"Scum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... may be entirely empty in dry seasons; and after heavy rains may contain a depth of 2 feet. This water now has a greasy looking scum and a sour, ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... Didaper', was a graduate of All Souls, Oxon, and sometime an usher at Merchant Taylors' school. He also seems to have been connected with the legal profession. 'The skip-jack of all fortunes', neither side has a good word for this notorious pamphleteer, the very scum of our early journalism. When Mercurius Britannicus temporarily ceased publication with No. 50, 9 September, 1644, Nedham recommenced it on the 30th of the same month with No. 51 (not No. 52 as is sometimes stated). No. 92, 28 July-4 August, 1645, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... garden, blighted utterly into a field of ashes, not even a weed taking root there; the roof torn into shapeless rents; the shutters hanging about the windows in rags of rotten wood; before its gate, the stream which had gladdened it now soaking slowly by, black as ebony, and thick with curdling scum; the bank above it trodden into unctuous, sooty slime: far in front of it, between it and the old hills, the furnaces of the city foaming forth perpetual plague of sulphurous darkness; the volumes of their ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... defeated, feelings torn By a fierce conqueror's scorn; The national gods o'erthrown—treasure and blood, Once boundless as the flood, That 'neath his fixed and unforgiving eye Crept onward silently; Scattered and squandered wantonly, by bands, Leaguered in shame, the scum of foreign lands, Sent forth to lengthen out their infamy, With the wild banquet ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... girl conversed absorbedly, with their elbows on the table. Their glasses of beer were pushed to one side, scarcely touched, with the foam on them sunken to a thin white scum. Since the stroke of one the stale pleasures of Rooney's had become renovated and spiced; not by any addition to the list of distractions, but because from that moment the sweets became stolen ones. The flattest glass of beer acquired the tang of illegality; the mildest claret ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... the room furiously. "Who in Mexico is this Pasquale?" he demanded, and then answered his own question: "Scum of the earth, a peon whipped for stealing whiskey, a hill robber and murderer. In my country they'd take the scoundrel and ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... folly you please," he answered. "I've nothing to say to you; and if you choose to excite the suspicions of a lot of foreign scum like that, you can do ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... yourself, there is, after all, something solemn and impressive in all this; but when a greasy apostle in an alapaca duster, takes his place behind the elevated desk, and with bad grammar and slangy sentences, asks God in a businesslike way to bless this buzzing mass of unclean, low-browed, barbarous scum of all foreign countries, and the white trash and criminals of our own, you find no reverence, and no ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... in a jargon difficult to follow, answered: "These at our left are the scum of Asia. They are here because they have nothing; their hope is to better their condition, to return rich, to exchange ragged turbans for crowns, and goatskin jackets for robes of silk. Look, Your Majesty, the tombs in front of us are well kept; to-morrow if there ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... number of washings. Yet it is observed that the mercury collects in this solution in small globules; these often come in contact with the plate, causing white spots, which spoil the impression. They should be guarded against, and the solution renewed. Again, in order to prevent streaks or scum on the surface of the plate, it is necessary that the coating should be removed with a good degree of uniformity. I find in practice that the hyposulphite of soda in our market varies much as regards strength, and consequently the rule to be adopted is to make a ...
— American Handbook of the Daguerrotype • Samuel D. Humphrey
... covered with tall forest-trees, at others opening out into a sedgy morass, with perhaps a small lake or water-patch in the centre. The first required them to make way through mud, or thick stagnant water covered with scum, often reaching above their knees. These places were especially disagreeable to cross; for under the gloomy shadow of the trees they would now and then catch a glimpse of huge newt-like lizards of the genus hydrosaurus—almost as large as crocodiles—slowly floundering ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... confined to the civil government and the courts of law; the army, too, was infected. In the ranks were to be found hired foreigners, unwilling peasants dragged from their farms, and the scum of the city slums. Thousands deserted every year. Had the discontented troops been well commanded, they might still have answered the purpose. But such was not the case. There were certainly enough officers—an average of one general for every 157 privates. But what officers they were! Dissolute ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... I wish't could be done by the power of attorney; Or where you must eat in a place called "saloon;" Or "coffee-house" synonym of whisky and rum; (I wish all the breed were sent off to the moon, And earth was well clear of the coffee-house scum;) Or where "Restauration" hangs out for sign, At bar-room or cellar or dirty back room, Where dishcloths for napkins are thought extra fine, And table cloths look as though washed with a broom; Where knives waiters spit ...
— Nothing to Eat • Horatio Alger [supposed]
... fathoms it came short. The latitude was 59 deg. 34', the wind northeast, and we sailed east, for we were almost in the latitude of the south point of Shetland. We saw, several times, quantities of spermaceti drifting, a yellowish fat, which lies in the water, all together, but solid like the green scum which floats in ditches. We also saw rockweed floating; and a small land bird came on board the ship, from which we concluded we were approaching land. The wind was more free, and after running out and in it remained north-northeast. It blew so hard that the ...
— Journal of Jasper Danckaerts, 1679-1680 • Jasper Danckaerts
... expensive way of boiling fish. A broth is made by boiling three onions, two carrots, two turnips, some parsley, pepper, salt, sufficient water, a tumbler of white wine, and a tumbler of vinegar together; the scum is removed as it rises, the fish is simmered in the broth. This broth is called Court bouillon. Fish cooked thus is eaten hot or cold, ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... asylum he went to Bapaume to see his son-in-law, the Duke of Burgundy, and to ask his aid. "My lord," said the duke to him, "by the allegiance I owe to you and also to the king you shall have satisfaction. It were to fail in one's duty to allow such a scum to govern a country. Unless order were restored, all knighthood and lordship might be destroyed in Christendom." The Duke of Burgundy went to Senlis, where Charles VI. was, and asked for his support on behalf ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume III. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... nearer the sea, their ranks compacted. "Why, you booze-bitten, lousy hunky, what in hell do you want? You never saw twenty dollars in a lump you c'u'd call yore own for more'n ten minnits. You boardin'-house loafer an' the rest of you scum o' the seven seas, git yore shovels an' git to diggin', or I'll put you ashore in San Francisco flat broke, an' glad to leave the ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... were recruited from the scum of human society. They were made up of bankrupts, decadent students, gamblers, topers, and beggars. They came from the ranks of those who had been pursued by misfortune and who bore the marks of crime. No one was too small or ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... deny the present applicability of the note upon 'Magazines' compiled by Pope, or rather by Warburton, for the episcopal bludgeon is perceptible in the prose description. They are not at present 'the eruption of every miserable scribbler, the scum of every dirty newspaper, or fragments of fragments picked up from every dirty dunghill ... equally the disgrace of human wit, morality, decency, and common sense.' But if the translator of the 'Dunciad' ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... filthy scum, ye lousy sons o' dogs!" he ended. "Ha, will ye fight agin my orders, then—mutiny ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... gaps enough among the noblemen of the South, which they can fill up, in the place of the French scum who now riot over Wessex. And if that should not suffice, what higher honor for me, or for my daughter the Queen-Dowager, than to devote our lands to the heroes who have won ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... a pottle of water, and put into it two handful of Mary-golds, and cover it with a tile or what you think fit, and set it again on the fire, where it is to boil softly for half an hour, about which time the scum will turn yellow, then put into it half a pound of Copporis beaten smal, and with it the hair that you intend to colour, then let the hair be boiled softly till half the liquor be wasted, & then let it cool three or four hours with your hair in it; and you ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... Egan, for the peppery Major's peculiarities of speech and manner were as well known as his tanned face; "'an' then, ye dissolute, half-baked, putty-faced scum o' Connemara, if I find a man so much as lookin' confused, begad, I'll coort-martial the whole company. A man that can't get over his liquor in six hours is not fit to belong to ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... rise up out of the very ground to waylay the English; and then offers affirm they are all in league with Satan to affright the Christians out of the heathen country over which he has reigned so long. Then, again, the seashore is infested by pirates, the scum of all nations: they land, and plunder, and ravage, and burn, and destroy. Folk get affrighted of the real dangers, and in their fright imagine, perchance, dangers that are not. But who knows? Holy Scripture speaks of witches and wizards, and ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... about the town, but all over England, ay, and beyond sea, too, and send abroad their circulators, and in this manner get into their hands all that is valuable. The rest of the trade are content to take their refuse, with which, and the fresh scum of the press, they furnish one side of the shop, which serves for the sign of a bookseller, rather than a real one; but instead of selling, deal as factors, and procure what the country divines and gentry send for; of whom each hath his book-factor, and, when wanting anything, writes ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... the house, pulled the door closed, and walked away down the street. I was very angry and disturbed, but I felt also the need to treat Barber with contempt so as to keep myself alive to the fact that he was really a mere nothing, a little scum on the surface of London, of no more importance than a piece of paper on the pavement. For—shall I confess it?—I was even yet so much under the emotion of the scene back there in the concert hall that I could not help regarding him still with some mixture ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth." This was not, however, because He did not feel. More painful than the nails which pierced His body were these missiles of malice shot at His mind. The human heart laid bare its basest and blackest depths under His very eyes; and all its foul scum was poured over Him. ...
— The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ - A Devotional History of our Lord's Passion • James Stalker
... you mischievous scum, the day will come when we will no longer stand this swaggering and bullying. We are a patient people; but you can provoke us too far. I know you four right well. I would sit you in the stocks in a row, or have you whipped at the cart's tail ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... out of all knowledge since I first made its acquaintance in 1877. It was then a cluster of evil-looking shanties, the abode of the scum of the Levant, who waxed fat by the profits of the gambling hells and the sale of pornographic photographs. It has now donned the outwardly respectable look of middle age; it has laid itself out in streets; the gambling ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... into cold water. Dissolve the butter in a large enamelled saucepan, slice the artichokes and fry for five minutes in the butter, then add the water, shalots and celery chopped, and the seasonings. Boil for three-quarters of an hour, removing the scum as it rises. Add milk and sago, and stir frequently for twenty minutes. Rub through a hair ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... the framework of his latest try, fully disheartened. He tried not to think of the unescapable fact that the water in the rain tank had sunk to only an inch or so of muddy scum. Last night he had dug in the heart of the interior valley where the rankness of the vegetation was a promise of moisture, to uncover damp clay and then a brackish ooze. Far too little to satisfy both him and ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... on board Two of them, women, began to preach publicly in the streets. They were arrested and imprisoned. Soon after they were discharged and embarked on board a ship to sail through Hell Gate, to Rhode Island, "where," writes Domine Megapolensis, "all kinds of scum dwell, for it is nothing else than ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... the soup into an earthen bowl and let it remain over night. Next day remove the cake of fat on top; take out the jelly, avoid the settlings; and mix into it the beaten whites of the eggs with the shells. Boil quickly for half a minute; then, removing the kettle, skim off carefully all the scum and whites of the eggs from the top, not stirring the soup itself. Pass through a jelly bag, when it should be very dear. Reheat just before serving, and add then a tablespoonful of caramel to give ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman
... Rainer as they hurried through the gardens. "A week ago I got a cable from Paris saying that a kidnapping gang were after Dorothy. I'm a millionaire, and the scum are after ransom. I cabled to McNeill, my Paris agent, to come right here with half a dozen of the best detectives in France, scooped up Mr. Buist of the New York police,"—he nodded towards the short, clean-shaven, grimy man—"borrowed a yacht, and came along myself. Being in a hurry, ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... the Provisional Government was spread all over the provinces. "The mob," says Lamartine, "was in part composed of galley slaves who had no political ideas in their heads, nor social principles in their hearts, and partly of that scum which rises to the surface in popular commotions, and floats between the fumes of intoxication and the thirst ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... removed. The 25th Infantry, with its honor undimmed by any such wanton crime, with a record unexcelled by any regiment in the service, was the target for all sorts of criticism and persecution as soon as it arrived. The one is a white regiment, composed of the scum of the earth, the other a black regiment composed of men who have yet to do one thing of which they should be ashamed. Yet Denver welcomes the one with open arms and salutes with marked favor, while she barely suffered the other ...
— The Colored Regulars in the United States Army • T. G. Steward
... not a priest by profession I was so in disposition. All my failings sprung from that. My first masters taught me to despise laymen, and inculcated the idea that the man who has not a mission in life is the scum of the earth. Thus it is that I have had a strong and unfair bias against the commercial classes. Upon the other hand, I am very fond of the people, and especially of the poor. I am the only man of my time who has understood the characters of Jesus and of Francis of Assisi. ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... conversations; and when Carlos inveighed against the Intendente, the old Don nodded sadly in his chair. He was dishonouring the name of the Riegos, Carlos would exclaim feebly, turning his head towards his uncle. His uncle's own province, the name of his own town, stood for a refuge of the scum of the Antilles. It wras a shameful sanctuary. Every ruffian, rascal, murderer, and thief of the West Indies had come to think of this ancient and honourable town as ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... these people in society, light as froth, blown every whither of temptation and fashion—the peddlers of filthy stories, the dancing-jacks of political parties, the scum of society, the tavern-lounging, the store-infesting, the men of low wink, and filthy chuckle, and brass breast-pins, and rotten associations? For the most part, they came from mothers idle and disgusting—the scandal-mongers of society, going ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... the country, my estates here would have been confiscated; partly because I should like to strike a blow, myself, at these tyrants of Paris, who seem bent on destroying the whole of the aristocracy of France, of wiping out the middle classes, and dividing the land and all else among the scum of ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... happening every day and every night,—were all reported to the Recorder; they were all, so to say, charged home upon the Recorder, and he was held responsible for them all; till his office was a perfect laystall and cesspool of all the scum and corruption of the town. And yet, in would come Governor God's-peace, without either warning or explanation, and would demand all the Recorder's papers, and proofs, and affidavits, and what not, it had cost him so much trouble ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... we find most people working too hard and too long at honest labor; some people working with damaging intensity at dishonest labor; and a few wretched paupers among the rich and poor, degenerate idlers who do not work at all, the scum ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... achievement, as you say. But other things will follow, and the plains will no longer keep men at bay. The money grabbers will pour in, and all the scum of creation will flock toward the setting sun. Then, too, I shall hate to see the wild animals that have their own rights killed in unsportsmanlike manner, and annihilated, as they are wherever men can easily reach them. Men are wasteful and bad. I've seen things in the wild places ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... St. George's Fields, where the vast army of men was drawn up in sections. Doubtless there were honest zealots sprinkled here and there, but for the most part the throng was composed of the very scum and refuse ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol III • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... the qualities manifested in his progenitors or parents—never any other; these qualities could not exceed the amount possessed by the parents, whereas we find criminals from birth in the most respectable families and saints born to parents who are the very scum of society. You may come across twins, i.e., beings born from the same germs, under the same conditions of time and environment, one of whom is an angel and the other a demon, though their physical forms ...
— Reincarnation - A Study in Human Evolution • Th. Pascal
... stand fixt, move not a foot, nor speak not, For if thou doest, upon this point thy death sits. Thou miserable, base, and sordid lecher, Thou scum of noble blood, repent and speedily, Repent thy thousand thefts, from helpless Virgins, Their innocence ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... brought together without any previous acquaintance with one another; and many of them, after a long residence on shore, have lost most of their naval habits. The sailors, being collected how and where we can get hold of them, are too frequently the off-scourings and scum of society. With such a heterogeneous crew, the first year is employed in teaching them habits of cleanliness and common decency; and it is only in the third year of their service that the ship becomes really efficient. Just as that point has been reached, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... the unpractis'd ear Of rusticks revelling o'er country cheer, A motley groupe; high, low; and froth, and scum, Distinguish but shrill squeak, and dronish hum? —Indoctus quid enim saperet, liberque laborum, ...
— The Art Of Poetry An Epistle To The Pisos - Q. Horatii Flacci Epistola Ad Pisones, De Arte Poetica. • Horace
... Julius Caesar, he only offended against the Dignity of Tragedy. For that part of the People who ran about the Streets upon great Festivals, or publick Calamities, or publick Rejoicings, or Revolutions in Government, are certainly the Scum of the Populace. But the Persons who in the Time of Coriolanus rose in Vindication of their just Rights, and extorted from the Patricians the Institution of the Tribunes of the People, and the Persons by whom afterwards Coriolanus was tried, were the ...
— Eighteenth Century Essays on Shakespeare • D. Nichol Smith
... in a large vessel till the scum rises. Skim this off as fast as it appears on the surface, until the butter remains quite clear, like oil. It should then be carefully poured off, that the impurities which settle at the bottom of the vessel may be separated. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... the scum of the earth," Katherine answered with a yawn, as she stretched out her feet to the glowing warmth of ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... baffle plate across the center which prevents direct outward flow. The heavy solids sink to the bottom and anaerobic bacteria, which develop only where there is no oxygen, breed rapidly and break these up so that they rise to the top and provide the ever present scum which excludes all air and stimulates fermentation of the entire content. Meanwhile, liquid from the tank is flowing into the disposal fields, which are porous land tile laid in shallow trenches and covered with earth and sod. Here some air is present and aerobic bacteria ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... the distant Thunder hem, Maryland! The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum. Maryland! She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb— Hnzza! she spurns the Northern scum! She breathes—she burns! she'll come! she'll come! ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... two ways of clarifying liquids—ebullition and precipitation; one forces the impurities to the surface as scum, the other sends them to the bottom as dregs. The former is the more offensive, and that seems to be our way; but neither is useful if the impurities are merely separated but not removed. We are told with tiresome iteration that ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... I there? If my mother had seen that wretched servant girl brushing my hair the old lady would have died—I, the child of many prayers, the hope of a house, and stumping home on a foggy morning after sitting among the scum of earth all night. I mean to be a philosopher, but what a beastly, silly school to cultivate political philosophy in! What do I know more than I knew before?—that one vulgar girl maintains three vulgar criminals, and that all the four will come ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... and growing, and therewith the jeering grew; And now that the time was come for an ugly brawl I knew, When I saw how midst of the workmen some well-dressed men there came, Of the scum of the well-to-do, brutes void of pity or shame; The thief is a saint beside them. These raised a jeering noise, And our speaker quailed before it, and the hubbub drowned his voice. Then Richard put him aside and rose at once in his place, And over the rags and the squalor beamed ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... dead in her, and she sulked, ashamed through all her eight hundred tons of wood and iron, copper, brass, and steel. For she was coaling, over-deck, and was grimy from stem to stern. While, arrayed in the cast clothes of all Europe, tattered, undersized, gesticulating, the human scum of Naples swarmed up the steep, narrow planks from the inky lighters and in over ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... departure instantly. "But it will be a fine story that Signor Fenshawe cables from Aden when he tells how the Governor of Massowah aided and abetted this half-crazy poltroon in onslaughts on defenseless women. It was not enough that Italian law should be misused to further his ends, but the scum of the bazaar is enlisted under his banner, and he is supported by the authorities in an act that would be reprobated by any half-savage ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... a pound of onions a light brown; mince a turnip and carrot and a little piece of celery; boil these until tender in three pints of the liquor in which a rabbit has been boiled, taking care to remove all scum as it rises; strain them out, and then pass the soup through a napkin. The soup should be clear, or nearly so, but if it is not, put it in a stewpan, boil and skim until bright; then throw in the contents of a tin of Nelson's Extract of Meat, soaked for a few minutes; ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... captain, "it's about the worst set of swabs that ever called themselves sailors. Some of 'em don't seem to know the spanker boom from the jib. Of course, that isn't true of all of 'em. Perhaps half of them are fairly good men. But the rest seem to be scum and riffraff." ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... transition of mind as well as transfer of body. I could appreciate the exclamation of an impulsive English girl while waiting one sultry day on a North-River pier, as she spread open her arms and rushed to the edge of the dock: "I feel as if I'd like to take a barth!" It was not the dirty scum under the piles that set her longing, but the general sense of refreshment which the broad and breezy river suggested to her imagination. Why should not those tides wash out some of the lines which a day in the city has left to deepen on a man's mind and brow?—especially ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... what a blessing it is for us to have, as we may have, a source of joy, frozen by no winter, dried up by no summer, muddied and corrupted by no iridescent scum of putrefaction which ever mantles over the stagnant ponds of earthly joys! Like some citadel that has an unfailing well in its courtyard, we may have a fountain of gladness within ourselves which nothing that touches the outside can cut off. We have but to lap a hasty mouthful of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... time when a queen of France appeared disguised as a violet-seller. I found there flower-merchants disguised as vivandieres. I expected to find libertinism there, but in fact I found none at all. One sees only the scum of libertinism, some blows, and drunken women lying in deathlike stupor on ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... ice neither grew any thinner nor any thicker, but seemed to remain at a stand-still. In the early part of the morning it was almost strong enough to bear them; but during the day the sun melted it, until it was little better than a scum over the surface ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... men and women of saffron color or quite black, either free or slave. Will any one dare to deny this fact? I will only designate, in support of my assertion (and to say no more), the famous house of Coquet, located near the center of the city, where all that scum is to be seen publicly, ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... the Indians? All they ask is to be let alone! Ever see a single piaster of profit made out of a dead Indian unless you could sell his hair? Of course not. The Indians don't want war. What they want is trade. I've lived among 'em. I know. It's Dunmore and the border scum who want war. They want ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... I shall never forget. In Kansas, before the war, I once had a walk of several miles under a burning sun, in a region where not a drop of water could be found. When I finally reached it, the only water to be found was in a small, stagnant pool, covered with a green scum nearly an inch in thickness. Warm, brackish, and fever-laden as that water was, I had never before tasted any thing half so sweet. Again, while crossing the Great Plains in 1860, I underwent a severe and prolonged thirst, only quenching it with the bitter alkali-water of the ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... idea you would have, Sir William Rumbold. They say scum rises. You grew a handle to your name during the war, but you ain't grown manners to go with it. War changes them that's changeable. T'others are ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... delight in insulting and humiliating the nobleman who owned the parish in which he lived? To Lord Trowbridge the very fact that the parson of the parish which he regarded as his own was opposed to him, proved sufficiently that that parson was,—scum, dregs, riff-raff, a low radical, and everything that a parson ought not to be. The Vicar had been wrong there. The Marquis ...
— The Vicar of Bullhampton • Anthony Trollope
... that meant a float-bridge through the cracks of which the water spurted up in jets at each impact of the horses' hoofs. On either hand the bayou, but a plank's thickness below the level of the float-bridge, filmed with green weeds and the bright scum of water, not too stagnant, offered surprises to the watchful eye. One could see many mud-turtles floating lazily, feet outstretched in poise; and bullfrogs and little frogs; and, in the clear places, trim and self-sufficient mud hens. From the reeds at the edges flapped small ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... from an attack of ardent spirits, was busily engaged, with a wet towel round his head, writing a leader upon the event. This production, which was very sonorous and effective, was peppered all over with such phrases as "protection of property," "outraged majesty of the law," and "scum of civilization"— expressions which had been used so continuously by Mr. O'Flaherty, that he had come to think that he had a copyright in them, and loudly accused the London papers of plagiarism if he happened to see them in ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... short time, begins to undergo a peculiar change. No matter how clear it might be at starting, yet after a few hours, or at most a few days, if the temperature is high, this liquid begins to be turbid, and by-and-by bubbles make their appearance in it, and a sort of dirty-looking yellowish foam or scum collects at the surface; while at the same time, by degrees, a similar kind of matter, which we call the "lees," sinks to ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... cried, "knew how to thrash these Lorrainers, and we will make them remember it. By St. George, I will not fly before a boy, before Rene of Vaudemont, who is coming at the head of this scum! He has not so many men with him as people think; the Germans have no idea of leaving their stoves in winter. This evening we will deliver the assault against the town, and to-morrow we will ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... sugar before you add the fruit to it, it will be improved in clearness by passing it through a flannel bag. Skim off the brown scum, all the ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie
... passing down the Boulevard is a never ending source of interest, and with some reason, for the prisoners now are not the scum of Belleville and La Villette, swept at haphazard out of their lanes and alleys, but the more prominent men, who have been lying hid ever since, and are being discovered or denounced singly, so that there are seldom more ...
— The Insurrection in Paris • An Englishman: Davy
... in and see your mother, or she'll be wondering what has happened to you. Yes, I'll go off to Dublin to-morrow. If Neil doesn't pay up his rent in a week, off he goes; it's men like Andrew Neil who are the scum of the earth. He has put my back up; and pay his rent he will, or out ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... were now three or four going to and fro against the grey hillside. "They will hang about me now all the night ... until I kill," said Andoo. "Filth of the world!" And mainly to annoy them, he resolved to watch the red flicker in the gorge until the dawn came to drive the hyaena scum home. And after a time they vanished, and he heard their voices, like a party of Cockney beanfeasters, away in the beechwoods. Then they came slinking near again. Andoo yawned and went on along the cliff, and they followed. Then ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... shame not enough in your eyes but that you must taunt me further? Do my innocent children want to look upon the faces of those who robbed them of a father? If there is a spark of manhood left in one of you, show it by leaving me alone! And you other scum, never fear but that you will clutter hell in reward for last night's work. Begone, and leave ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... of oil spread outwards from a miniature maelstrom where vast bubbles heaved themselves up and broke; the air was sickly with the smell of benzoline, and mingled with it were the acrid fumes of gas and burnt clothing. A dark scum gathered in widening circles, with here and there the white belly of a dead fish catching the sun: a few scraps of wreckage went by, but no sign of a man or what had ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... 'The Thimble' disappeared in a cloud of grayish vapor, the dull sound of an explosion filled the ear, and the ground under our feet trembled. There was nothing to be seen, even with the glass, save a light scum covering the water and some fragments of charred tree branches. But the air about us was full of a fine dust that powdered Betty's hair, as though for a costume ball, ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... situation and adopted an attitude which is, in the main, that of most middle-class Christian Englishmen towards prostitutes. But as puberty develops this attitude has to be accommodated with the wish to make use of this scum, these moral lepers. The ordinary young man, who likes a spice of immorality and has it when in town, and thinks it is not likely to come to his mother's or sisters' ears, does not get over his arrogance and disgust or abate them in the least. He takes them with him, more ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... easily spare the money, without risk of future repentance; and she went on to infer that in such a case "Mr. Croftangry had grown a rich man in foreign parts, and was free of his troubles with messengers and sheriff-officers, and siclike scum of the earth, and Shanet MacEvoy's mother's daughter be a blithe woman to hear it. But if Mr. Croftangry was in trouble, there was his room, and his ped, and Shanet to wait on him, and tak payment when it ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... The pond be close at hand. Let's give him a taste of his deservings! What do he the scum, turn himself up at West Lynne for, bearding Mr. Carlyle? What have he done with Lady Isabel? Him put up for others at West Lynne! West Lynne's respectable, it don't want him; it have got a better man; it won't have a villain. ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Miss Sally with dancing eyes. "I, a So'th'n girl, actually set my foot on the head of a No'th'n scum of a co'nnle! My!" ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... who seemed inclined to defy his and every other person's authority; and, on hearing that the result of all the disorders and revolutions had been the elevation of Bibars Bendocdar to the throne of Saladin, he remarked, in homely oriental phrase, 'when the pot boils, the scum rises to the top.' Above all, Musteazem was a miser, and covetous to the last degree; and when it was explained to him by his grand vizier, whom the Templar had already bribed with a purse of gold, that the King of France was liberal in money matters, and ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... magnate chose for the enforcement of this cruel order. A driving blizzard had raged throughout the night, and the snow had banked up in drifts in places many feet deep. The temperature was freezing, and the strong east wind cut like a knife. It was Ames's desire to teach these scum a needed lesson, and he had chosen to enlist the elements to aid him in ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... same time liberated, and combines with the indigo to form the soluble indigo white. It takes about twenty-four hours to make an indigo vat. When properly made and in good condition, the liquor will be clear and of a brownish-yellow colour, a bluish scum may collect on the surface. If the liquor appears at all greenish it is an indication that the indigo has not been completely reduced, and the vat needs a further addition of lime and copperas, which should be of good quality. Too much of each ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... minority of slave-owners all their power. You say we control the Union. We do, and we do it by the votes of these people, who are as far below our niggers as the niggers are below decent white men. Who that reflects that this country has been governed for fifty years by such scum, would give a d—— ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... thought and love by the gewgaws she hangs on her bonnet! How light must be that thing which will float on the sea of passion—a bubble, a feather, a puff-ball! And yet multitudes of women float there, live there, and call it life. Poor things! Scum on the surface! But there is a truth, young women; woman was made for a higher purpose, a nobler use, a grander destiny. Her powers are rich and strong; her genius bold and daring. She may walk the fields of thought, achieve ...
— Aims and Aids for Girls and Young Women • George Sumner Weaver
... water, Kiruha and Vassya filled the cauldron and fixed it over the fire. Styopka, with the notched spoon in his hand, took his place in the smoke by the cauldron, gazing dreamily into the water for the scum to rise. Panteley and Emelyan were sitting side by side in silence, brooding over something. Dymov was lying on his stomach, with his head propped on his fists, looking into the fire. . . . Styopka's shadow was dancing over ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... "O scum of the earth!" cried Sancho at this, "O miserable, spiteful enchanters! O that I could see you all strung by the gills, like sardines on a twig! Ye know a great deal, ye can do a great deal, and ye do a great deal more. It ought to have been enough for you, ye scoundrels, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... for the scum of the streets. How they lived was a mystery, except to people who kept fowls, or forgot to lock their doors at night. A few were vicious idlers, sponging on their parents for a living at twenty years ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... London was terrible. An ugly clamour of strident noises and hard, shrill voices, jabbering of vulgar, trivial things. A wry, desperate, cursed world, as she had called it, a pot seething with bitterness and all dreadfulness, with its Rosalinds floating on the top like scum. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... or the green German lentils may be used for this soup. If the latter, soak overnight. Stew the lentils very gently in the water for 2 hours, taking off any scum that rises. Well wash the vegetables, slice them, and add to the soup. Stew for 2 hours more. Then rub through a sieve, or not, as preferred. Add the lemon juice, herb powder, and butter ...
— The Healthy Life Cook Book, 2d ed. • Florence Daniel
... fence taught me by Captain Galsworthy. The only work which all the prisoners had to perform in turn was the drawing of water from a well in the keep. The water of the moat, as I had seen when we crossed it on entering, was covered with a green scum, the rivulet which fed it not being of sufficient volume to keep it ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... stop there. He conjured up a tempting vista of long and honored life under an empire that was now supreme. Even the scum of rebellion yet left on the calm surface was that day swept away, and naught remained but to enjoy the favors of his ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... is the scum of wit and the scorn of reason, the hate of wisdom and the dishonour of humanity. He is the danger of society and the hurt of amity, the infection of youth and the corruption of age. He is a traitor to affiance and abuse to employment, ...
— Character Writings of the 17th Century • Various
... and round and round, And he sniffed at the foaming froth; When I ups with his heels, and smothers his squeals In the scum of the boiling broth. ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... and man, even when Holy Church herself is in the question. God can be ill served in the church as well as the monarch on his throne. We are not counted rebels and traitors because we condemn a minister of state; why, then, are we to be counted heretics and the scum of the earth because we see the evils and corruption in the lives of ...
— For the Faith • Evelyn Everett-Green
... bank of mortar, and scoria, and bricklayer's refuse, on one side, which the clean water nevertheless chastises to purity; but it cannot conquer the dead earth beyond: and there, circled and coiled under festering scum, the stagnant edge of the pool effaces itself into a slope of black slime, the accumulation of indolent years. Half-a-dozen men with one day's work could cleanse those pools, and trim the flowers about their banks, and ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... waters drowned all other words. A great mist made from the stream sent up by the swamped burning mountains stopped all accurate view, though the blaze from the fires lit it like gold. But I had a last sight of a horde of soldiery rushing up the slopes of the Mountain, with a scum of surge billowing at their heels, and licking many of them back in its clutch. And then my eye fell on old Zaemon waving to me with the Symbol to shut down the door in ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... surveyor," she said. "Maybe he was just a smooth talker, but he had a nice face; laughing crinkles around his eyes and a way of looking at you, if you'd done a mean thing, to make you feel like the scum of the earth. But he happened to be acquainted with the man that made me a present of my first billy and ewes, and you—favor him a little." She paused, then went on unsteadily, while her eyes continued to search him. "He was about your size, but he's been up in Alaska, way in ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... gentlemen something of a sight more interesting that this," the newcomer continued. "They don't want to sit down and drink with the scum ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... some for high tea to-night, and some for breakfast in the morning, and give our landlady the rest. Nice woman that; full of stories about the prisoners, and Bony and his wretched scum. Ugh! The very name of the rascal raises my bile, and—There, I think I had better take you home and ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... been taught by his brother, and his brother's set, to believe that Dissenters were, morally and intellectually, the scum of the earth. Here were men who, though not Dissenters themselves, held doctrines practically undistinguishable from theirs, and yet united the highest mental training with the service of God and the imitation of Christ. There was in the Cleaver household none of that reserve ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... the person of Stace Morse, fence, yeggman and murderer, had been captured. The public, if it had held any private admiration for the one-time mysterious crook could now once and forever disillusion itself. The Gray Seal was Stace Morse—and Stace Morse was of the dregs of the city's scum, a pariah, an outcast, with no single redeeming trait to lift him from the ruck of mire and slime that had strewn his life from infancy. The face of Inspector Clayton, blandly self-complacent, leaped out ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... of Whay, which is purging; and Butter, as it is expressed in the said Gallen, Cap. 15. Also we finde in Wine which is in the Must, three substances, that is to say, earth, which is the chiefe; and a thinner substance, which is the flower, and may be called the scum, or froath: and a third substance which we properly call Wine; And every one of these substances, containes in it selfe divers qualities, and vertues; in the colour, in the smell, and in ...
— Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke • Antonio Colmenero de Ledesma
... purification is not properly effected by one in a standing posture, not by one while he is going along.' And Utanka having agreed to this, sat down with his face towards the east, and washed his face, hands, and feet thoroughly. And he then, without a noise, sipped thrice of water free from scum and froth, and not warm, and just sufficient to reach his stomach and wiped his face twice. And he then touched with water the apertures of his organs (eyes, ears, etc.). And having done all this, he once more entered the apartments of the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... streets ferment in full activity; While every thing around was calm and still, Except the creak of wheels, which on their pivot he Heard,—and that bee-like, bubbling, busy hum Of cities, that boil over with their scum:— ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... Pirates, scum of all nations, headed by such men as the hideous little Portuguese monkey, and the one-eyed English convict with the gash across his face, that ought to have gashed his wicked head off? The worst men in the world picked out from the worst, to do the cruellest and most ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... after the war the character of the immigration began to change, and during the eighties and nineties came to be almost entirely made up of the lowest, most wretched, and barbarous races of Europe—the very scum of the continent. Even to secure these wretched recruits the agents of the transatlantic steamers and the American land syndicates had to send their agents all over the worst districts of Europe and flood the ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... and remove decayed leaves only; drain well, then pound in a mortar or chopping-bowl until quite mashed. Let it stand a quarter of an hour, then squeeze the mass in a cloth, and put the green water into a cup, which set over the fire in a small saucepan of water; watch the scum rise; when it stands quite thick at the top and turns a vivid green, remove at once (if it remains on the fire after this the green darkens); pour the contents of the cup through cheese-cloth or thin muslin laid in a strainer. ...
— Choice Cookery • Catherine Owen
... said Stagman, "thou art somewhat rash in this matter, for Interpreter's fee is but a trifle; and I can tell thee, that if by mischance thou shouldst come to lose thy way in the Fair, thou mayst chance to be very roughly handled. There is always a scum of villains there on the outlook to decoy strangers, and, if they will not consent to be cheated, to flout and mock them with gibes and scurril jests. 'Twas but the other day they put Truepenny into the STOCKS, and kept him there ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... it may be said, that the croun of England is upon the downfal, and surely we are all seething in the pot of revolution, for the scum is mounting uppermost. Last week, no farther gone than on Mononday, we came to our new house heer in Baker Street, but it's nather to be bakit nor brewt what I hav sin syne suffert. You no my way, and that I like a been house, but no wastrie, and ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... him. He was silent, and then brought out a string of expletives. "I mistrusted the filthy pack from the first," he said. "See what they give us to work with, sir—the scum of Glasgow and London; and none of us to have a say in the matter. I'd sooner go to sea with Satan than scum like that," he said fiercely. "As soon as I set eyes on them I knew we were in for it—but not this," he added, "not this by a ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... less tragic; indeed, in a sense it was comic. Wellington, himself an Irishman though of the narrower party, was preeminently a realist, and, like many Irishmen, was especially a realist about Englishmen. He said the army he commanded was the scum of the earth; and the remark is none the less valuable because that army proved itself useful enough to be called the salt of the earth. But in truth it was in this something of a national symbol and the guardian, as it were, of a national secret. There ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... the South before the war, most of these were the offspring of white overseers—and it is a notorious fact that a majority of our professional "nigger-drivers" were from the North. This is no reflection on the character of the Northern people—these fellows were simply the feculent scum, the excrementitious offscourings of civilization. And now I remember that a second-cousin of mine in Kentucky has an overseer from Ohio named Otis. A very thrifty and choleric man was my cousin, and considering a yaller nigger less valuable than ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... thy course uncheck'd, heroic WOOD! Regardless what the player's son may prate, Saint Stephens' fool, the Zany of Debate— Who nothing generous ever understood. London's twice Praetor! scorn the fool-born jest— The stage's scum, and refuse of the players— Stale topics against Magistrates and Mayors— City and Country both thy worth attest. Bid him leave off his shallow Eton wit, More fit to sooth the superficial ear Of drunken PITT, and that pickpocket Peer, When at their sottish orgies they did sit, Hatching mad counsels ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... day, when with cropped hair—with the broad-arrowed coat, the yellow stockings—this man dragged wearily the wheelbarrow in the grim silences under the sinister skies of Dartmoor, with warders to taunt, or insult, or browbeat the Irish felon-patriot—with the very dregs and scum of our lowest social depths for companions and colleagues—and then think of this same man standing up before the supreme and august assembly where the might, sovereignty, power, and omnipotence of this world-wide empire are centred, and holding it for ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... often considered safer to pass the water through still another filter bed, consisting of layers of charcoal, which has the power of gathering oxygen in its pores, to attack and oxidize, or burn up, the remaining impurities in the water. A sort of scum forms over the surface of the last and finest bed of sand or charcoal, and if this scum is not too frequently removed, though it makes the filtering slower, the water comes out purer. On examining this ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... comfort my children are to me! One son a fool, and the other a lost sinner that's left his home to live with smugglers and gypsies and villains, the scum of ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... the hotel office with a desperate glance, trying to select a face to which she might appeal. There wasn't one. Estabrook was filling with its usual week-end scum; crafty faces, hard faces, faces shallowly good-natured, and therefore doubly treacherous. Even the pimply clerk at the desk, discerning her unescorted state, had changed ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... sugar, a pint of molasses, and eight ounces of salt-petre, are enough to boil in four gallons of water. Skim it clean while boiling. Put it to the beef cold; have enough to cover it; and be careful your beef never floats on the top. If it does not smell perfectly sweet, throw in more salt; if a scum rises upon it, scald and skim it again, and pour it on the ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... ability, and the unfledged scribbler whose crudities are utter abominations. We care nothing for mere names, though a good deed is none the worse for coming from a good hand; but the small fry of literature—the lackadaisical geniuses—Heaven bless the mark—who, scum-like, float upon the surface, soiling what they touch and disturbing by their presence what, but for them, might be free from offence—we ...
— The Philadelphia Magazines and their Contributors 1741-1850 • Albert Smyth
... inland, and those who are here today are gone to-morrow, and their places in society filled up by others who ten years back had no prospect of ever being admitted. All is transition, the waves follow one another to the far west, the froth and scum, ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat) |
