"Dirt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old men and the women came with a good store of berries; item, my old maid, with the cow's tail and mane, who brought word that the whole house was turned upside down, the windows all broken, and the books and writings trampled in the dirt in the midst of the street, and the doors torn off their hinges. This, however, was a less sorrow to me than the chalices; and I only bade the people make springes and snares, in order next morning to begin our fowling, with the help of Almighty God. I therefore scraped the rods myself ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... with an effort beyond his years. Not more than any other youngster did he like to eat dirt or to be misjudged, but he saw himself in a cleft stick. The train rolled out of ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... over in his mind, cautiously. A good deal of his attention was needed for the task of nursing his old car along the ruts of the dirt road, but the murmured exclamation impelled him to steal a glance at the boy sitting beside him. This was the spring of Timmy's tenth year—the sixth year of his friendship with "Uncle" Phil—and those years had taught Phil ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... for how many days we traveled across that sad and saddening land, Fred always cheerful in spite of everything, Will more angry at each village with its dirt and sores, Brown moaning always about his lovely herd of cows, and I groaning oftener ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... clothes were in rags—torn to pieces by the thrusts of the sharp pointed bamboos, to which they had daily been subjected—the bad food, the cramped position, and the misery which they suffered had worn both lads to skeletons; their hair was matted with filth, their faces begrimed with dirt. Percy was so weak that he felt he could not stand. Fothergill, being three years older, was less exhausted, but he knew that he, too, could not support his sufferings for many days longer. Their bodies were covered with sores, and try as they would they were able to catch only ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... three frescoes by Perugino and two lunettes of his own upon the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel for his new scheme. He is said to have had the wall rebuilt of well-baked bricks, so possibly the old frescoes had suffered from damp and dirt. Vasari says Fra Sebastiano del Piombo prepared the wall for Michael Angelo, and secretly had it grounded for oil painting, no doubt hoping himself to be employed in the work, as oil was his special medium. Michael Angelo was very wroth with his old friend for ...
— Michael Angelo Buonarroti • Charles Holroyd
... ally stronger than itself, perishes by the assistance it receives. But the contrivers of this scheme of government will not trust solely to the military power; because they are cunning men. Their restless and crooked spirit drives them to rake in the dirt of every kind of expedient. Unable to rule the multitude, they endeavor to raise divisions amongst them. One mob is hired to destroy another; a procedure which at once encourages the boldness of the ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. I. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... part board, and she helped them about their kingdom, and kept it in good order for them, and left them plenty of time to play and enjoy themselves. She was the greatest person for order there ever was; and if she found a speck of dust or dirt on the kingdom anywhere, she would have out the whole army and make them wash it up, and then sand-paper the place, and polish it with a coarse towel till it perfectly glistened. The father of the Prince and Princess had taken the precaution, before he died, to subdue all his enemies; ...
— Christmas Every Day and Other Stories • W. D. Howells
... saying. Only a few days after that, I found one of their little wooden images, painted and feathered like a Delight-Maker, in my cave. It was an invitation. It smelled of Kokomo and I scratched dirt on it. Then came Tse-tse, and as he turned the little Koshare over in his hand, I saw that there were many things had come into his head which would never come into mine. Presently I heard him laugh as he did when he had hit upon some new trick for splitting the people's ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... furniture, or any article of convenience or common decency. The woman and her children were seen seated on the floor, surrounded by pigs and poultry: the man lounging at the door, which could be approached only through mud and filth: the former too slatternly to sweep the dirt and offal from the door, the latter too lazy to make a dry footway, though the materials were close at hand. If the mother were asked why she did not keep herself and her children clean with a stream of water running near the cabin, her answer invariably was—Sure, ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... all snobs," answered Madelene tranquilly. "It's one of the deepest dyes of the dirt we came from, the hardest ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... cried hysterically, "I suppose so! I shall have to go through another scene and be spoken to as if—as if I were dirt under these women's feet instead of being as far above them in—in position and education and refinement as the clouds. Why can't I have peace—just a little peace and quiet? Why must I always have to undergo humiliation ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Holbrook returned, he proposed a walk in the fields; but the two elder ladies were afraid of damp, and dirt, and had only very unbecoming calashes to put on over their caps; so they declined, and I was again his companion in a turn which he said he was obliged to take to see after his men. He strode along, either wholly forgetting my existence, or ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... the front-line trenches. The explosion had blown a big hole in the ground and damaged some food stores, but that was all, except that when the Americans were about to answer roll call they were knocked down by the concussion, and some, like Ned, were scratched and cut by flying dirt and stones, or perhaps by fragments ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... direction, their nature (macadamized, corduroy plank, dirt, etc.), their condition of repair, their grade, the nature of crossroads, and the points where they leave the main roads; their borders (woods, hedges, fences or ditches), the places at which they pass through defiles, cross heights ...
— Manual of Military Training - Second, Revised Edition • James A. Moss
... in hot weather, dyed wid red dirt or mulberries, or stained wid green wa'nuts—dat is de hulls. Never had much exchanging of clothes in cold weather. In dat day us haul wood eight or ten feet long. De log houses was daubed wid ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... Ralph,' said Mrs. Hodge, heartily, for she knew that Ralph's influence was great. 'Now for a pail of fresh water, and let me see if I cannot get all this dirt off this poor fellow's ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... and shade—light, forsooth!—or for its Prout-like quality, or for its quality of this, that, and the other, while inside the real stye, at the very moment when the auctioneer knocks down the drawing amidst applause, lies the mother dying from dirt fever; the mother of six children starving and sleeping there—starving, save for the parish allowance, for the snow is on the ground and the ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... Till you are all stamped out, ground into your dirt. [Tenderly] Look up, little Vera! You saw how papasha loves you—how he was ready to hold out his hand—and how this cur tried to bite it. Be calm—tell him a daughter of Russia cannot ...
— The Melting-Pot • Israel Zangwill
... up, and he piled all of his wares in a basket. Then he took out a little broom and began to sweep in an orderly way around his little stall. He had a battered old dustpan, and as he carried it out to the street to empty it, he saw a stiff greenish-gray paper sticking out of the dirt. Nothing in the world ever looks exactly like that but an American greenback, and, sure enough, when Jimmy pulled it out it proved to be ...
— Our Holidays - Their Meaning and Spirit; retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... think I'd taken too much upon myself, what with the flower-boxes and having the house repainted. I wanted to have things nice for your Lordship after——" She hesitated for a word, and then burst out, "After all the dirt and beastliness! Your Lordship ought never to have gone in the ranks, begging your pardon; you weren't fitted for it. You ought to have gone as a General. Then you wouldn't have come home with that poor leg and——" She ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... worked unceasingly in digging the gold mine to which they had gained access through the instrumentality of the trapper. When they had gathered together quite a quantity of the gravel and dirt, with the yellow sand glittering through it, it was carried a short distance to the margin of the river, where ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... remembering God, treated their slaves in a humane manner, and not as beasts of burden, while there were others who were seldom known to perform a kind or generous action; but the most barbarous and tyrannical of all were those former serfs who arose from the dirt and became princes. ...
— The Kreutzer Sonata and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... metallic glitter had caught his eye, and then he saw, half covered by the pebbles and dirt, the figure of a man. He must have been struck by the landslide and not overwhelmed by it, but rather carried before it like a stick in a rush of water. At the outermost edge of the wave he lay with the rocks and dirt washed ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... searching until he found a ball of the sky material that had been pinched off when the little opening was sealed. Further hunting gave him a few bits of dust from the star bits and some of the junk that had gone into shaping the planets. He brushed in some dirt from the ground that had been touched by the sun stuff and was still glowing faintly. He wasn't at all sure of how much he could extrapolate from what he'd read in the book on Applied Semantics, but he knew he needed a control—a ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... field, and passed by where the brethren were at work covering up the bodies. They piled the dead bodies in heaps, and threw dirt over them. The bodies were only lightly covered, for the ground was hard, and the brethren did not have proper tools to dig with. I suppose the first rain washed the bodies out again, but I never went back to examine whether it ...
— The Mormon Menace - The Confessions of John Doyle Lee, Danite • John Doyle Lee
... Ditte took the children's clothes from the chair and spread them over the bed. From their parents' bed came the mother's voice. "You're to be quiet," said she. The father got up, fetched his driving-cape, and spread it over them; it was heavy with dust and dirt, but it warmed them! ...
— Ditte: Girl Alive! • Martin Andersen Nexo
... am able to speak to a few points, which as a mere traveller I could not have done. The information I before received of the prices of living is correct. Fish and poultry are plentiful and very cheap. Good lodgings almost as dear as they are in London; though we were well accommodated (dirt excepted) for two guineas and a-half a week. All the lower ranks in this city have no idea of English cleanliness, either in apartments, persons, or cookery. There is a very good society in Dublin in a Parliament winter: a great round of dinners and parties; and balls ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... received, and forgets, that instead of being the Host, he himself was the smiling and obsequious Guest of the man he pretends to have despised. With all this miserable forgetfulness of dignity and self-respect, he mounts the high horse, from which he instantly is tumbled into the dirt; and in his angry ravings collects together all the foul trash of literary gossip to fling at his adversary, but which is blown stifling back upon himself with odium and infamy. But let him call ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson
... sitting on his blankets in the San Gabriel camp cursing talentedly when Ranse Truesdell rode up and dismounted on the next afternoon. The cowpunchers were ignoring the stray. He was grimy with dust and black dirt. His clothes were making their last stand in ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... fun comes in to a steer, to get down on his knees in the mud and dirt, and horn the bank and muss up his curls and enjoy it like that?" inquired Strayhorn of ...
— The Log of a Cowboy - A Narrative of the Old Trail Days • Andy Adams
... to the mountains of Vindhya. And severe were the ascetic penances they performed there. Exhausted with hunger and thirst, with matted locks on their heads and attired in barks of trees, they acquired sufficient ascetic merit at length. Besmearing themselves with dirt from head to foot, living upon air alone, standing on their toes, they threw pieces of the flesh of their bodies into the fire. Their arms upraised, and eye fixed, long was the period for which they observed their vows. And during the course of their ascetic penances, a wonderful ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... railway pamphlet put out by the Northern Pacific Railway it is stated that on Sunday, February 16, 1913—one hundred and seventy years after Verendrye got back that far east—a school girl playing with some others at the top of a hill scraped the dirt from the end of a plate, which then was exposed about an inch above the ground. She pulled it out. The story said it looked like a range-stove lining. It was eight and a half inches long by six and a half inches wide and an eighth of an inch in thickness. Well, it was discovered ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... cart through the sodden filth that is pressed Into ooze, and the sombre dirt spouts up at my hands As I make my way in twilight now to rest. The hours have tumbled their leaden, ...
— Bay - A Book of Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... have tea, and with one biscuit, no pemmican, so as to leave our scanty remaining meal for eventualities. We started marching, and at first had to wind our way through an awful turmoil of broken ice, but in about an hour we hit an old moraine track, brown with dirt. Here the surface was much smoother and improved rapidly. The fog still hung over all and we went on for an hour, checking our bearings. Then the whole place got smoother and we turned outward a little. Evans ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... join young Fitz-Osbern from Warwick and Leicester, to root out the last Englishman? Why not? That would be a deed worthy of the man who married Judith, and believes in the powers that be, and eats dirt daily at William's table." ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... more artistic and dignified than the husks I wore. I had been so serene in the belief that the moon was uninhabited as to overlook such precautions altogether. As it was I was dressed in a flannel jacket, knickerbockers, and golfing stockings, stained with every sort of dirt the moon offered, slippers (of which the left heel was wanting), and a blanket, through a hole in which I thrust my head. (These clothes, indeed, I still wear.) Sharp bristles are anything but an improvement ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... with the help of the spirit, he made them all look clean. Then he made beaded moccasins from some of the scraps; leggings and a coat from some others. At last a frontlet with feathers sticking in it for the head. He gathered up snow and dirt, and filled the moccasins and the rest of the suit with it. The spirit changed the whole thing into a man,—a fine-looking warrior, to whom was given the name Moowis. The Beau-man at once took him to the village where the ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister
... was made to ballast the track, as the construction work was done. The ties were laid on the grade with just enough dirt on them to keep them in place. Speedy construction was considered of the first importance and then the ballasting could be done much cheaper ...
— The Story of the First Trans-Continental Railroad - Its Projectors, Construction and History • W. F. Bailey
... mothers' meetings, Sunday-school teaching, Bible classes, and all the multitudinous ways of meeting the squalor, poverty, ignorance, sickness, and sin of the poor of the east of London. There is no poetic enthusiasm that strengthens one for such work, the dirt, the degradation, the forlorn condition are so trying. The little children so precociously wicked, so preternaturally cunning, that the natural charm and attraction of childhood have wholly disappeared; the ...
— Deaconesses in Europe - and their Lessons for America • Jane M. Bancroft
... fiddlestick!" said Mrs Belfield; "here's no lady here, nor no company; so if you think I'll have my entry filled up by two hulking fellows for nothing, I shall shew you the difference. One's dirt enough of one's own, without taking people out of the streets to help one. Who do you think's to clean ...
— Cecilia vol. 3 - Memoirs of an Heiress • Frances (Fanny) Burney (Madame d'Arblay)
... dawn could lend mystery to the hideous, littered yard, untidy as the yards of frontier towns invariably are, to the board fence, to the trampled half-acre of dirt, known as "The Square," and to the ugly frame buildings straggled about it; but it could and did give an unearthly look of blessedness to the bare, gray-brown buttes that ringed the town and a glory to the sky, while upon Pierre, waiting ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... big room with a high roof. The floor was of dirt and very hard. The walls were limestone rock in beautiful rough layers, one upon another. From the roof the limestone hung in long ...
— The Cave Boy of the Age of Stone • Margaret A. McIntyre
... dinner we walked to the King's play-house, all in dirt, they being altering of the stage to make it wider. But God knows when they will begin to act again; but my business here was to see the inside of the stage and all the tiring-rooms and machines: and, indeed, it was a sight worthy seeing. But to see their clothes, and the various ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... souls. A common woman would not have appreciated the greatness of the beggar and vagrant before her. Only a discerning and sympathetic woman would have seen in the tones of his voice, and in his lofty bearing, despite all his rags and dirt, an unusual and marked character. She probably belonged to a respectable class, reduced to poverty by the famine, and her keen intelligence recognized at once in the hungry and needy stranger a superior person,—even as the humble friar of Palos saw in Columbus ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... hear him working away and talking excitedly to himself. I approached the steps and listened. He had ceased for a moment, I could hear his heavy breathing. I stepped down a few steps; he turned toward me, coat off; his face grimed with perspiration and dirt, he glared upon me. 'Aha, you come too late; I have concealed it, I am not the owner of it; you cannot prove me guilty.' His mind was wandering; he imagined the officers were come to take him. I moved toward him; a pistol shot, a heavy fall, and he had escaped—so far as human penalty ...
— Nick Baba's Last Drink and Other Sketches • George P. Goff
... as to give the appearance of deformities; but if the toes were straight, instead of being incurved, the animal could not use them for the purpose of keeping its fur in order, and cleansing it from dirt and moisture. ...
— Stories about the Instinct of Animals, Their Characters, and Habits • Thomas Bingley
... raiment as was diverse from the raiment of any who traded in that fair; few could understand what they said; and the pilgrims set very light by all their wares. And they did not believe them to be any other than bedlams and mad. Therefore they took them and beat them, and besmeared them with dirt, and then put them in the cage, that they might be made a spectacle to all the men ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... wonderful experience for the girls—and they're just the right age to enjoy it most. A few years later they'll fuss about dirt and want ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... guns to the adjutant at guard-mounting. This signifies that they intend competing for "colors." The adjutant falls them out after the guard has marched to its post, and inspects them. Absolute cleanliness is necessary. Any spot of dirt, dust, or any thing unclean will often defeat one. Yearlings "bone" their guns and accoutrements for "colors," and sometimes get them every time they ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... to the town is often difficult; for should one of the apes take a dislike to any unlucky traveller, he is sure to be assailed by the whole community, who follow him with all the missile weapons they can collect, such as pieces of bamboo, stones, and dirt, making at the same time a most hideous howling. Of the danger attending a meeting with enemies of this description, the following is a melancholy instance. Two young cavalry officers, belonging to the Bengal army, having occasion to pass through ...
— Anecdotes of Animals • Unknown
... this interview took place had a sordid and miserable look. Rotten, and covered with a thick coat of dirt, the boards of the floor presented a very insecure footing; the bare walls were scored all over with grotesque designs, the chief of which represented the punishment of Nebuchadnezzar. The rest were hieroglyphic characters, executed in red chalk and charcoal. The ceiling had, in many ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... he always does. He gets up at two o'clock to dig for them. He was coming in from the woods all tired and covered thick with dirt. I was going to the barn with the pail of water for Uncle Wesley to use in milking. I had to set down the pail to shut the gate so the chickens wouldn't get into the flower beds, and old Snap stuck his dirty nose into the water and began to lap it down. I knew Uncle Wesley wouldn't ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... shoulders 396; circumference of chest 880; of belly 810. His ears were greatly developed, his supraorbital arches most pronounced, and his whole appearance like a restoration of primitive man. He wore only a loin string and a deerskin knapsack, and was most extraordinarily blackened with dirt and the pitch from smoky fires. His intelligence seemed very low, but he was said to be married ...
— The Negrito and Allied Types in the Philippines and The Ilongot or Ibilao of Luzon • David P. Barrows
... sacred corner in the hut, with a particular seat which none else presumed to occupy; the former, a receptacle for dirt, the latter, formed of a large stone, with four smaller ones, which served for legs ...
— A Voyage Round the World, Vol. I (of ?) • James Holman
... hard with no protection but the ridges in a large rice field which we were fighting over. Our firing line was in a line of skirmishers. A bullet hit the ground in front and between the old soldier and where I lay. It knocked dirt in our faces. The old soldier looked at me and appeared to be very much frightened. I only laughed at his funny looks. Before I got away from that position I felt a hard shock on my chest. I thought that I was shot at last and put my hand up to examine the ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... on tiptoe in order the better to see him. He remained dumbfounded under this downpour of filthy abuse. It appeared to him that these words, which came from that mouth and fell upon him, defiled him like dirt, and, in presence of the row which was beginning, he fell back, retraced his steps, and rested his elbows on the railing towards the river, turning his back upon the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... "Girls" had always been unwilling to come out to Bellevue because of the distance from their friends and followers, and they now put forth another universally recognized obstacle in the phrase, "I never work out where there is a baby. They make so much dirt." Anastasia O'Hern was there, to be sure—heavy-handed, warm-hearted 'Stashie, who took the new little girl to her loyal spinster heart and wept tears of joy over her safe arrival; but 'Stashie had proved, as Paul predicted from the first time he ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... touch a wound with your fingers. If the wound is dirty, remove the dirt as well as possible, with ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... Christy perceived the role which circumstances had laid out for him, he put his hand into a slush-tub he found in the waist, and anointed his face with the filthy stuff. There was just color enough in the compound of grease and dirt to change his complexion, if it had been light enough to observe his physiognomy. Flint ...
— Within The Enemy's Lines - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray—Afloat • Oliver Optic
... Soper, stepping aft and touching his hat, said, "I never like to peach on shipmates, but, as an honest man, I can't hold my tongue. On two different nights I saw Muggins get up and change the meat and throw dirt in among the bread. One night he carried up some of the best pieces and ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... he heard her up in the room sweeping and scrubbing, as if for these five years it had been left a prey to dust and dirt; and when he went out after dinner to give a lesson at Bilton, she was still at it with an energy worthy of a woman, half ...
— Zoe • Evelyn Whitaker
... surroundings. Men ought to be better up there, but they aren't. They just magnify faults with the bigness of the hills around. Lots of it was romantic, lots of it ought never to be lost, the frank freedom, the vital living, the joy of uncertain victory over the dirt of the mines. It made men wild, wild to the last degree, that ever possible stumbling into gold, pure, glittering gold. Why, I saw it as a kid, shining like stars all over the side of the tunnel. It made even the children ...
— Claire - The Blind Love of a Blind Hero, By a Blind Author • Leslie Burton Blades
... reference to the consideration whether space for a garden ground was to be had. No such thing as a real garden could be seen. No flowers bloomed anywhere; no token of life's comfort or pleasure hung about the poor dwellings. Poverty and dirt and barrenness; those three facts struck the visitor's eye and heart. A certain degree of neatness and order indeed was enforced about the road and the outside of the houses; nothing to give the feeling of the sweet reality ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner
... small, and already three-quarters of it had been satisfactorily smeared, and the dirt spread to the necessary consistency. Now he was nearing the ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... explosions. She sat with delight through the Japanese acrobats and Swiss quartette of yodelers, and she welcomed pretty, pert little Mazie Villines with enthusiasm that gradually faded into horror as that artist flaunted more and more lingerie and "dished the dirt" which the inebriate playwright, at that moment engaged in "putting pep" into Miss Adair's own beloved "Purple Slipper," nee "The Renunciation of Rosalind," had supplied. The "dirt" was received by the audience at large with a hilarious joy that entirely ...
— Blue-grass and Broadway • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the total number of airports. The runway(s) may be paved (concrete or asphalt surfaces) or unpaved (grass, dirt, sand, or gravel surfaces), but must be usable. Not all airports have facilities for refueling, maintenance, or air ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... mine, Insinuating as if I would shine In name and fame by the worth of another, Like some made rich by robbing of their brother; Or that so fond I am of being Sire, I'll father bastards; or if need require, I'll tell a lye in print, to get applause. I scorn it; John such dirt-heap never was Since God converted him. Let this suffice To shew why I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XVII. No. 469. Saturday January 1, 1831 • Various
... us bless Our Gracious Queen and eke the Fire Brigade, And bless no less the horrid mess they've been and gone and made; Remove the dirt they chose to squirt upon our best attire, Bless all, but most the lucky chance that ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Breckenridge's desk, where he had thrown it when he first boarded the vessel. Then they made their way up to Nadia's stateroom, which they found in meticulous order and spotless in its cleanliness—there is neither dust nor dirt in space. Nadia glanced about the formal little room and ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... He was evidently a half-breed, and his clothes denoted him to be of the poorer class—a class accustomed to live by preying upon its white neighbors. He was clad in a pair of moleskin trousers, which doubtless at one time had been white, but which now were of that nondescript hue which dirt conveys. His upper garments were a beaded buckskin shirt and a battered Stetson hat. Around his waist was a cartridge belt, on which was slung a holster containing a heavy six-chambered revolver and a long ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... very plain, the moonlight shining full upon him—a large, stout gentleman with a round red face, and clad in a fine laced coat of red cloth. Amidship of the boat was a box or chest about the bigness of a middle-sized traveling trunk, but covered all over with cakes of sand and dirt. In the act of passing, the gentleman, still standing, pointed at it with an elegant gold-headed cane which he held in his hand. "Are you come after this, Abraham Dawling?" says he, and thereat his countenance broke into ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... the British race. If a hundredth part of the organising skill which the Japanese and the Russians are showing in the great war now in progress were shown by ourselves as citizens in our great civil war against disease and dirt, poverty and overcrowding, we could not only build many new cities on the best models, but could also bring our old towns into line with the new and better order. Prof. Geddes wishes well, I know, to the Garden City Association, a propagandist body, ...
— Civics: as Applied Sociology • Patrick Geddes
... near, and, although none of the flying metal struck them, their faces were stung by fine dirt. When John brushed the dust out of his eyes he saw that he was right in his surmise about the crossing in boats, but wrong about probable delays in embarkation. The German machine even in retreat worked with neatness and dispatch. There were three boats, and the first relay of ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... of him. He found Pheraulas with his face covered with blood and dirt, and asked him if he had received a blow. "I have," said Pheraulas, "as you see." "Then," said the Sacian, "I make you a present of my horse." Pheraulas asked an explanation. The Sacian accordingly gave him an account of what had taken place between himself and Cyrus, and said, in the end, that ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... newspaper office was a roaring whirlpool of excitement, for the same scenes were being enacted in every centre of the North. The whole city was now a fairy dream, its dirt and sin, shame and crime, all wrapped ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... had passed; the weather was cool, the sky clear and high; the city was free from dust and dirt; the city was beautiful. As yet no snow had fallen on ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... in front of me, unpapered and uncarpeted, which turned at a right angle at the farther end. Round this corner were three doors in a line, the first and third of which were open. They each led into an empty room, dusty and cheerless, with two windows in the one and one in the other, so thick with dirt that the evening light glimmered dimly through them. The centre door was closed, and across the outside of it had been fastened one of the broad bars of an iron bed, padlocked at one end to a ring in the wall, and fastened at the other ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... ailing a good deal this winter, and begged me to remember her to you the first time I wrote to you. Surely woman, amiable woman, is often made in vain. Too delicately formed for the rougher pursuits of ambition; too noble for the dirt of avarice, and even too gentle for the rage of pleasure; formed indeed for, and highly susceptible of enjoyment and rapture; but that enjoyment, alas! almost wholly at the mercy of the caprice, malevolence, stupidity, or wickedness of an animal at all times comparatively ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Mary, my mary, Why, where is your dolly? Look here, I protest, on the floor: To leave her about In the dirt so is folly, You ought to be trusted ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... make clean by removing dirt, impurities, or soil of any kind. Cleanse implies a worse condition to start from, and more to do, than clean. Hercules cleansed the Augean stables. Cleanse is especially applied to purifying processes where liquid is used, as in the flushing of a street, etc. We ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... Smithfield, he looked round it, and said, 'This is a place that hath long groaned for me.' For he knew well, what kind of bonfires would soon be burning. Nor was the knowledge confined to him. The prisons were fast filled with the chief Protestants, who were there left rotting in darkness, hunger, dirt, and separation from their friends; many, who had time left them for escape, fled from the kingdom; and the dullest of the people began, now, ...
— A Child's History of England • Charles Dickens
... in the ponderous and dirt-shaggy glazing of the smithy, one can see a portion of the street, and a sketch, in bright and airy tones, of scattered people. It is like the sharply cut field of vision in an opera-glass, in which figures are drawn and shaded, and cross each other; where one makes out, at times, a ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... pictures, from the one showing that girl's face in the crowd, to the old chap with the fish-stall. She'll never die that one. Because she's the spirit. It's the other one who's dead—and she doesn't know it. But some day she'll find herself buried. And I want to be there to shovel on the dirt." ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... Buddhist monastery, I was struck by the appearance of a man sitting at the side of the road near it. He was extraordinarily ugly; his body naked, with the exception of a rag round his waist; and his face so covered with dirt, that the tears he was shedding left furrows as they rolled ...
— Hindoo Tales - Or, The Adventures of Ten Princes • Translated by P. W. Jacob
... course, it is at Monsieur le General's service. It gives him a hold over Monsieur le Prefet, at any time. That was desired, I understood. All I say is, I would not use it just yet. The circumstances are delicate. When I sold the information, and dirt cheap too, I knew nothing of all the interesting romance Monsieur le General has told me. An affair of marriage wants tender handling. This one, especially, wants very clever management. If I, in Monsieur le General's place, meant to be the husband of Mademoiselle de Sainfoy, I would not begin ...
— Angelot - A Story of the First Empire • Eleanor Price
... one evening when we had smoked more than usual, said to me, 'Hajji Baba, you are too much of a man to be a seller of smoke all your life:—why do you not turn dervish, like us? We hold men's beards as cheap as dirt; and although our existence is precarious, yet it is one of great variety, as well as of great idleness. We look upon mankind as fair game—we live upon their weakness and credulity; and, from what I have seen of you, I think you would do honour to our profession, and in time become as celebrated ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... the sick man, and shouted at him, "Thou elephantiac, foul with mud and dirt, not worthy of the third heaven, wilt thou not stop shouting blasphemies against God? Dost thou not know that he who ministers to thee is Christ? How darest thou say such things against Christ?" And he bade Eulogius and the sick man go back to their cell, and live in ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... going to stay with you mostly, mother. There will be painters and paperers and cleaners in my home and a lot of dirt ...
— The Measure of a Man • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... hard, frozen crust and this was not so easily broken and tossed aside. But finally Freddie had made quite a hole, and then he and Flossie saw something queer. For, instead of coming to the hollow inside of the snow house, the little boy and girl saw a mass of sticks, dried grass and dirt. Over this was the snow, and it was piled up round, like the queer houses the Eskimos make in ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at Home • Laura Lee Hope
... skull-cap, and bent down over a book—above the head a sallow, withered hand shaking itself at me as a sign that I must not venture to speak just at that moment—on the tops of the bookcases glass vases full of spirits of some kind, with horrible objects floating in the liquid—dirt on the window panes, cobwebs hanging from the ceiling, dust springing up in clouds under my intruding feet. These were the things I observed on first entering the study of ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... blood. It was a joyous thing to us to see the faithful ones revelling in the healing sunlight, their stomachs filled at last with sweet rich forage. We were dirty, ragged, and lame, and our hands were calloused and seamed with dirt, but we were strong ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... Guamos are a race of Indians whom it is extremely difficult to fix down to the soil. Like other wandering savages, they are distinguished by their dirt, revengeful spirit, and fondness for wandering. The greater part of them live by fishing and the chase, in the plains often flooded by the Apure, the Meta, and the Guaviare. The nature of those regions, their vast extent, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... possessed by a much stubborner spirit than this interesting mischief-devil. Upon one point he was positively demented—the only four-footed maniac I ever knew. He had gone crazy on the subject of dirt, mad to ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... of Cologne—aromatic mementos; Visiting cards, so to speak, of hotels; Como's, Granada's, Zermatt's and Sorrento's Ah! how ye cling to my boxes and bags, Glued with a pigment that baffles removal; Dogged adherents in dirt and in rags; Labels, receive my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... condition it was some seconds before he could control the wild jangling of his nerves. Then he searched his pockets and, finding a match, lighted it. There, covered to the armpits by dirt and rocks, was the body of Balcom, whose last act before his own death had been an attempt to ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... "Dirt cheap!" cried poor Mrs. Wragge, falling headlong into the snare, and darting at the parcel as eagerly as if nothing ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... at Bonneville—shackamarack gilt dirt, Irish-French. Pictet bought a sparrow some boys in the street threw up at the window, and said he would bring it home for his little grandson. It was ornamented with a topping made of scarlet cloth. He put it in his hat, and tied a handkerchief ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... very beggarly lining—yet he may be worth your acquaintance; a little of thy chymistry, Tom, may extract gold from that dirt. ...
— The Comedies of William Congreve - Volume 1 [of 2] • William Congreve
... into the hard dirt floor with his heel. "You ought to see ours. Twenty pounds, and my, such a big fellow! Cranberry sauce an' roast potatoes, an' squash to go with ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... the usual morning scene. The slanting sifter was dropping its rain of dirt through the grating and sending the stones rolling down. The mixer was revolving. A hundred feet or so from the shore the clumsy old dredge was drawing up sand from the bottom of the lake, and the big pipeline running to shore was pulsating ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... I will send a man with you to my quarters. You will find soap and water there and a tin basin. The accommodations are a little primitive and not quite up to the Mariella's, but you can get some of the dirt out of those cuts. We will sup here when you are ready. Washington, you know the way to the mess-room. Go and fill up that empty stomach of yours and then return to me. You go back to ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... dug for the most part by those poor creatures who scooped up the sand and dirt with their bare hands and carried it up the steep banks to the dumps in palm-leaf baskets of their own making. Task masters with cruel whips of hippopotamus hide punished the sick and the fainting, as well as the lazy. There ...
— A Fantasy of Mediterranean Travel • S. G. Bayne
... earnest teaching-place, where children are gathered in and told all about Christ's love and mercy—where they are softened and won to better thoughts and kinder actions, and their poor little minds filled with shining truth, instead of street dirt and abuse." ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... around me more clearly than I had hitherto done. I could not have read a book, but I could see my hands as I held them up before me, and they were as black as those of a negro. Probably my face was much in the same condition. I knew that my feet and my clothes also were begrimed with dirt. Strange as it may seem, I was so busy in taking a survey of the locality, that I forgot to shout out, for as the light came down my voice would certainly have been heard, as without doubt one of the hatches had been opened. My impulse was to take the opportunity of working my way ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... an Arctic explorer should be able to live the same life as the natives of the land he was exploring, and during his winter in Greenland he lived much with the Eskimos, sleeping in their rude huts of stone and dirt, and joining in their hunts on land ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 56, December 2, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... mud-spattered car came around the bend in the road and headed at Val, going a good pace for the dirt surfacing. Before it quite reached him it stopped and the driver stuck his head out of ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... as possible I went again to see my Aunt Gainor. The good old lady was lamenting her scanty toilet, and the dirt in which the Hessians had left her house. "I have drunk no tea since Lexington," she said, "and I have bought no gowns. My gowns, sir, are on the backs of our poor soldiers. I am not fit to be seen beside that minx Darthea. And how is Jack? The Ferguson woman has been ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... the riot act!" which some of the mob hearing, became terrified thereat, none knowing the penalties or consequences thereof, when backed by soldiers; and in a moment, as if they had seen the glimpse of a terrible spirit in the air, the whole multitude dropped the dirt and stones out of their hands, and, turning their backs, flew into doors and closes, and were skailed before we knew where we were. It is not to be told the laud and admiration that I got for my ability in this business; for the major was so well pleased to have been saved from a battle, ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... twenty fortunes. So he began taking them out, slowly and carefully, thinking he had plenty of time. But after he had taken out the first load, he heard cries and groans in a room near his own office, and going in, he found an old man, a wretched old miser that lived there all alone, in dirt and misery, though every one knew he was immensely rich. He seemed to have gone out of his mind with fright, and there he sat, his hands full of notes and bonds and things, screaming and crying, and saying that he could ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... there except around the trees. It is like most other lawns in southern Illinois, mostly clay and what other soil we put on top. Now the clay is very hard and in setting the trees I had my man dig a hole three feet deep and two feet across and in setting the trees I packed good dirt around them. The question is how should I feed those trees? I have put barn manure around them and they are now growing and doing very nicely, I want to know if I have ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... rewards of almost as many turnings of his political coat. There was one journal in New York which had the insolence to speak of President Davis and Mister Lincoln in the same paragraph. No wonder the "dirt-eaters" of the Carolinas could be taught to despise a race among whom creatures might be found to do that by choice which they themselves were driven to do ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 44, June, 1861 • Various
... where they make things nice for them!" he said to himself. "Where the flowers see dirt, they turn away, and won't ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... came. What do it matter to them if she fills with water? they only pop out over both sides, and hold on and slop it out again, and then jump in. Water runs off them like it does off ducks' backs. I believe they oil themselves all over instead of using a bit of honest soap. Don't matter though; the dirt can't show. My word, we are going it. Straight for ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... to a tree near at hand, the horseman walked slowly about. A gold pan lay rusting, half filled with rock and dirt, by a bench before the cabin. It was well worth cleaning and taking away, together with some of ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... toward the light, while he ran his hand through his hair, and again she saw the look, so like spiritual exaltation, transfigure his face. Before this man, who had sprung from poverty and dirt, who had struggled up by his own force, overcoming and triumphing, fighting and winning, fighting and holding, fighting and losing, but always fighting—before this man, who had been born in a cellar, she felt suddenly humbled. ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... behind the rocks. The enemy's guns had secured an accurate range, and the air was filled with the projectiles of iron and lead. Exploding shells splintered rocks into atoms and sent them tearing through the grass. Puffs of smoke and dirt were springing up from every square yard of ground, and a few men rose from their retreats and ran to the rear where the Basuto servants were holding their horses. More followed several minutes afterwards, and when those who remained on the summit ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... peering into the mystic recesses of the growth, susceptible to its magic thrall in spite of his hardheadedness. Higgins, the engineer, kicked deeply into the black dirt of the bridle path. ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... having slept in a bed until after our family was declared free by the Emancipation Proclamation. Three children—John, my older brother, Amanda, my sister, and myself—had a pallet on the dirt floor, or, to be more correct, we slept in and on a bundle of filthy rags laid upon ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... cried a shrill female voice, 'was you given to understand that I—I—was going to be engaged to an assassinating thief that shed the gore of my pa? Do you—do you think, ma'am—that I was very fond of such dirt beneath my feet, as I couldn't condescend to touch with kitchen tongs, without blacking and crocking myself by the contract? Do you, ma'am—do you? Oh! ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... just beginning to come with its light from behind the very large and crooked old mountain that is called Old Harpeth, when my Gouverneur Faulkner made me to turn my good Cherry from off the main road into a little road, of much narrowness and of beautiful brown dirt the color of the riding trousers that I wore, and stop beside a very humble, small house, which was covered with a vine in beautiful bud, and around which many chickens hovered in waiting for a morning breakfast. Behind the small house was a large barn and as ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... get a letter to Chicago and back; and he couldn't have gone home and written the firm so that I could get the notification as soon as I did unless he wrote the cancellation the very night we took him to the theater. I never had a man do me such dirt. I felt like I'd love to give him just one more swell dinner, and use a ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... here in our London Ghetto the gates and gaberdines of the olden Ghetto of the Eternal City; yet no lack of signs external by which one may know it, and those who dwell therein. Its narrow streets have no specialty of architecture; its dirt is not picturesque. It is no longer the stage for the high-buskined tragedy of massacre and martyrdom; only for the obscurer, deeper tragedy that evolves from the pressure of its own inward forces, and the long-drawn-out tragi-comedy of ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... almost fifteen years old when my uncle presented me with a flint-lock gun. The possession of the "mysterious iron," and the explosive dirt, or "pulverized coal," as it is called, filled me with new thoughts. All the war-songs that I had ever heard from childhood came back to me with their heroes. It seemed as if I were an entirely new being—the boy had become ...
— Indian Boyhood • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman |
