"Muck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... discouraging to the driver for pleasure to find in rainy weather almost bottomless muck and mud on portions of the main travelled highway between New York and Buffalo, but that, for the present, is normal. The manufacturer may regret the condition and wish for better, but he cannot be heard to complain, ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... are, sir. Commonest muck o' men. Fit for nothing but putting under ground. Why, how I should like to take my old mother with us, and let her loose at that there captain. I wouldn't give much for his chance. Shall ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... move to-morrow," said the Jersey youth, repeating the orders read out in the early part of the day, and removing a clot of farmyard muck from the foresight guard of his rifle as he spoke. It was seven o'clock in the evening, the hour when candles were stuck in their cheese sconces and lighted. Cakes of soap and lumps of cheese are easily scooped out with clasp-knives ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... for you to want me to muck up out of the window, wasn't it?" demanded the obstinate barbarian, becoming passionate in his bearing rather than reluctantly, but with courteous grace, lessening the price to a trifling degree, as we regard the proper way ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah
... one, whom ye see strutting awkwardly, stagily, and stiffly, and with a laugh on her mouth like a Gallic whelp. Throng round her, and claim them back. "O putrid punk, hand back our writing tablets; hand back, O putrid punk, our writing tablets." Not a jot dost heed? O Muck, Brothel-Spawn, or e'en loathsomer if it is possible so to be! Yet think not yet that this is enough. For if naught else we can extort a blush on thy brazened bitch's face. We'll yell again in heightened tones, "O putrid ...
— The Carmina of Caius Valerius Catullus • Caius Valerius Catullus
... was, his first wife's laconic comment on her ex-husband. She, for instance, was undoubtedly the blameworthy one in their marital failure, but she had managed to extract a ruinous alimony from him. Twice married and twice divorced, he was traveled through the Orient to write a series of muck raking articles and, incidentally if possible, to forget his last unhappy ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... interests. Here are you and I, busying ourselves in an attempt to throw some little light—a very little it must be—on some petty problems of the origin of our race. We are looking downwards, downwards always; digging in old muck-heaps; raking up all kinds of unsavoury rubbish to prove that we are born out of the dirt. And we have never a thought for the future in all our work,—a future that may be glorious, who knows? Here, perhaps in this village, insignificant from most points of view, but ...
— The Wonder • J. D. Beresford
... I'm no magazine muck-rake, doctor," I said as I got out of the motor (he had taken me up through the Park to Morningside and back, while I was telling him), "and I'll probably be a ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... threw a flood of light upon the sumptuous table beneath and left the rest of the closely guarded room shrouded in Stygian darkness, plans were laid and decrees adopted which seated judges, silenced clergymen, elected senators, and influenced presidents. There a muck-raking, hostile press was muffled. There business opposition was crushed and competition throttled. There tax rates were determined and tariff schedules formulated. There public opinion was disrupted, character assassinated, ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... stiff; but they were still after me, or I thought they were, so I floundered on. The path, if it was a path, was slimy with mud, and about every third step I'd slip and go sprawling. I can't tell you how many times I felt my legs shoot out into nothing, and dug my fingers into the muck, or broke my nails on rocks and caught clumps of grass with my teeth, to keep from going over ... and all the while that all-gone feeling in ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... truffled omelets, wonderful salads of eggs, anchovies, and tunny-fish, ducks with oranges and olives, and other delicacies of the Provencal cuisine prepared by a consummate artist, and those four English cubs termed them all "muck," and clamoured for plain roast mutton and boiled potatoes. It really was a case of casting pearls before swine! Those ignorant hobbledehoys actually turned up their noses at the admirable "Cotes du Rhone" wine, and begged for beer. In justice I must add ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... gracious I mighty glad you mention dat,' says Brer Tarrypin, sezee. 'Mr. Mud-Turkle is setch clos't kin ter me dat I calls 'im Unk Muck, en I lay ef you sen' dar atter dat sane you won't fine Unk Muck ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... house is in particularly neat and good order. I did not think it at all worth while to make troublesome enquiries of the people who reside there, but took Mr Case's account. There seems no doubt that the fire was caused by the maid-servant throwing cinders into a sort of muck-place into which they had been commonly thrown. I suppose there was after all this dry weather straw or muck drier than usual, and the cinders were hotter than usual. The whole was on fire in an exceedingly short time; and ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... what looks arter the poor is always givin' broken rubbish to the children," she exclaimed. "Not but what they mean it kindly, but it makes a heap of muck ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... subject to which he gave much attention. He made use of manure when possible, but the supply of this was limited and commercial fertilizers were unknown. As already indicated, he was beginning the use of clover and other grasses, but he was anxious to build up the soil more rapidly and the Potomac muck seemed to him a possible answer to the problem. There was, as he said, "an inexhaustible fund" of it, but the task of getting it on the land was a heavy one. Having heard of a horse-power dredge called the Hippopotamus that ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... person; and it shows every sign of having been written to please the opera-goers of those days. Curiously, the critics of the time, in the words of the "Daily Telegraph," saw in "the Bayreuth master another form of Bunyan's man with the muck-rake," who "never sought to disguise the garbage he found in the Newgate Calendar of Mythland, or set his imagination to invent," and they were disgusted, also like the "Daily Telegraph," by "approaching incest" in "The Valkyrie"; yet they saw no harm whatever in the charming ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... shepherds have encamped; and the palings were broken, the water in the trenches was disappearing, while fragments of glass and the bones of apes were to be seen amid the miry puddles. A scrap of cloth hung here and there from the bushes, and the rotten flowers formed a yellow muck-heap beneath the citron trees. In fact, the servants had neglected everything, thinking that the ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... slow to learn the meaning of the word, and to this day the firm hold "tanuk" has on the language is only equalled by the thirst for the fluid which the name implies. Among the Asiatic Eskimo the word "um-muck" is common for "rum," while "em-mik" means water. Even words brought by whalers from the South Sea islands have obtained a footing, such as "kow-kow" for food, a word in general use, and "pow" for "no," or "not any." They also call their babies "pick-a-nee-nee," which to many ...
— The First Landing on Wrangel Island - With Some Remarks on the Northern Inhabitants • Irving C. Rosse
... the stem of Giotto's tower, like a lily stem, or a long, lovely pale pink and white and green pistil of the lily of the cathedral. Florence, the flowery town. Firenze—Fiorenze—the flowery town: the red lilies. The Fiorentini, the flower-souled. Flowers with good roots in the mud and muck, as should be: and fearless blossoms in air, like the cathedral and the ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... it was colder, he again followed Injun's lead, and wore moccasins. Buckskin moccasins, with little bead decorations. In the cold of winter, when the snow was deep, and when the big thaws came, Whitey wore heavy, moccasin-like muck-lucks, made of buckskin, which laced high, nearly to his knees, and over the tops of which hung the ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... "You have done your work, and I fling you away, as I fling away all my tools at my pleasure. There, in the green muck and slimy filth, you will tell ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... ground being prepared and treated as for oats. If designed to cut for green fodder, half a bushel of seed to the acre should be used; if to ripen seed, twelve quarts, sown broadcast, about the last of May or early in June. A moist loam or muck is the best soil adapted to millet; but very great crops have been grown on dry upland. It is very palatable and nutritious for milch cows, both green and when properly cured. The curing should be very much like that of clover, care being taken not to over-dry ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... within, among which he heard the full, manly voice of Robert Willoughby, calling on the garrison to be firm, he raised an answering yell to those of the Mohawks, the war-whoop of his tribe, and plunged into the fray with the desperation of one who ran a muck, and with the ...
— Wyandotte • James Fenimore Cooper
... the dusk, and a glint of light shot out from the jewel of his necktie, as the light from the house caught it at the right angle. As they gazed in silence at each other, Howard divined something of the hard, bitter feeling which came into Grant's heart as he stood there, ragged, ankle-deep in muck, his sleeves rolled up, a shapeless old ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... thur wur, yo' mind, for yo' ma' think ha it wur conducted when thay wur threapin' wi' one another like a lot a oud wimen at a parish pump, wen it sud be. One sed it mud tak place at rush-buren, another sed next muck-spreadin' toime, a third sed it mud be dug et gert wind day it memmery o' oud Jack K—- Well, noan et proposishuns wud do fur the lot, and there wur such opposishun wal it omust hung on a thre'ad whether th' railway went on or net, wal at last an oud farmer, ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... combination with proper ingredients, we do say it is a good and profitable manure for grass. For each acre mix from 200 to 400 lbs. with as many bushels of plaster, or ten to one of charcoal, or twenty to one of dry swamp muck or peat, woods mould or fine clay, and sow upon the meadow or pasture early in spring. If the season is moist, the benefit will be very great; if dry, it will probably be said, as it has been before; "Oh, ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... you must understand that I was a greenhorn at diving. None of us were divers. We'd had to muck about with the thing to get the way of it, and this was the first time I'd been deep. It feels damnable. Your ears hurt beastly. I don't know if you've ever hurt yourself yawning or sneezing, but it takes you like that, only ten times ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... can we soonest get out of this muck of houses and streets?" asked Mat, surveying the London view around him with an expression of grim disgust. "There ain't no room, even on this bridge, for the wind to blow fairly over a man. I'd just ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... spoils he kick'd at; And looked upon things precious as they were The common muck of the world: he covets less Than misery itself would give; rewards His deeds with doing them; and is content To spend the time to ...
— The Tragedy of Coriolanus • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... the law? WINSER, the cabman, who gave his false evidence so gaily in the Thirkettle Case, has been had up, and sentenced. Having dealt with WINSER, it is only a short step from WINSER to SLOUGH—but perhaps such a slough of muck, that it wants the pluck of a Hercules in the Augaean stable to commence operations, and a deus ex-machina—that is, the Public Prosecutor from the Treasury—to see that the proceedings are not abortive. Oh, where, and Oh, where ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... he begs the Society to be cautious and offer no encouragement to any disposed "'to run the muck' (sic) (it is Sir George's expression) against the religious and political INSTITUTIONS of Spain"; but "the delicacy of the situation does not appear to have been thoroughly understood at the time even by the Committee at home." {224b} They saw the astonishing success of Graydon in distributing ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... carrying huge yards of steel, rising higher and higher, until steel masts and yards gave way to slender spars of wood, while ropes and stays turned into a delicate tracery of spider-thread against the sky. That such a wretched muck of men should be able to work this magnificent ship through all storm and darkness and peril of the sea was beyond all seeming. I remembered the two mates, the super-efficiency, mental and physical, ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... populous, twice as prosperous. It will add its quota to the habitable surfaces; and it's a good quota—a land that some future generation will love, and swear by, and fight for, if need be. And to think that for one man's narrow-mindedness and another's greed we've got to christen it in blood and muck and filth and dishonesty—it makes me sore, Kenneth; ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... combats by sea and by land; stockade was opposed to stockade, and the fighting was constant and severe; but he never lost a man killed during the two months, and only boasted of killing five of the enemy! The principal danger in Malay warfare is the 'Mengamuk' (Anglice, running a-muck), which is the last resource of a ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... He'll break you, an' bring you to your knees, an' that 'fore your gray hairs be turned, as mine, to white. Oh, Christ Jesus, look you at this blind sawl an' give en somethin' better to lay hold 'pon than his poor bally-muck o' religion what's nort ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... mines so bright with jewels that they had to be approached at night lest the flashing light should strike men blind. Florida became proverbial; and Elizabethan wits made endless fun of it. Stolida, or the land of fools, and Sordida, or the land of muck-worms, were some of their jeux d'esprit. Everyone was 'bound for Florida,' whether he meant to go there or not, despite Spanish spheres of influence, the native cannibals, and pirates by ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... friend. I've always loved you, Eleanor," went on Carley, earnestly. "I'm as deep in this—this damned stagnant muck as you, or anyone. But I'm no longer blind. There's something terribly wrong with us women, and ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... detested women with a too exuberant vitality and a lack of . . . well, of inhibition. Freddie Drummond accepted the doctrine of evolution because it was quite universally accepted by college men, and he flatly believed that man had climbed up the ladder of life out of the weltering muck and mess of lower and monstrous organic things. But he was a trifle ashamed of this genealogy, and preferred not to think of it. Wherefore, probably, he practised his iron inhibition and preached it to others, and preferred women ...
— The Strength of the Strong • Jack London
... six. They neared the walls, half a huge double gate Lay prostrate, though the other by stone hinges Hung to its flanking tower. The path they followed Threaded an old paved road whose flags were edged With dry grass and dry weeds, even cactuses Had pushed the stones up or found root in muck heaps: The path struck up the slope of the fallen door, Basalt like midnight, o'er which dusty feet Had greyed a passage, for it rested on Some debris fallen from the left-hand tower, And from its upper edge rude blocks ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... fellows?" he exclaimed, in dismay when he had rammed the seven foot pole down until three fourths of its length had vanished in the unfathomable depths of soft muck. ...
— The Boy Scouts of Lenox - Or The Hike Over Big Bear Mountain • Frank V. Webster
... was going on night, and the wolves howled in hearing, and I begun to feel dubious. Uncle Waldron heard me chopping, and come, and took me home to his little hemlock hut. Remember it, Uncle Mose? I slep on the softest corner of your black muck-floor, and you said ...
— Summerfield - or, Life on a Farm • Day Kellogg Lee
... Lord God: Behold, I will bring a King of kings from the north, with horses and with chariots, and with horsemen and companies and muck people. He shall slay with the sword ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... of the thousands of soldiers at the front, for French soldiers suffer that the children may never have to wade through this blood and muck. The foul creature that has bathed the world in blood must be slain forever. With the full consent of the intellect, of the heart and the conscience, these glorious French boys have given themselves to God, to freedom, and ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... that mare, although, as you say, Miss Catharine, she was never healthy, has the most wonderful pluck, as you know. I remember once I had two ton o' muck in the waggon, and we were stuck. Jack and Blossom couldn't stir it, and, after a bit, chucked up. I put in Maggie—you should have seen her! She moved it, a'most all herself, aye, as far as from here to the gate, and then of course the others took it up. That's blood! What a thing blood ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... muck soon," he said, "against all this talk about genius and high art, and the rest of it. It will be the ruin of us, as it has been of Germany. They have been for fifty years finding out, and showing people how to do everything in heaven and ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... inn door. They whose company he had quitted were silent for a moment; then said Sir Mortimer, slowly: "I remember now—there was a Thomas Baldry, master of the Speedwell. Well, it was a sorry business that day! If from that muck of blood and horror was ...
— Sir Mortimer • Mary Johnston
... though it be nothing more than opposition to some other magazine. If a magazine attacks Mrs. Eddy, another gallantly rushes to her defense. If one gets to seeing things at night, the other becomes anti-spirituous. If the first acquires the muck-raking habit, the complementary organ publishes an 'Uplift Number' that oozes optimism from every paragraph. The modern editor does not sit in his easy-chair, writing essays and sorting over the manuscripts that are sent in by his contributors. ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... Peter went on. "I've got work, too." He pointed at his pile of dirt on the table. "You see, there's gold in all that muck, ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... had at first cried out, had only a slight bullet graze through the fleshy part of it; so, considering the skipper fired off no less than five shots out of the six which his revolver contained, it was a wonder more were not grievously wounded, if not killed, when he ran a-muck like that! ...
— The Island Treasure • John Conroy Hutcheson
... lifting their unnumbered stones to the clear and wonderful skies, have held, still hold, their secrets; but they do not seek for yours. The terrific temples, the hot, mysterious tombs, odorous of the dead desires of men, crouching in and under the immeasurable sands, will muck you with their brooding silence, with their dim and sombre repose. The brown children of the Nile, the toilers who sing their antique songs by the shadoof and the sakieh, the dragomans, the smiling ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... them to a place where they move like clock-work, and you actually believe you can trust them, then graduation day comes round, and they think they're all safe,—and every single individual member of the class breaks out and runs a-muck with the one dare-devil deed she's been itching to do every day the past three years! Why this very morning I caught the President of the Senior Class with a breakfast tray in her hands—stealing the cherry out ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... bloomin', blasted, infernal ice, I tell you,' he shouted in a rage, standing in black muck almost to his knees, with the same material bespattered over him from head to foot. Indeed his red and perspiring face showed a couple of great, black smirches with which he ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... haven't your rope along. Here's just the ticket—some old fence rails lying in a heap. Cheer up, comrade, we'll have you out of that in a jiffy now," sang out Frank, seizing one of the long, cast-off rails, and dropping it on the surface of the muck. ...
— The Boys of Columbia High on the Gridiron • Graham B. Forbes
... done justice; and yet not Hawthorne either, for he was mildly minded, and it lay not in him to create for us that throb of the miser's pulse, his fretful energy of gusto, his vast arms of ambition clutching in he knows not what: insatiable, insane, a god with a muck-rake. Thus, at least, looking in the bosom of the miser, consideration detects the poet in the full tide of life, with more, indeed, of the poetic fire than usually goes to epics; and tracing that mean man about his cold hearth, and to and ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of humiliation. I spent the night in a stinking cell. I haven't eaten since breakfast yesterday. Did they think I was going to eat the muck they shoved in? And all because in a moment of anger—which I regret, I regret!—I happened to strike my daughter, who was interfering between me and my wife. The thing would be funny if it weren't so disgusting. A man's house used to be sanctuary. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to de wall, sar," cautioned my guide; "dere am a gutter in de middle ob de road, and if you steps into dat you go in ober your shoes in muck." ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... the clothes of people crowded in a close room fill the air with bacteria in very great numbers. They are found in excessive abundance in every bit of decaying matter wherever it may be. Manure heaps, dead bodies of animals, decaying trees, filth and slime and muck everywhere are filled with them, for it is in such places that they find their best nourishment. The bodies of animals contain them in the mouth, stomach, and intestine in great numbers, and this is, of course, equally true of man. On the surface of the body they cling in great quantity; attached ...
— The Story Of Germ Life • H. W. Conn
... protective coloring from the action of time and the elements; his shirt had faded from a bright buff to a nondescript shade which blended with what had once been light corduroy trousers; his heavy shoes, treated only the evening before to a coat of preservative grease, were now covered with muck; and, pulled over his eyes, a shapeless canvas hat completed the list of the visible ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... cannot look on a heap of accumulated work with indifference; when he is also ambitious he rolls up his sleeves and forgets everything in the debris of vouchers and figures. Like a mole he works away, his eyes blinded (to keep out the muck); unlike the mole he never succeeds in building a nest for himself. The heap diminishes gradually before him and he thinks he sees rock-bottom, when suddenly an avalanche comes down, obliterating marks of previous effort and storing up labor for days, ...
— A Canadian Bankclerk • J. P. Buschlen
... Iver was a small boy, his father employed him about the farm, to assist him in ploughing, to hoe potatoes, and wield the muck-fork in the cow-house, or, to use the local term, the cow-stall. He kept the lad hard at work from morning rise till set ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... o' heather honey, and the music o' the brae, As I watch the great harts feeding, nearer, nearer a' the day. Oh, to hark the eagle screaming, sweeping, ringing round the sky— That's a bonnier life than stumbling ower the muck to colt and kye. ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... a muck of a world," he declared cheerfully, taking off his coarse harvest hat and running his hand through his clustering fair hair. In the mellow light the almost brutal strength of his jaw was softened, and his sunburned face paled to the beauty of some ancient ivory carving. Cynthia, ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... duty for their faces;" not to speak of the characterization of a "Sacred Heart" too revolting to reproduce? Surely when, after having reviled M. Tissot almost personally, he describes his works as painted with "muck, wine-sauce, and mud," it is difficult not to answer with a tu quoque as far as this word-painting is concerned—difficult not to see here some morbid and "frightful appetite for the hideous" struggling with the ...
— The Faith of the Millions (2nd series) • George Tyrrell
... for?" he boomed. "They'll only spend it on all kinds of muck they don't want; what the missionaries leave them, ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... were, they were still fearful savages. Messengers arrived from the neighbouring town to announce the death of their chief, Matiamvo. That individual had been addicted to running a-muck through his capital and beheading any one he met, till he had a large heap of human heads in front of his hut. Men were also slaughtered occasionally, whenever the chief wanted part of a ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... gold was there, and they persisted. Somehow, the romance of the land and the quest entered into their blood, the spell of it gripped hold of them and would not let them go. Man after man of them, after the most terrible privation and suffering, shook the muck of the country from his moccasins and departed for good. But the following spring always found him drifting down the Yukon on the ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... years old, played naked in the muck, and Flower, of the red-gold hair, reputed the wickedest woman in the Marquesas, ironed her gowns on the floor of the porch. Raising her head, she called to ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... recorded week by week in the paper. The inaugural meeting took place in Essex Hall, Essex Street, Strand, on September 17, 1926. G.K. summed up their aim in the words: "Their simple idea was to restore possession." He added that Francis Bacon had long ago said: "Property is like muck, it is good only if it be spread." The following week the first committee meeting took place. Chesterton was elected President; Captain Went, Secretary, and Maurice Reckitt, Treasurer. It was planned to form a branch in Birmingham. Alternative names were discussed: The Cobbett Club, the ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... bewilderment, flitting silent at his side. But in the cattle-market she shrank from the press of men, all men, all in heavy, filthy boots, and leathern leggins. And the road underfoot was all nasty with cow-muck. And it frightened her to see the cattle in the square pens, so many horns, and so little enclosure, and such a madness of men and a yelling of drovers. Also she felt her father was ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... "for it goes so high that he thinks the stars have set him all a-fire. An' it'll take great thumpin' jumps sometimes, an' run along the tops of the trees, carrying its partner with it, an' then droppin' him jest as a fish hawk'll drop a pickerel to kill it before eatin'. An' its food, of all the muck in the whole Bush is—moss!" And he laughed a short, unnatural laugh. "It's a moss-eater, is the Wendigo," he added, looking up excitedly into the faces of his companions. "Moss-eater," he repeated, with a string of the most outlandish oaths he ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... the corner of the room, Nema looked up for a moment, and there was fear and worry in her eyes before she looked back to her weaving of endless knots. Sather Karf sighed in weariness. "If I knew what was happening to the sky, would I be dredging the muck of Duality for the likes ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... then?" he asked. "Red, yaller, muck-dirt colour?"—and he stared significantly at the Tailless Tyke, who was lying at his master's feet. The little man ceased rubbing his knees and eyed the boy. David shifted uneasily ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... might wreak; Such ending is not death: such living shows What wide illumination brightness sheds From one big heart,—to conquer man's old foes: The coward, and the tyrant, and the force Of all those weedy monsters raising heads When Song is muck from springs ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... whether we will live a king's life or a slave's: Marcus Aurelius on his throne was a king, for nothing could conquer him; but Epictetus in chains was equally unconquerable and equally a king. We all have the choice between the Crown and the Muck Rake, and I think we sometimes turn to the straws and the rubbish, not because they are fascinating to us, but because they seem the only things open to us: we do not feel as if our lives had anything to do with Crowns. If ...
— Stray Thoughts for Girls • Lucy H. M. Soulsby
... they did not look it. There seemed nothing unusual about them, while they would have passed muster as fair specimens of lumbermen in any Michigan camp. But outside, in the darkness, where holes yawned in the ground, were many men engaged in windlassing muck and gravel and gold from the bottoms of the holes where other men received fifteen dollars per day for scraping it from off the bedrock. Each day thousands of dollars' worth of gold were scraped from bedrock and windlassed to the surface, ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... not have come this way, Miss Gordon," said Mr. Huntley solicitously, as he guided her across the black muck of the crossing, to which the snow had already been converted. "I hope you ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... stay by her half an hour, till Eliza, the German nurse, comes to take her to bed. The cows merely stand there, and do nothing; yet the mere sight of them is all-sufficient for Jean. She requires nothing more. The other evening, after contemplating them a long time, as they stood in the muddy muck chewing the cud, she said, with deep and reverent appreciation, "Ain't this ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... satire on our institutions! The conclusion will be, that mankind will hang itself upon a tree. And have all the precepts in all the Bibles taught men only this? and is the last and most admirable invention of the human race only an improved muck-rake? Is this the ground on which Orientals and Occidentals meet? Did God direct us so to get our living, digging where we never planted,—and He would, perchance, reward us with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... (Eve),—from her princes are born to the king,—virgo (virgin), lac virginis (virgin's milk), menstruum, materia hermaphrodita catholica Solis et Lunae (Catholic hermaphrodite matter of sun and moon), sputum Lunae (moon spittle), urina puerorum (children's urine), faeces dissolutae (loose stool), fimus (muck), materia omnium formarum (material of all ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... take warning," I said to him. "You have shown yourself a fool by your contempt of me. I may not be your match in craft; but I am in manhood. Lay low there in your native muck." ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... close at hand were the gross and dirty huts of the off-colors (half-castes). The house, which was in the middle of the plot, was a bulging hovel of green brick, no more stately or respectable than any of the huts round about. As our horses picked their way through the muck underfoot, and we rode down to it, the off-colors swarmed out of their burrows and grinned and ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... mealy-mouthed for?' said his wife indignantly. 'Why conno yo say reet out 'at it's a pleeace not fit for ony decent dog to put his head in, an' an ill-mannert daggle-tail of a woman to keep it, as I'd like to sweep out wi th' bits of a morning, an' leave her on th' muck-heap ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... said Liza. Mrs. Garth gave her no time to say more, for, at the full pitch of indignation, she turned to Rotha, and added: "And ye're a rare pauchtie damsel. Ye might have been bred at Court, you as can't muck a byre." ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... wrong, but it is so frightfully easy to displease a cook. 'It's them children: there's that there new carpet in their room, covered thick with mud, both sides, beastly yellow mud, and sakes alive knows where they got it. And all that muck to clean up on a Sunday! It's not my place, and it's not my intentions, so I don't deceive you, ma'am, and but for them limbs, which they is if ever there was, it's not a bad place, though I says it, and I wouldn't wish ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... beloved father-city, lived a man, whom people called "Little Muck." Though at that time I was quite young, I can recollect him very well, particularly since, on one occasion, I was flogged almost to death, by my father, on his account. The Little Muck, even then, when I knew him, an old man, ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... watched the stream was turned off, and men took from the cleats quantities of mingled muck and gravel, which they proceeded to ...
— Jack Ranger's Western Trip - From Boarding School to Ranch and Range • Clarence Young
... in which his normal faculties were unseated, but with the passage of time he roused himself a little. Weakened as he was, his perception told him that the ship had buried itself deep in a swamp until it rested on bedrock. A dozen feet of muck and water lay over it. Even had they survived the crash they would have been helpless unless intelligent aid could be enlisted. He tried to drive out his thoughts in a cry for help, but the strength was gone from him. Within ...
— The Short Life • Francis Donovan
... to evacuate anyway, as the persistence of our attack and effectiveness of our rifle fire had nearly broken their morale. Americans with white, strained faces, in contrast with their muck-daubed uniforms, shook hands prayerfully as they discussed how a determined defense could have murdered them all in making that frontal attack across a swamp in face ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... nothing wrong," said Mrs. Rapkin, observing his expression; "I only used a little warm ale to it, which is a capital thing for brass-work, and gave it a scrub with 'Vitrolia' soap—but it would take more than that to get all the muck ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... workmen followed the spring through four feet of tufa and muck. Then they came to a layer of solid tufa two feet thick, then one foot of muck in which they found another log. Below this were three feet of tufa, and there seventeen feet below the apex of the mound they found the embers and ...
— Saratoga and How to See It • R. F. Dearborn
... she repeated with a sigh of satisfaction. "Always; and hyiu muck-a-muck when big salmon run. No more ever come that bad year when ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... least render a little first aid there. We had our pocket-knives out and were slashing away at the twisted maze of ropes and straps that bound the brute down between the shafts, when a particularly shrill chorus of shrieks checked us. We stood up and faced about, figuring that the poor devil on the muck heap had died and that his people were bemoaning his death. That was not it at all. The entire group, including the fat old woman, were screaming at us and shaking their clenched fists at us, warning us not to damage that harness with our knives. Feeling ran ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... out, you buck! Tailor, Tailor, muck! muck! muck!" Buck could bear all sorts of jeering, Jibes and jokes in silence hearing; But this insult roused such anger, Nature couldn't ...
— Max and Maurice - a juvenile history in seven tricks • William [Wilhelm] Busch
... cleansing the stables. But there was a dry loft overhead with some straw, where we might get some sleep, in spite of the rain and the midges; a double layer of boards, standing at a very acute angle, would keep off the former, while the mingled refuse hay and muck beneath would nurse a smoke that would prove a thorough protection against the latter. And then, when Jim, the two-handed, mounting the trunk of a prostrate maple near by, had severed it thrice with easy and familiar stroke, and, rolling the logs in front of the shanty, had kindled a fire, ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... head muck-rakers, I found that I was popular with the British ruling classes; they found my books useful in their campaigns against democracy, and they were surprised and disconcerted when they found I did not agree with their interpretation ...
— The Profits of Religion, Fifth Edition • Upton Sinclair
... which every thinker must desire to learn from one whose life has been devoted to the searching and contemplative study of Nature. It is in the realm of thought here explored, that Natural Science, whose figure we are wont to look down upon, crouching to her task, like him of the muck-rake, as he painfully gathers together his sticks and straws, rises erect, and lifts her forehead into the upper atmosphere of philosophy, where the clouds are indeed thickest, but the stars are nearest. The second ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... the Heath Society's youngest child. The heath is full of peat-bogs that only need the sand, so plentiful on the uplands, to make their soil as good as the best, the muck of the bog being all plant food, and they have a surplus of water to give in exchange. With hope the keynote of it all, the State has taken up the herculean task of keeping down the moving sands of the North ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... rout Of cheats and 'bashers' now surround the Ring, You'd better stop it as a shameful thing. In JACKSON'S time, and even in my day, It did want courage, and did mean fair play— Most times, at least. But don't mix up this muck With tales of rough-and-tumble British pluck. I'd like to shake ENTELLUS by the hand, And give that DARES—wot he'd understand Better, you bet, than being fair or "game," Or trying to keep up the Old Country's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 January 11, 1890 • Various
... game fairly begins: Whish! sound the brooms as they are whisked here, there, every where, in attempts to strike the hog; one man giving a strong blow, strikes another one who was stooping down to arrange his garters, where he dislikes to be struck, and instantly the one struck runs a muck, hitting wildly left and right. Two or three men charge on one another and brooms fly in splinters all round. One champion got a head-blow and had his wind knocked out by another blow simultaneously; round they go, and at it they go, beating the air and each other, while the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Auray!" he exclaimed. Then he dropped his whip, clasped his hands, and stood as if in ecstasy. A faint color illuminated his coarse face, and his eyes shone like diamonds dropped on a muck-heap. "Is it really the brave girl from Cottin?" he muttered, in a voice so smothered that he alone heard it. "You are fine," he said, after a pause, using the curious word, "godaine," a superlative in the dialect of those regions ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac
... was reported at dawn by Billy Muck, who had taken no part in the intimidation scheme, a wholesome awe crept into the old men's admiration; for a black fellow is ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... else could you expect, after making such a muck of it?" said his brother, sulkily. "We all thought you were so clever. How could we know you were going to be—well, ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... like the Western Plains and the glory of Niagara. The contrast between the bustling pettiness of the artificial city of Buffalo and the eternal fresh beauty of Niagara is like Bunyan's vision of the man busy with the muck-rake while over his head stood an angel with a ...
— The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century • William Lyon Phelps
... arm and with the left clasping the basket of provisions to her side; the air grows thick with the smell and smoke of kitchens. It again becomes clear to our Lane that the real and normal consist solely of herself, her houses, and their muck-heaps. ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... win by fighting," he replied. This was in March, 1915. "You know," he went on, taking another tack, "when one gets back to England out of this muck he wants good ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the highway was the broad river, which glinted like molten lead in the sunshine. They could not travel very close to its bank, for here the ground was uncertain. Once Sam left the highway to get a better view of the stream, and, before Cujo noticed it, found himself up to his knees in a muck which stuck to him ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... 'The dahned publishers are crawling to me. They've had their filthy lucre, and they know I can shift the stuff, and they're on their knees to me, begging me to take their muck by the hundred—at my ...
— Mummery - A Tale of Three Idealists • Gilbert Cannan
... even swampy, soil, it will do well on moist loam. It is cultivated like spearmint. In Michigan, western New York and other parts of the country it is grown commercially upon muck lands for the oil distilled from its leaves and stems. Among essential oils, peppermint ranks first in importance. It is a colorless, yellowish or greenish liquid, with a peculiar, highly penetrating odor and a burning, camphorescent taste. An interesting use is made of ...
— Culinary Herbs: Their Cultivation Harvesting Curing and Uses • M. G. Kains
... old man in the 'Pilgrim's Progress' with his muck-rake, always scraping with downcast looks, never gazing upwards," remarked James. "Ah! it is sad work; and yet, when a person gets down in the world, and feels the want of the wealth he once possessed, it must be a severe trial to him to prevent his mind from continually ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... the mounted men, and Harry and Dalton at last dismounted and led their horses. The division made slow progress and as they struggled on the battle deepened. Now and then as they toiled through the muck they saw long masses of blue infantry on a ridge, and with them the batteries of great guns which the gunners of the North knew so well ...
— The Scouts of Stonewall • Joseph A. Altsheler
... muck-faced jezebo of a sea-sculpin, you dare to yap out any more of that sculch and I'll come aboard you after we anchor and jump down your gullet and gallop the etarnal innards out of ye! Don't you know that ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... turned on him angrily. "Man," he said, "haven't you heard? That muck won't do now. I have to try to do Martlow justice." He went out to the platform, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... little account in this life, and he received the penalty due to his sin in the life hereafter. For in the spirit land the ghost of such a poor-spirited wretch was sentenced to what the Fijians regarded as the most degrading of all punishments, to beat a heap of muck with his bloodless club.[718] ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... usual custom, And requisite he should: he has now put off The Funeral black, (your rich heir wears with joy, When he pretends to weep for his dead Father) Your gathering Sires, so long heap muck together, That their kind Sons, to rid them of their care, Wish them in Heaven; or if they take a taste Of Purgatory by the way, it matters not, Provided they remove hence; what is befaln To his ...
— The Spanish Curate - A Comedy • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... third of the minute islands to look back. He saw the lash of blaster fire on the top of the cliff, Tau on his knees on the first of their chain of steppingstones, and a graz sprawled head and forequarters in the sucking muck where it had dived past the two defenders above. Needler and blaster fired together again, and then Jellico swung over the cliff rim. Tau waved vigorously and Dane took off for the next islet, just ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... open formation, with their guns ready. I set apart with my eye the one I opinionated to be the boss muck-raker of ...
— Options • O. Henry
... of the cicadas, that little brown lizard among the pebbles, almost within reach, seeming to listen to the beating of summer's heart so motionless it lay; unconscious, as though in verity he were again deep in some stifling trench, with German shells whining over him, and the smell of muck and blood making foetid the air. He was in the mood which curses God and dies; for he was devout—a Catholic, and still went to Mass. And God had betrayed the earth, and Jean Liotard. All the enormities he had seen in his two years at the front—the ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... inflicts—and if left to himself would as a rule have no hand in it. It is only occasionally—when ground down beyond endurance by the rent-racking classes above him, or threatened beyond endurance by an enemy from abroad, that he turns his reaping-hook into a sword and his muck-fork into a three-pronged bayonet, exchanges his fowling-piece for a rifle, and fights savagely for his home and his ...
— The Healing of Nations and the Hidden Sources of Their Strife • Edward Carpenter
... library, and I regret to say that the natives have the reputation of not keeping the Sunday with ostentatious strictness. Eigg, the little island contiguous, is a little heaven below. The missionary there well deserves a word of commendation: the island of Muck is under his spiritual supervision, and with a sandwich and a sermon in his pocket, he often sets sail, scorning gust and current, to preach to his parishioners in ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... in a hurry did they twain fare, The gent, and the son of the stout porter, Who fled like an arrow, nor turned a hair, Through all the mire and muck: "A ticket, a ticket, sir clerk, I pray: For by two of the clock must I needs away." "That may hardly be," the clerk did say, "For indeed—the ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... to go from New York to Pittsburgh, but the mill that father was working in had shut down. And so he had sent us tickets to Hubbard, Ohio, where his brother had a job as a muck roller—the man who takes the bloom from the squeezer and throws it into the rollers. That's all I can tell you now. In later chapters I shall take you into a rolling mill, and show you how we worked. I believe I am the first puddler that ever described his job, for ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... won't talk about that. I don't want to make YOU feel bad; you've befriended me. But what I want to say, is, don't YOU ever get drunk—then you won't ever get here. Stand a litter furder west—so—that's it; it's a prime comfort to see faces that's friendly when a body's in such a muck of trouble, and there don't none come here but yourn. Good friendly faces—good friendly faces. Git up on one another's backs and let me touch 'em. That's it. Shake hands—yourn'll come through the bars, but ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... think I'm talking fearful flowery stuff. I'd have said Dear me at myself three years ago if I had ever caught myself thinking in terms of stars and roses. But it's all the beastly blood and muck of the war that does it,—sends one back with a rush to things like that. Makes one shameless. Why, I'd talk to you about God now without turning a hair. Nothing would have induced me so much as to mention seriously that I'd even ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... coin. She had a kindly, intelligent face, and spoke volubly in patois, having very little command of French. It was, indeed, necessary for me to converse by the medium of an interpreter. On approaching the village we were overtaken by a slight, handsome youth conducting a muck-wagon. This was her younger son, and his easy, well-bred greeting, and correct French, prepared me for the piece of intelligence to follow. The wearer of peasant's garb, carting manure, had passed his examination of Bachelor of Arts and Science, had, in fact, received the education of ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... of the "muck-rake"[2] magazines was typical of the ten years at the opening of the twentieth century. These periodicals printed articles which portrayed a side of American life not commonly discussed in the newspapers. ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... while priests are cutting capers— Priests of beetles, cats, and tapirs, Brutes, who would thy beauty truck, For an inch of yellow muck. ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... go by yesterday;" and Jimmie pointed to enormous footprints in the muck of a marshy place. "Verrie big moose—we make call at next camp—think it ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... Ile neuer lin, But I will thorough thicke and thinne, Vntill at length I bring her in, My dearest Lord nere doubt it: Thorough Brake, thorough Brier, Thorough Muck, thorough Mier, 310 Thorough Water, thorough Fier, And thus goes ...
— Minor Poems of Michael Drayton • Michael Drayton
... appear higher owing to the slight depression of the ground at the site, and for this reason the border was all made above the surface two feet and a half in height, composed largely of decayed sods, with an addition of muck, coal and wood ashes and a small quantity of stable manure. It has been found to work admirably, and preserve an even moisture throughout. Elevated borders are highly recommended by some exotic grape growers, and our experience with them is much ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... wet as muck; my head all bumps, my cheek all cut, my nose big as two! forced to wear a plaister; half ruined in vinegar. Got a great cold; put me in a fever; never ...
— Cecilia Volume 1 • Frances Burney
... sweat is a word of connotation too vigorous (though honest withal) for us to use the term in the drawing room. A questionable woman in The Vicar of Wakefield betrays her lack of breeding by the remark that she is in a muck ...
— The Century Vocabulary Builder • Creever & Bachelor
... squint at the chimney tops, and you know that underneath is a little cottage about the size of the Grand Central station. That's the style you live in when you've hit the stock-market right, or in case you've got to be a top-notch grafter that the muck-rakers ain't jungled yet. ...
— Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... her shiftless husband at the inn was one of Mrs Durbeyfield's still extant enjoyments in the muck and muddle of rearing children. To discover him at Rolliver's, to sit there for an hour or two by his side and dismiss all thought and care of the children during the interval, made her happy. A sort of halo, an occidental glow, came ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... go oozing along contentedly through peat-bogs and meadow-ditches, mounting, perhaps, in moments of inspiration, to the moderate sublimity of a cranberry-meadow, but subsiding with entire satisfaction into a muck-puddle; and all the while the little brook that you patronize when you are full-fed, and snub when you are hungry, and look down upon always,—the little brook is singing its own melody through grove and orchard and sweet wild-wood,—singing with the birds and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... confound 'em," lamented Dank; "they know the real article, and you can't fool 'em. She knows that he is the high muck-a-muck in this party and she won't even look at me, you ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... politics, orthodoxy and the highest social spheres. The cropped convict, released from prison, was followed everywhere by the jeers and branding of a society which gloated over his downfall and which forever reminded him of his infamy. But the men who waded on to wealth through the muck of base practices and by means of crimes a millionfold more insidious and dangerous than the offense of the convict, were not only honored as leading citizens, but they became the extolled and unquestioned dictators ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... mount, and sneer, and grin at the high pommel, and start. For a minute it was pretty; and then I give a little soft call, and in a minute there was the broncho bucking—doubling like a hoop, and dropping same as lead. Once that—groom—come down on the pommel, then over on the ground like a ball, all muck and blood." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... about the plumlike external gills of the newly-born newt. It's not a thing you can do twice. No, I accept my destiny. It's all over. And now, Bertie, like a good chap, shove off. I want to compose my speech. I can't compose my speech with you mucking around. If you are going to continue to muck around, at least give me a couple of stories. The little hell hounds are sure to expect a ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... magnitude, that acts of great tyranny, can but seldom be exercised, and only by a few persons. They are privileged crimes. They are the dreadful prerogatives of greatness, and of the highest situations only. But when a Governor-General descends into the muck and filth of peculation and corruption, when he receives bribes and extorts money, he does acts that are imitable by everybody. There is not a single man, black or white, from the highest to the lowest, that is possessed in the smallest degree of momentary authority, that cannot imitate ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... mate, for me; that means money, and rules, sportsman form, and sech muck. I likes to pick out my own pals, go permiskus, and trust to pot-luck. A rush twelve-a-breast is a gammock, twelve squeakers a going like one; But "rules o' the road" dump you down, chill yer sperrits, and spile ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 102, May 7, 1892 • Various
... and if he detects traces of the white grub, cross-plow it again just as the ground is beginning to freeze. Early in the spring he can cover the surface with some fertilizer—there is nothing better than a rotted compost of muck and barn-yard manure—at the proportion of forty or fifty tons to the acre. Plow and cross-plow again, and in each instance let the first team be followed by a subsoil or lifting plow, which stirs and loosens the substratum without bringing it to the surface. The half of the field prepared in ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... our notions on cleanliness are in the highest degree superficial. We make a great fuss over a flea; hardly mention it in polite company; but we tolerate the dirty housefly on all our food. We eat high game which our cook's more natural taste calls muck. We are only just beginning to realise the indescribable filthiness of carious teeth, than which anything more unclean, a few diseases excepted, can scarcely be found in slums. Even in this great age of pseudo-scientific ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds |
