drank when drinks were offered; he used much tobacco and rich food. ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll
... a diseased imagination and morbid feelings; the latter, beautiful and virtuous, and instilling something of her own excellence into the wild heart of her brother, but not enough to cure the deep taint of his nature. The third person was a wizard; a small, gray, withered man, with fiendish ingenuity in devising evil, and superhuman power to execute it, but senseless as an idiot and feebler than a child to all ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... his father. "'Taint no door open to us or the likes on us. There ain't no open door for the likes of us but the ...
— Weighed and Wanting • George MacDonald
... the scene. At the spot where the game had entered the water stood the black hound, sniffing the air for some taint of ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... steps, and left me darkling in the abyss of wretchedness. Such as you describe this happy fair, was once my Serafina, rich in every grace of mind and body which nature could bestow. Had it pleased Heaven to bless her with a lover like Renaldo! but no more, the irrevocable shaft is fled. I will not taint your enjoyment ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... made the world, entered into the womb of the Virgin in the form (if I may with reverence say so) of a new organic cell; and around it, through the virtue of his creative energy, a material body grew again of the substance of his mother, pure of taint and clean as the first body of the first man was clean when it passed out under his hand in the beginning of all things. In Him thus wonderfully born was the virtue which was to restore the lost ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... Khein Lakonlen, is entitled to the first rank. He composed about forty-nine books in lyric and dramatic verse, besides epigrams and elegies. Of his many poems, the few that remain afford passages of much elegance and sweetness, and even of sublimity,—almost sufficient to atone for the taint of grossness he derived from the licentious imagination of his land and time. While yet hardly out of his infancy, he was laid at the feet of the monarch, and reared in the palace at Lophaburee. Some dramatic pieces composed ...
— The English Governess At The Siamese Court • Anna Harriette Leonowens
... blundered on it unwittingly, eaten ignorantly and surely died?... Or was he going mad? Good God! Could that be it? Was there something they hadn't told him—a strange taint in his blood, or his mother's blood.... Would he end his days in a madhouse.... What a fate, what a dreadful fate! A slavering gray-headed man, wandering through the Valley of the Black ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... do occur do not depend on the close interbreeding itself, but on the tendency it has to perpetuate any constitutional weakness or other hereditary taints; and he attempts to prove this by the argument that "if crosses act by virtue of being a cross, and not by virtue of removing an hereditary taint, then the greater the difference between the two animals crossed the more beneficial will that act be." He then shows that, the wider the difference the less is the benefit, and concludes that a cross, as such, ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... in the scale with harmonic interpretation of instrumental rather than true vocal suggestion. His tunes are pathetic, melodious, and of truly national and popular character, the best of them almost unaccountably free from the indefinable secular taint that such qualities are apt to introduce, and which the bad following of his example did very quickly introduce in the hands of less sensitive artists. They are ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... morality and medical knowledge among their unmarried women, it did not take many years after the appearance of the Whites to taint the race throughout with certain diseases. A cold-blooded passage in Crozet's journal tells of the beginning of this curse. Though not altogether unskilful surgeons, the Maoris knew virtually nothing of medicine. Nor do they show much nervous power when attacked ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... anxious year there had been fear of lung trouble, and mental agitation of any kind told quickly upon him. Margot's thoughts flew longingly to the northern glen where the wind blew fresh and cool over the heather, with never a taint of smoke and grime to mar its God- given purity. All that would be medicine indeed, after the year's confinement in the murky city! Ron would lift up his head again, like a plant refreshed with dew; body and mind alike would then ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... (and among those who scaled the carriages, were many of the commonest men and boys), than for its innocent vivacity. For, odd as it may seem to say so, of a sport so full of thoughtlessness and personal display, it is as free from any taint of immodesty as any general mingling of the two sexes can possibly be; and there seems to prevail, during its progress, a feeling of general, almost childish, simplicity and confidence, which one thinks of with a pang, when the Ave Maria has rung ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... to God," Lincoln said, in response to the serenade, "for this approval of the people; but while grateful for this mark of their confidence in me, if I know my heart, my gratitude is free from any taint of personal triumph. I do not impugn the motives of any one opposed to me. It is no pleasure to me to triumph over any one, but I give thanks to the Almighty for this evidence of the people's resolution to stand by free government and ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... masculine, naive, rowdyish, Laugher, weeper, worker, idler, citizen, countryman, Saunterer of woods, stander upon hills, summer swimmer in rivers or by the sea, Of pure American breed, of reckless health, his body perfect, free from taint from top to toe, free forever from headache and dyspepsia, clean-breathed, Ample-limbed, a good feeder, weight a hundred and eighty pounds, full-blooded, six feet high, forty inches round the breast and back, Countenance sunburnt, ...
— Whitman - A Study • John Burroughs
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