"Blacken" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... say not. But that doesn't matter to me! it is we who talk of justice, of respect, and sympathy from man to man, and then we go and blacken the men who don't agree with us—whole classes, that is to say, of our fellow-countrymen, not in the old honest slashing style, Tartuffes that we are!—but with all the delicate methods of a new art of slander, pursued ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... them. But I must indicate one train of thought which kept passing through my mind with constant recurrence:—Was it fair to let her marry such a man in ignorance? Would she marry him if she knew what I knew of him? Could I speak against my rival?—blacken him even with the truth—the only defilement that can really cling? Could I for my own dignity do so? And was she therefore to be sacrificed in ignorance? Might not some one else do it instead of me? But if I set ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... as they are thrown into the list to blacken him, his intended match with his own niece Elizabeth, the penance of Jane Shore, and ...
— Historic Doubts on the Life and Reign of King Richard the Third • Horace Walpole
... termination en is added, especially to adjectives; as, haste, to hasten; length, to lengthen; strength, to strengthen; short, to shorten; fast, to fasten; white, to whiten; black, to blacken; hard, to harden; ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... distilleries and breweries, still at work day and night in the land, placed in one city or county, they would blacken all the surrounding heavens with their smoke. And could all the oaths, obscenities, and blasphemies they occasion every hour, be uttered in one voice, it would be more ...
— Select Temperance Tracts • American Tract Society
... "Go and blacken your face and hands at one of the slack dumps and pass yourself for a miner quitting his job," was Blount's parting suggestion; but the hollow-eyed fugitive had a last word to say, too, and he ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... wanted. If ice is at hand, it will be found advantageous to keep the eggs in it. In well-furnished kitchens a copper beating-bowl is provided; it should not be tinned, as contact with this metal will blacken the eggs; for this reason, the whisk, if of iron wire, should not be new. An earthenware bowl with circular bottom, and sufficiently large to admit of a good stroke in beating, answers the purpose perfectly ...
— Nelson's Home Comforts - Thirteenth Edition • Mary Hooper
... Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make And who with Eden didst devise the Snake; For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man Is blacken'd, Man's Forgiveness ...
— Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam and Salaman and Absal • Omar Khayyam and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... interrupted Mrs. Parry, too eager to blacken character to give her friend a chance of concluding her sentence. "Giles Ware, of Kingshart—the head of one of our oldest Essex families. He came into the estates two years ago, and has settled down into a country squire after a wild life. ...
— A Coin of Edward VII - A Detective Story • Fergus Hume
... decided him to burn all the letters he had received from Madame Hanska. It was a terrible sacrifice. He describes in an unpublished letter to her his feelings, as he sat by the fire, and watched each letter curl up, blacken, and finally disappear. He had read and re-read them till they had nearly dropped to pieces, had been cheered and comforted by the sight of them when the world had gone badly, and had owned them so long that they seemed part of himself. There was the first of all, the herald of joy, ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... But as the daylight came through the window only half was lit up by the lamp. And though he looked terrible and magnificent and would chuck the Forest, he said, and come to the Slade, and be a Turkish knight or a Roman emperor (and he let her blacken his lips and clenched his teeth and scowled in the glass), still—there lay ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... Large numbers can be dried on these frames. Care of course must be taken that the plants are not burned. In all cases the plants must be so placed that air will circulate under and around them, otherwise they are apt to blacken. ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... he either possesses or can project, what is this but to destroy all government? and this is anarchy. My right honorable friend, in supporting this motion, disgraces his friends and justifies his enemies in order to blacken the Constitution of his country, even of that House of Commons which supported him. There is a difference between a moral or political exposure of a public evil relative to the administration of government, whether in men or systems, and a declaration of defects, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... has breathed its last all the people in the village unite in making grand lamentations. They cry, moan and howl worse than at the proverbial Irish funeral, they blacken their faces with charcoal and daub it with other colours to frighten away the bad spirit whilst the family crowd round the dead body and let their ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... uncle is a gentleman. He would never stoop so low as that. I know he tried to blacken my dear father's character, but he idolized his son, and hardly realized the mischief he was doing. Watson is a thorough scoundrel! I have always known it, and my uncle has already dismissed him for tampering ...
— The Carved Cupboard • Amy Le Feuvre
... clothes—but he need not wash his face much—and bring him here. Mr. Logan, I mean Lord Fastcastle, will want him. Now, Mrs. Bower—you see I trust you absolutely—what he is wanted for is this. I shall dress in your grandson's clothes, I shall blacken my hands and face slightly, and I must get to Drem. Have I time to reach the station by ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... this world, after that took to drinking, used to get constantly drunk, and rolled from public-house to public-house, and bar to bar, and as the worst glass of vitrol still cost a penny, he became reduced to undertaking the part which you have seen, to dabble in the water, to blacken himself, and to allow himself to ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... every kind of conveyance cross each other's course in every possible direction. Twisting in and out by the wheels and under the horses' heads, working a devious way, men and women of all conditions wind a path over. They fill the interstices between the carriages and blacken the surface, till the vans almost float on human beings. Now the streams slacken, and now they rush amain, but never cease; dark waves are always rolling down the incline opposite, waves swell out from the side rivers, all London converges ...
— The Story of My Heart • Richard Jefferies
... vivacity, besmirch and weaken his mind, take the strength from his muscles, the courage from his heart, sap the very foundation of his existence, unsex and unnerve him, render him feeble, wavering and imbecile, dog his footsteps to the very steps of the altar, to curse and blacken and disappoint those joys of parentage and marital right that should be his. The shadow deepens with him as life advances, and follows him, bringing shame and misery and despair at every step, until the poor victim, driven too far, sinks into an early grave by disease or suicide, or is lost ...
— Manhood Perfectly Restored • Unknown
... consummate eloquence, that this same Quintianus, supposing him to have dined off some birds or, as they assert, killed them for magical purposes, should have had no slave to sweep up the feathers and throw them out of doors! Or further that the smoke should have been strong enough to blacken the walls and that Quintianus should have suffered such defacement of the room in which he slept, while it was still in his occupation! Nonsense, Aemilianus! There is no probability in the story, unless indeed Crassus on his return went not to the bedroom, but after his fashion made straight ...
— The Apologia and Florida of Apuleius of Madaura • Lucius Apuleius
... man to have a fool for a son. I see plainly that you were leagued with Druce and Anson to blacken the woman I love. But right is might and love is right. The whole dastardly affair enlightens me as to the nature of your alliance with that dive. Why did you renew the lease to Druce against my protest? I never realized until tonight the horror of your extensive holdings of tenderloin property. ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... in the abstract, mother," said Miles; "but you and Frank have not seen the scoundrel in his beaten down state, and, as Archie says, it is hard to blacken the memory of either poor George Proudfoot or Tom Vivian, who have fathers to feel it ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... time we're fighting [the murmuring dies], not for ourselves, our own little bodies, and their wants, 't is for all those that come after throughout all time. [With intense sadness.] Oh! men—for the love o' them, don't roll up another stone upon their heads, don't help to blacken the sky, an' let the bitter sea in over them. They're welcome to the worst that can happen to me, to the worst that can happen to us all, are n't they—are n't they? If we can shake [passionately] that white-faced ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... till sheer exhaustion obliges him to desist, when his place is taken by his assistant. Water is sprinkled on the stone and huge fires are kindled. No layman may approach the sacred spot while the mystic ceremony is being performed. When the Sulka of New Britain wish to procure rain they blacken stones with the ashes of certain fruits and set them out, along with certain other plants and buds, in the sun. Then a handful of twigs is dipped in water and weighted with stones, while a spell is chanted. After that rain should follow. In Manipur, on a lofty hill to the east of ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... In the foreground, a black group of trees may be dimly discerned; beyond are indistinct hills and the last glow of a bloody sunset. Smoke and dust blacken the scene. Even before the cloud breaks to reveal the valley for a moment, the low roar is suddenly broken by the rattle of musketry, followed by the booming of artillery and the drumming sound of the machine guns. A trumpet sounds the charge. The dust cloud breaks. ...
— Makers of Madness - A Play in One Act and Three Scenes • Hermann Hagedorn
... increased. Finding that they could neither answer nor controvert my principles, nor put me down, they have been base enough to resort to slander, and to the most wanton and barefaced falsehoods, which they have trumped up to blacken me. The separation from my wife was a subject that they never failed to urge against me, after having tortured it into a thousand aggravated shapes; not one of which was true. If, however, I would but have joined any one of these factions—would have followed the example of Sir Francis ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... high, and on alternate sides; scatter the wounds, made from year to year, as much as possible. Another process of tapping is now most popular with all who have tried it. Bore into the tree half an inch, with a bit not larger than an inch, slanting slightly up, that standing sap or water may not blacken the wood. Make the spout out of hoop-iron one and a fourth inches wide; cut the iron, with a cold chisel, into pieces four inches long; grind one end sharp; lay the pieces over a semicircular groove in a stick of hard wood, and place an iron rod on it lengthwise ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... respite of those fighting days, came back the conquerors themselves, to enjoy a fleeting period of rest and fame ere they should stiffen on Russian snows, or swell the streams which bathe the walls of Leipsic, or blacken, with countless dead, the plains stretching between the Rhine and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... your dealings with these apparently easy-going people you must exercise the same acuteness that is so absolutely necessary in England. There are few great crimes in proportion to the population, nor do we ever hear of such atrocities as those classes of murders which so frequently blacken the page of our modern history. Homicide is more common than actual murder, and is often the result of a sudden quarrel where knives are drawn, and a fatal stab in passion constitutes the offence. Sheep-stealing is the prevalent crime, and is ...
— Cyprus, as I Saw it in 1879 • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... very moment did the president of the Atlantic Bridge Company comprehend the trap he had walked into, but now the whole hideous business became apparent. He had been fooled, swindled, and in a way to render recourse impossible; nay, in a manner to blacken his reputation if the story became public. He fell actually ill from the passion of his rage and not even a long rest from the worries of business completely cured him. The bitter taste of defeat would not down. He might never have understood the matter thoroughly had it not been for a ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... dreadful countenance, that the doctor affirmed her to be not mad but malicious, that his father had stated in 1822 he—Honore—would never have a worse enemy than his mother. Had his mother been all this and more, it would have been ungenerous and unfilial to blacken her reputation to a stranger. And, being false, it was odious. Madame Balzac's partiality towards the second son—heavily enough punished—did not prevent her from loving the elder, though their characters (hers and his) were not made to comprehend each other; ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... hateful Crimes, He Rails at Wedlock in confused Rhimes, Calls Woman Faithless, 'cause she woun't consent, To humour what his Brutish Thoughts invent; No wonder then, if with his poisonous Breath, He strives to Blacken the Brightest thing on Earth: Woman! by Heaven her very Name's a charm, And will my Verse against all Criticks Arm; She Comforts Man in all his Sweats and Toils, And richly pays his Pains, with Love and ...
— The Pleasures of a Single Life, or, The Miseries Of Matrimony • Anonymous
... elected to the highest place in the Government, and fellow Democrats in another high place, where they have the right to speak and legislate generally, to join with the commune in traducing the Senate of the United States, to blacken the character of Senators who are as honorable as they are, who are as patriotic as they ever can be, who have done as much to serve their party as men who are now the beneficiaries of your labor and mine, to taunt and jeer us before the country as the advocates of trust ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... were rather," said the knight, "that my writhen features should blacken, as they are like to do, in ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... poverty in India which is largely due to the political and commercial drain on the country year by year, the political, it is asserted, amounting to L30,000,000 and the commercial to L40,000,000. These figures have been placed even higher by those who wish to blacken the Indian Administration in order to bolster up a malicious agitation against this country. I think it is incumbent upon the representative of the Indian Government in this House to deal with the statement. I may at once say that it has no foundation in fact. (Hear, hear.) ...
— Indian Unrest • Valentine Chirol
... is on account of its admirable qualities that Germany has so many enemies. Friedrich v. Schiller says: "The world loves to blacken whatever is radiant and shining, and to drag what is exalted in the dust.... Socrates had to drain the bowl of poison, Columbus was cast into fetters, Christ was nailed to the cross,"—FELDMARSCHALLEUTNANT FRANZ RIEGER, quoted by KR. NYROP, Er ...
— Gems (?) of German Thought • Various
... to elaborate his instructions. The men were to be divided into two parties, one to form a line north of the scene of the last outrage, and the other to be spread over a particular zone some three miles the other side of Hempdon. They were to blacken their faces and hands, and observe great care to show no light colouring in connection with their clothing. Thus they would be indistinguishable from ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... he loved so well. A corner of a page of St. Augustine's Confessions was turned towards him and lay on a singed fragment of Aldonza's embroidered curtain, while a little red flame was licking the spiral folds of the screw, trying, as it were, to gather energy to do more than blacken it. Ambrose could have wept over it at any other moment, but now he could only catch up a brand—it was the leg of his master's carved chair—and run back with it. Lucas ventured to light a lamp, and they could then ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... made to own that all which had passed between herself and Girard was merely the offspring of her own diseased fancy; that all she had spoken of as real, at the bidding of her brethren and the Carmelite, was nothing more than a dream. Not content with whitening Girard, she must blacken her own friends, must crush them, and put ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... full grown, but not too hard; pour boiling salt and water on them; let them be covered with it nine days, changing it every third day; then take them out on dishes, and put them in the sun to blacken, turning them over; then put them in a jar and strew over them pepper, cloves, garlic, mustard seed and scraped horse-radish; cover them with cold strong vinegar ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... into the mist, but there was no pirate within a mile. The wave and squall that carried away my boom dismasted the felucca outright. I perceived his thieving crew, some dozen or more of them, struggling to recover their rigging from the sea. Allah blacken ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... following revolution in the romance of his own abominable life. He had in his pockets above a hundred pounds of booty; means, therefore, for a full disguise. This very night, if he will shave off his yellow hair, and blacken his eyebrows, buying, when morning light returns, a dark-colored wig, and clothes such as may co-operate in personating the character of a grave professional man, he may elude all suspicions of impertinent ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... were Esmond's performances worse for the effect they were intended to produce (though no doubt they could not injure the Duke of Marlborough nearly so much in the public eyes as the malignant attacks of Swift did, which were carefully directed so as to blacken and degrade him), because they were writ openly and fairly by Mr. Esmond, who made no disguise of them, who was now out of the army, and who never attacked the prodigious courage and talents, only the selfishness and ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... kitchen, like a beast in a cage; raving in the dreadful drink-madness called delirium tremens. In the farthest corner of the room, barricaded behind the table, the landlord's wife and daughter crouched in terror of their lives. The gas, turned full on, blazed high enough to blacken the ceiling, and showed the heavy bolts shot at the top and bottom of the solid door. Nothing less than a battering-ram could have burst that door in from the outer side; an hour's work with the file would have failed ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... you've had the experience and your record is far above the average, so we're going to issue the license; but if you'll take a bit of advice from an old sailor you'll be content to go as second mate for a year or two more, until your jowls blacken up a bit and you get a trifle ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... entire bowl with his wings, can be no other than the Spaniard, who endeavours to engross all the treasures of the Indies to himself. The lion is indeed, the common emblem of Royal power, as well as the arms of England; but to paint him black, is perfect Jacobitism, and a manifest type of those who blacken the actions of the best Princes. It is not easy to distinguish, whether the other fowl painted over the punch-bowl, be a crow or raven? It is true, they have both been held ominous birds; but I rather ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... other on the walls, messieurs et mesdames, si vous voulez; make portrait busts of the bread and figurines of the potatoes, and decorate the plates in whatever style of art you please; but don't, je vous en supplie, don't blacken the table-cloths before they are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... said Conrad; 'thou art the marauding villain Slavata, whose body I intend to hang upon my topmost turret, to blacken in the sun and feed the ravens ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 366, April, 1846 • Various
... baptisteries of Provence, for something of a primitive character has been preserved to which such modern altars and XVII century trappings as those of Aix and Frejus are fatal. Under the heavy dust there is visible an unhappy coating of whitewash, traces of a fire still blacken the walls, fragments of Roman sculpture are scattered about, and between the columns a pagan altar has been placed for safe-keeping. The columns themselves are of pagan construction, and as they differ somewhat ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... hit me. Then the thing would be done. They would have begun the attack, and the beaten party must take its chance. How is anybody to know which person's aim has been true, in a scuffle? Listen to your own sister, Orso! These lawyers who are coming will blacken lots of paper, and talk a great deal of useless stuff. Nothing will come of it all. That old fox will contrive to make them think they see stars in broad midday. Ah! if the prefect hadn't thrown himself in front of Vincentello, we should have had ...
— Columba • Prosper Merimee
... paper, columns were given to the prospective prize- fight at Carson City. All the news about the good Corbett and the orthodox Fitzsimmons—about the training of the gentlemen who are going to attack each others' jugulars and noses; who are expected to break jaws, blacken eyes, and peel foreheads in a few days, to settle the question of which can bear the most pounding. In this great contest and in all its vulgar details, the readers of the Times-Herald are believed by the editor of that religious daily to take ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... system in the housekeeping made everything harder for her, too. It was all right for daddy to help wash the dinner dishes, and even to blacken the range and the gas stove as he did on this evening, but there were dozens of things going wrong every day in the house which neither Janice ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... and last night they up an' spoke—you should just a' 'eard them. Then someone set it goin' as the fault wasn't Dick's at all. See what I mean? I don't know who started that. I can't think as he'd try to blacken a girl's name just to excuse himself; that's goin' a bit ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... charge. So much I observed. It was concerning the contracting of the impeachment. I observed that some found fault with the length of that as it was drawn. They were offering some reasons to contract it, and I heard this prisoner at the bar vent this expression; 'Gentlemen, it will be good for us to blacken him what we can; pray let us blacken him,' or words to that purpose. I am sure 'blacken' ...
— State Trials, Political and Social - Volume 1 (of 2) • Various
... among other reasons which he urged upon the queen why she should not marry Leicester, saying that "he is infamed by the murder of his wife." The queen remained a virgin sovereign, and Leicester's crime availed only to blacken his character. ...
— England, Picturesque and Descriptive - A Reminiscence of Foreign Travel • Joel Cook
... of the methods of those at work to blacken a person whom they knew to be innocent, that, as you will remember, they refused to publish your analysis which destroyed their charges and, incidentally, revealed ...
— When the World Shook - Being an Account of the Great Adventure of Bastin, Bickley and Arbuthnot • H. Rider Haggard
... Feemy! becase I still want to see my father's daughter an honest woman, though she may be soon a beggar; becase I don't want to see my sister crouching under a blackguard's foot; becase I don't want the worst disgrace that can happen a family to blacken the ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... sod; all harvest utterly cleared away; starvation in its most grisly forms again began to stalk the land; the people perished by tens of thousands, and the tales told by eye-witnesses of what they themselves had seen at this time are too sickening to be allowed needlessly to blacken these pages. ...
— The Story Of Ireland • Emily Lawless
... occurrence in Hyde Park, and to Mr. Raeburn. I listened to it with pain, for, if there can be degrees in the absolute evil of injustice and lack of charity, it seems to me that the highest degree is reached in that uncharitableness which tries to blacken the character of an opponent. Since the subject has been introduced, the House will, I hope, bear with me if for the sake of justice I for a moment allude to a personal matter. Some years ago I myself was an atheist, ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... blood?" He paused,—and in the same low, horror-stricken tone, continued. "Blood ... Blood! It stains the earth and sky! ... its red, red waves swallow up the land! ... The heavens grow pale and tremble,—the silver stars blacken and decay, and the winds of the desert make lament for that which shall come to pass ere ever the grapes be pressed or the harvest gathered! Blood ... blood! The blood of the innocent! ... 'tis a scarlet sea, wherein, like a ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... faction fight in ould Ireland, they say, Was all on account of Saint Pathrick's birthday, Some fought for the eighth—for the ninth more would die. And who wouldn't see right, sure they blacken'd his eye! At last, both the factions so positive grew, That each kept a birthday, so Pat then had two, Till Father Mulcahy, who showed them their sins, Said, "No one could have two ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... abjectly cowardly. She dwells with great fullness upon his crimes, and passes rapidly and coldly over the many great and good things he achieved for France. In some instances positive misrepresentations are resorted to, calculated to blacken his character. Thus, in relation to the disaster at the bridge ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... substance is fused with two parts of soda, and one part of borax, upon charcoal, the sulphide of sodium is formed. This salt, if moistened and applied to a polished silver surface, will blacken it. The borax serves no other purpose than to prevent the absorption of the formed sulphide of sodium by the charcoal. As selenium will blacken silver in the manner above indicated, the presence of this ...
— A System of Instruction in the Practical Use of the Blowpipe • Anonymous
... little he feared Tarzan's threats. An instant later he felt the ape-man's steel fingers at his throat, and Paulvitch, who attempted to dodge them and reach the door, was lifted completely off the floor, and hurled senseless into a corner. When Rokoff commenced to blacken about the face Tarzan released his hold and shoved the fellow back into his chair. After a moment of coughing Rokoff sat sullenly glaring at the man standing opposite him. Presently Paulvitch came to himself, and limped painfully back to ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... rules the ball, Thus shall your wives, and thus your children fall: On all the line a sudden vengeance waits, And frequent hearses shall besiege your gates. There passengers shall stand, and pointing say, (While the long funerals blacken all the way) 40 'Lo, these were they, whose souls the Furies steel'd, And cursed with hearts unknowing how to yield.' Thus unlamented pass the proud away, The gaze of fools, and pageant of a day! So perish all, whose ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... Stranger to this Peace of Mind, Search where thou may'st conspicuous Merit find: There strive to blacken with thy utmost Art, And rail the ...
— Two Poems Against Pope - One Epistle to Mr. A. Pope and the Blatant Beast • Leonard Welsted
... area through which I have traveled. No furniture brings confusion to their rooms, no machinery distresses the ear with its groaning or the eye with its unsightliness, no factories belch out smoke and blacken the beauty of the sky, no trains screech to disturb sleepers and frighten babies. The simplest of simple beds—in most cases merely a few boards with a straw mattress placed thereon—the straw sandal on the foot, wooden ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... whom do I owe the power of publishing what I am now writing, save to this liberator of modern thought?" Michelet employed his almost matchless rhetoric not only to exalt the Reformers to the highest pinnacle of greatness, but to blacken the character of their adversaries, the obscurantists, ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith
... east the horizon began to blacken against the sky. It was early morning. A watch was set, the Chinamen sent below, and until daybreak, when Charlie began to make a clattering of tins in the galley as he set about preparing breakfast, Wilbur paced the rounds of the schooner, looking, listening, and waiting ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... black. The material is usually separated into two parts, one to be dyed, the other to be bleached. That to be dyed is spread in the sun and thoroughly dried for one or two days, care being taken that rain does not fall upon it and blacken it. The other part is boiled in a solution of acetic acid for twenty minutes, after which it is thoroughly dried in ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... stretching across for the reception of the tobacco-sticks, thick pine laths, from which are suspended the heavy plants. Safely housed and beyond all danger of the frost, whose slightest touch is sufficient to blacken and destroy it, the crop is now ready for firing, and through the late autumn days blue clouds of smoke hover over and around the steep roofs of the tall tobacco-barns. A stranger might suppose the buildings on fire, but ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... My own lips are sealed, but yours are free. You shall tarnish the memory of our father and blacken the honor of our mother. You shall humble me, and rob me of my wife's love—if you ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... its brilliancy was so unbearable that Barbicane and his friends were obliged to blacken the object-glasses of their telescopes with gas-smoke in order to support it. Then, mute, hardly emitting a few admirative interjections, they looked and contemplated. All their sentiments, all their impressions were concentrated in their eyes, as life, under violent emotion, is concentrated ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... And now again Within that square of darkness, look! a light That feels its way with hesitating pulse, As we do, through the darkness that it drives To blacken into deeper night beyond. ...
— Life Is A Dream • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... 1789. He was one of those whom Peter Mackintosh remembered to have seen run into his master's blacksmith's shop, and blacken their faces with soot. ...
— Tea Leaves • Various
... time. When once he had determined to act against his friend, knowing himself to be suspected, he acted with more zeal than would have been necessary or justifiable if he had been employed against a stranger. He exerted his professional talents to shed the Earl's blood, and his literary talents to blacken ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... that while we range with Science, glorying in the Time, City children soak and blacken soul and sense ...
— The Constitution of the United States - A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution • James M. Beck
... the attester of this pretended confession, on that occasion; their close and reserved silence, at the time when they must have had this confession of Paris in their pocket; and their publishing every other circumstance that could tend to blacken the queen, and yet omitting this confession, the only direct evidence of her supposed guilt; all this duly and dispassionately considered, I think, one may safely conclude, that it was judged not fit to expose, so soon, to light this piece of evidence against the ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... shoalbrains leave the helm to me: God, let me not in their dull ooze be stranded: Let not this one frail bark, to hollow which I have dug out the pith and sinewy heart 270 Of my aspiring life's fair trunk, be so Cast up to warp and blacken in the sun, Just as the opposing wind 'gins whistle off His cheek-swollen pack, and from the leaning mast ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... managed to flip it around his neck, and the next moment he was at my mercy. I had no mercy then. I understand how it might be possible to kill prisoners. I pulled it tight, tight—pulled till I saw his face blacken and his eyes stand out. He went down, but still I pulled. And then after a little I found myself ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... to blacken the characters of prominent men Manufacturers of phrases More glorious to merit a sceptre than to possess one Necessary to let men and things ...
— Widger's Quotations from The Memoirs of Napoleon • David Widger
... alone from the party, out of sorts with himself, angry with Azalia, and boiling over with wrath toward Paul. He set his teeth together, and clenched his fist. He would like to blacken Paul's eyes and flatten his nose. The words of Azalia—"I know nothing against Paul's character"—rang in his ears and vexed him. He thought upon them till his steps, falling upon the frozen ground, seemed to say, "Character!—character!—character!" ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... left even after severe frosts; sometimes they seem to shrivel or blacken, and may not perhaps be palatable then. Missel-thrushes and wood-pigeons eat them. Last winter in the stress of the sharp and continued frosts the greenfinches were driven in December to swallow the shrivelled blackberries still on the brambles. The fruity ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... Bristling, and in the midst, the open sand. And Rustum came upon the sand, and cast His eyes toward the Tartar tents, and saw Sohrab come forth, and eyed him as he came. As some rich woman, on a winter's morn, Eyes through her silken curtains the poor drudge Who with numb blacken'd fingers makes her fire— At cock-crow, on a starlit winter's morn, When the frost flowers the whiten'd window-panes— And wonders how she lives, and what the thoughts Of that poor drudge may be; so Rustum eyed The unknown adventurous youth, who from afar Came seeking Rustum, and defying forth ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... degree of relationship or of devotion. Consistent with the idea of sacrificing all personal beauty and adornment, they trim off likewise from the dress its fringes and ornaments, perhaps cut it short, or cut the robe or blanket in two. The men blacken their faces, and widows or bereaved parents sometimes gash their arms and legs till they are covered with blood. Giving themselves up wholly to their grief, they are no longer concerned about any earthly possession, and often give away all that they have to the first ...
— The Soul of the Indian - An Interpretation • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... quarters an effort has been made to blacken the reputation of General Clarke by comparing his treatment of the Tories with the mild and humane policy pursued by Francis Marion. There was, indeed, some misunderstanding between the two men in regard to the methods that might be adopted. The policy of Marion was ...
— Stories Of Georgia - 1896 • Joel Chandler Harris
... a cake of oatmeal, which is baked at the fire upon a stone. After the custard is eaten up, they divide the cake into as many portions, and as similar as possible, as there are persons in the company. They blacken one of these portions with charcoal until it is perfectly black. They put all the bits of cake into a bonnet. Every one blindfolded draws a portion—he who holds the bonnet is entitled to the last. Who draws the black bit is the devoted person to be sacrificed to Baal, whose favour they ...
— Folk Lore - Superstitious Beliefs in the West of Scotland within This Century • James Napier
... The Downs change their complexion, but are never other than soothing and still: no stress of weather produces in them any of that sense of fatality that one is conscious of in Westmoreland. Thunder-clouds empurple the turf and blacken the hangers, but they cannot break the imperturbable equanimity of the line; rain throws over the range a gauze veil of added softness; a mist makes them more wonderful, unreal, romantic; snow brings them to one's doors. At sunrise they ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... proposals of marriage to her which she had rejected, and married Mr. Williamson." But when the case came on the grand jury, having heard the charge, declared themselves thoroughly persuaded that it was an artifice of Mr. Causton's designed "rather to blacken the character of Mr. Wesley, than to free the colony from religious tyranny, as he had been pleased to ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... pieces of bread a slice deep brown, but do not blacken or burn. Break into small pieces and put into a jar. Pour over the pieces a quart of boiling water; cover the jar and let it stand an hour before using. Strain ...
— Searchlights on Health - The Science of Eugenics • B. G. Jefferis and J. L. Nichols
... he knew he could not. To tell her anything of this story would be gall and wormwood! To have to drop a hint that would blacken another man's character would place him in a most awkward position. To think of doing it was like tearing out his heart for her ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... would think of how I must blacken my shoes, brush my clothes, comb my hair, live up to the rules of etiquette and possibly turn out to ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... indeed, sir? That's a much more Christian-like way of looking at it, than to blacken your own soul before God by ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... that the meat on them is not too thick in any part; sprinkle them well with the above seasoning, and broil over a very clear fire. When nicely browned they are done; but do not allow them to blacken. ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... inexperienced fellow like Owen do? Will he not be hoodwinked by some specious story or another, framed to last till Manston gets tired of poor Cytherea? And then the disclosure of the truth will ruin and blacken ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... the many tales, which, as Osborn says, "may be found in the black relations of the Jesuits, and some French and Spanish Pasquilers." These slanderers were chiefly, I believe, Parsons or Persons, and Sanders, who scrupled at nothing that would tend to blacken the character and reputation of Elizabeth. Thus besides the above, and other stories of Elizabeth {12} herself, it was stated by Sanders that her mother, Anne Boleyn, was Henry VIII.'s own daughter; and that he intrigued, not only with Anne's mother, but with her sister. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 62, January 4, 1851 • Various
... thyself so far, ma mie," said Mary. "Were mine innocence clearer than the sun they would blacken it. All that can come of this same trial is that I may speak to posterity, if they stifle my voice here, and so be known to have died a martyr to my faith. Get we to our prayers, girls, rather than feed on vain ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... are used to that kind of thing and will probably dissolve partnership and lie quiet for a bit, and still less to folk like myself, who are only servants. But if you were still here it would have mattered a great deal to you, for it would blacken your name and break your heart, and then what's the good of the money? I tell you, Major," the clerk went on with quiet intensity, "though I am nobody and nothing, if I could afford it I would follow your example. But I can't, for I have a sick wife and a ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... Vauvert et les Gobelins de la Bievre. This last-mentioned old volume interested him all the more, because his garden had been one of the spots haunted by goblins in former times. The twilight had begun to whiten what was on high and to blacken all below. As he read, over the top of the book which he held in his hand, Father Mabeuf was surveying his plants, and among others a magnificent rhododendron which was one of his consolations; four days of heat, wind, and sun without a drop of rain, had passed; ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... drawing him into some position which might justify the "few friends," as he termed them, first in disgracing him, and afterwards of settling their account ultimately with a man whom they wished to blacken, as dangerous to the society of which they were members. The curse, however, of these secret confederacies, and indeed of ribbonism in general, is, that the savage principle of personal vengeance is transferred from the nocturnal assault, or the midday assassination, which ...
— Fardorougha, The Miser - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... of sunshine died away; the deep woods began to blacken; a cool air sighed in the high tops of the trees. It was very homeless and lonely. She took heart, however, remembering God's goodness to her, and placing her confidence in ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... the case, and in a few minutes we saw a signal run up to the royal-mast-head of the "Victory," Lord Hood's flag-ship. The seventy-four immediately replied, and at once ceased firing altogether, the fire from the "Juno" also slackening somewhat. Then we saw the rigging of the two ships blacken, as the hands went aloft to loose the canvas. Rapidly, yet as steadily as though the crews were merely being put through their sail drill, the heavy folds of canvas were let fall from the yards, sheeted home, and hoisted, the head-yards ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... time, and the whole country filling up with human masses as far as one could see from the battlements. At last the wind sprang up and a cloud appeared—in the right quarter, too, and just at nightfall. For a little while I watched that distant cloud spread and blacken, then I judged it was time for me to appear. I ordered the torch-baskets to be lit, and Merlin liberated and sent to me. A quarter of an hour later I ascended the parapet and there found the king and the court assembled and gazing ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... talents, and equally ill-treated by the calumny or just satire of his contemporaries as an unjust and partial judge. Some of the notes are by that curious and laborious antiquary, Robert Milne, who, as a virulent Jacobite, willingly lent a hand to blacken ...
— Bride of Lammermoor • Sir Walter Scott
... was left for some hours where it fell, until it became the sport of rabble children, who dragged it all round Paris. They tried to burn it, but did little more than scorch and blacken the remains, which were first thrown into the river, and then taken out again "as unworthy to be food for fish," says Claude Haton. In accordance with the old sentence of the Paris Parliament, it was dragged by the hangman to the common gallows at Montfaucon, and there hanged ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... operation. The wicked lying of previous campaigns no doubt cannot be repeated: bigotry will make no further experiments in Pigottry. But a resolute attempt, lavishly financed and directed by masters of the art of defamation, will be made to blacken Ireland. Every newspaper in every remotest country-town in England will be deluged with syndicated venom. The shop-keeper will wrap up his parcels in Orange posters, and the working-man will, I hope, light his pipe for years to come with ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... sooner set foot upon the North American shores, than they suddenly become possessed with an ultra republican spirit. The chrysalis has burst its dingy shell; they are no longer caterpillars, but gay butterflies, prepared to bask in the sun-blaze of popular rights. Ask such a domestic to blacken your shoes, clean a knife, or fetch a pail of water from the well at the door, and ten to one she will turn upon you as fierce as a lioness, and bid you do it yourself. If you are so imprudent as to insist on being ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... is with men. When years after his death the world agrees to call a man great, the verdict must be accepted. The historian may whiten or blacken, the critic may weigh and dissect, the form of the judgment may be altered, but the central fact remains, and with the man, whom the world in its vague way has pronounced great, history must reckon one way or the other, whether ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge
... been nearly as anxious to blacken his wife's character as his own, they have seized on this letter to confirm the reckless and random assertions of contemporary libellers, that her reputation was questionable. The matter may be left to readers to decide,—I ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... it. Miss Browning sent for me this evening to tell me how people were talking about you. She implied that it was a complete loss of your good name. You do not know, Molly, how slight a thing may blacken a girl's reputation for life. I had hard work to stand all she said, even though I did not believe a word of it at the time. And now you have told me that ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... their working proves how necessary they are, from this simple fact: You would suppose that, as the ventilator opens freely into the chimney, the smoke would be blown down through it in high winds, and blacken the ceiling: but this is just what does not happen. If the ventilator be at all properly poised, so as to shut with a violent gust of wind, it will at all other moments keep itself permanently open; proving thereby that there is an up-draught ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... of the topsail shivers, The bowlines strain and the lee shrouds slacken, The braces are taut, the lithe boom quivers, And the waves with the coming squall-cloud blacken. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I., No. 3, January 1858 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... darkened by exposure, showed that he had told the truth as to his descent, notwithstanding the amazing daubs on his face. His hair, stiffened with black grease, stood out all around his head, and the same oily composition had been used to blacken his ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... the haggard women of Bourke ever breathed a suspicion of scandal against her. They said she was too good and too pretty to be where she was. You see it was not as in an old settled town where hags blacken God's world with their tongues. Bourke was just a little camping town in a big land, where free, good-hearted democratic Australians, and the best of black sheep from the old world were constantly passing through; where husband's were often obliged to be away from home for twelve ...
— Children of the Bush • Henry Lawson
... me to be in the way of the accomplishment of his wishes, he has prejudiced her against me, and done so in such a manner as to induce the belief in her mind that I am his bitterest enemy, and would use any means to do him an injury or blacken his character. Hence, if she were to know that anything came through me, she would at once set it down as false and slanderous, which would drive her farther from me and nearer to the other, thereby hastening the ...
— Eveline Mandeville - The Horse Thief Rival • Alvin Addison
... death the funeral takes place, and the neighbors are invited to a feast of all the provisions that can be procured, which must be all consumed. The relations of the deceased do not join in the banquet; they cut off their hair, cover their heads, blacken their faces, and for a long ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... let the grass grow under my feet. I have bought Penton Court. I have also started a campaign which will wipe the Jebusa Jones people off the face of the earth they blacken. I hope you are finding a vocation. When I am settled at Nunsmere we must talk further of this. I take a greater interest in you than in any other woman I have ever known, and that I believe you take an interest in me is the ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... silver hairs impart, And fill her place in his indulgent heart: As where fruits fall, quick rising blossoms smile, And the bless'd Indian of his care beguile, In vain these various reasons jointly press, To blacken death, and heighten her distress; She, thro' th' encircling terrors darts her sight To the bless'd regions of eternal light, And fills her soul with peace: to weeping friends Her father, and her lord, she recommends; Unmov'd herself: her foes her air survey, And rage to see their ...
— The Poetical Works of Edward Young, Volume 2 • Edward Young
... bird in the tree; O bird, sing loud in the sky, And honey-bees, blacken the clover-beds; There are none of ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... South African people was their high sense of honour, and they would maintain their reputation for honourable dealing untarnished. (Cheers.) To forget their loyalty to the Empire in this hour of trial would be scandalous and shameful, and would blacken South Africa in the eyes of the whole world. Of this South Africans were incapable. ...
— Native Life in South Africa, Before and Since • Solomon Tshekisho Plaatje
... and triumph'd over in the hour Of mine own victory! Curses on ye both! May thorns be planted in the marriage-bed! And love grow sour'd and blacken'd into hate Such as ...
— The Lady of Lyons - or Love and Pride • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... degraded Priest, who was dismissed from the Board of Inquisitors, of which he had been Secretary. Actuated by interest and revenge, he wrote his history at the instance of Joseph Bonaparte, the new King of Spain, and, to please his royal master he did all he could to blacken the character of that institution. His testimony, therefore, should be received with great reserve. To give you one instance of his unreliability, he quotes the historian Mariana as his authority for saying ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... yielded reluctantly to Barneveld's request that he should, for the time at least, remain at his post. Later on, as the intrigues against him began to unfold themselves, and his faithful services were made use of at home to blacken his character and procure his removal, he refused to resign, as to do so would be to play into the hands of his enemies, and, by inference at least, to accuse himself of infidelity to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... bitterly," said I. "I know what has happened. You are hot from an inn full of the viler type of cyclist, and I presume that, after their custom, they mocked at your machinery. But don't blacken a popular exercise on ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... blood. Tear me away. I have not force enough to liberate myself. Why do you grin at me? The corpse grins likewise. It is jugglery. I am innocent. You would take away my life. Tear me away, I say: the veins rise; they blacken; they are filling with new blood. I feel them swell; they coil like living things around my ...
— Rookwood • William Harrison Ainsworth
... a bare room with seven or eight men standing in a circle round him, regarding him with sullen and angry looks, yet with curiosity and some respect; and on more than one face there were marks of the struggle, savage flushes that would blacken to-morrow, and blood on lips. He looked from one to the other, but saw no face he recognized, yet they were not such a murderous set of scoundrels as he had expected to see, and although more than one of them, ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... the two desires which make it difficult to confess anything truthfully—the desire to tell the worst of oneself and the desire to do full justice to oneself at the same time. It is so very hard not to blacken the blackness, or whiten the whiteness, when one comes to trying to tell the truth about oneself. "But I been a beast all the same," said ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... pictures are quite as rare as good poets; and I do not see why we should pique ourselves on admiring any but the very best. One in a thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause of men, from generation to generation, till its colors fade or blacken out of sight, and its canvas rots away; the rest should be put in garrets, or painted over by newer artists, just as tolerable poets are shelved when their little day is over. Nevertheless, there was one long gallery ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... humbler houses in the little street, the inner firelight shining on the panes as the outer twilight darkened. When the families gathered in-doors there, for the night, it was only a foolish fancy to feel as if it were a little hard in them to close the shutter and blacken the flame. So with the lighted shops, and speculations whether their masters and mistresses taking tea in a perspective of back-parlour—not so far within but that the flavour of tea and toast came out, mingled with the glow of light, into the street—ate ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... witchcraft began with the inquisitors in the South of France in the thirteenth century. It was then and there that the charge of sexual uncleanness with demons was first devised. Persecuted heretics would naturally meet in darkness and secret, and it was easy to blacken such meetings with the accusation of deeds so foul as to shun the light of day and the eyes of men. They met to renounce God and worship the Devil. But this was not enough. To excite popular hatred and keep it fiercely alive, fear must be mingled with it; and this end was reached by making ...
— Among My Books - First Series • James Russell Lowell
... he caught through the kitchen door fanned into a fresh glow his smoldering anger against the foreman. It was not that he minded in the least the result of the fellow's plotting. But the method of it, the effrontery of that cowardly, insolent attempt to blacken and besmirch him with Mary Thorne, made him more furious each time he thought of it. When he reached the bunk-house ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... even with the closest attention to the above directions, annoying failures will not occur. It often happens that some accidental circumstance—generally a projecting film or a little dust—will occasion the mercurial vapor to act with great energy on one part of the paper, and blacken it before the other portions are at all effected. Again, the mercury will sometimes accumulate along the lines made by the brush, and give a streaky appearance to the picture, although these lines are not at all evident before the mercurial vapor was applied. (A brush ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... favour, Doctor, an' don't talk to me about that there man. I'm that angry at him! That man hurt my feelin's too bad. The way we was—him an' me, for so long—an' then he goes and tries to blacken my character with all them people. [To JULIUS.] ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... the Corporation Debate on Repeal, has a single bold course been proposed for Ireland, that folly, disorder, and disgrace has not been foreboded. Never has any great deed been done here that the alien Government did not, as soon as the facts became historical, endeavour to blacken the honour of the statesmen, the wisdom of the legislators, or the valour of the soldiers ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... The plantation paths now began to blacken with slowly moving figures, but within the Big House there was no confusion. Colonel Blount paced slowly up and down the gallery. ...
— The Law of the Land • Emerson Hough
... the book to come, but no more abstract can be necessary. The way in which Jean is delivered from his Adelaide and rewarded with his Caroline, if not quite probable (for Adelaide is made to blacken her own character to her rival), is not without ingenuity. And the narrative (which has Paul de Kock's curious "holding" quality for the hour or two one is likely to bestow on it) is diversified by the usual duel, by Jean's noble and rather rash conduct, in putting down his pistols ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... minds; he's not a gentleman! True, it is now and then our legal lot To teach a stupid witness what is what, Or show that he (or she) Is rather worse than he (or she) should be; We find it necessary, Very, To blacken what we have no doubt is white, And whiten what is very ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... Valois, the Bastard of Angouleme, and their attendants, had reached the admiral's house. The wounded man was almost alone. Could there be any clearer proof of the rectitude of his purpose, of the utter falsity of the charges of conspiracy with which his enemies afterward attempted to blacken his memory?[983] Guerchy and other Protestant gentlemen had expressed the desire to spend the night with him; but his son-in-law, Teligny, full of confidence in Charles's good intentions, had declined their offers, and had, indeed, himself ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... sights are and how to use them. We should know how those men most successful in the science and art of shooting hold the rifle under different conditions, how they adjust their slings, how they prepare (blacken) their sights and care for their rifles, what practice and preparation they take, and what bits of advice they have ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... inarticulate mumblings are everywhere repeated as utterances of profound wisdom, and the slaver that drools from his chin is carefully collected and shown to the people, evoking the wildest enthusiasm of his supporters. His opponents all this time are trying to blacken his character by the foulest conceivable falsehoods, some even going so far as to assert that he is not an idiot at all! It is generally agreed among them that if he were chosen to office the most dreadful disasters would ensue, and that, therefore, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... it was a 'Gospel Sonnet on Tobackka and Pipes'; pipes, mind you, as well—all about this Indian weed, and the pipe which is so lily white. Oh, sir, it was most improvin'. And that fanatic of a praycher, not fit to blacken the Erskines' shoes, even if they were Sesayders! I went home and I says, 'Rufus, my son,' and he says, 'Yes, fayther!' Says I, 'Rufus, am I a Christian man, though frail and human, am I a Christian man or am I not?' Rufus says, 'You are a Christian, fayther.' Then says I, 'What is the praycher, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... demanded Syria for themselves. The British are pro-Feisul, but the French don't want him anywhere except dead or in jail. They know they've given him and the Arabs a raw deal; and they seem to think the simplest way out is to blacken Feisul's character and ditch him. If the French once catch him in Damascus he's done for and ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... that they should be far better neighbors, and that their housekeeping expenses would be lessened. The Fuller replied: "The arrangement is impossible as far as I am concerned, for whatever I should whiten, you would immediately blacken ...
— Aesop's Fables - A New Revised Version From Original Sources • Aesop
... To blacken the fronts of stone chimney-pieces, mix oil varnish with lamp black that has been sifted, and a little spirit of turpentine to thin it to the consistence of paint. Wash the stone very clean with soap and water, and sponge it with clear water. When perfectly dry, brush it over twice with ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... you of that," she retorted, laughing a little in spite of herself. "If I were a man I should want to blacken your eyes—" And she blushed hotly at being betrayed into a personality which seemed to her undignified, and, what was worse, unrefined. She turned her back squarely toward him, started down the path, and remembered that she had not filled ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... steel, weave hemp, festoon crystal, imitate flowers, work woolen things, break in horses, dress harness, carve in copper, paint carriages, blow glass, corrode the diamond, polish metals, turn marble into leaves, labor on pebbles, deck out thought, tinge, bleach, or blacken everything—well, this middleman has come to that world of sweat and good-will, of study and patience, with promises of lavish wages, either in the name of the town's caprices or with the voice of the monster dubbed speculation. Thus, these quadrumanes ...
— The Girl with the Golden Eyes • Honore de Balzac
... a wealth of goodness overliving all scorns, compelling respect from a community rebuked, fellowship from a Church charged with ungodliness, and acknowledgment of unstained repute from a public eager to blacken with scandal; if to do thus, and bear thus, and live thus, is action, then my father did act to the full purpose of life in the struggle ...
— The Underground Railroad • William Still
... "Le docteur n'est si bien pour moi que depuis que je lui donne mon argent. Ah! j'en suis bien sur, de celui-la!"[583] This disclosure enables us to understand why the surgeon, after being found out and dismissed from the service, sought to blacken the character of Sir Hudson Lowe by every conceivable device. The wonder is that he succeeded in imposing his version of facts on a ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... mere evil in yourselves. Your flesh ceases to grow like man's flesh: it grows like a fungus on a tree. Instead of breathing you sneeze, or cough up your insides, and wither and perish. Your bowels become rotten; your hair falls from you; your teeth blacken and drop out; and you die before your time, not because you will, but because you must. I will dig, ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... Currie, Ferguson, and Smith of Newburn &c. who, in order to palliate and extenuate the evil of the present backsliding courses, seem to have left no stone unturned to expose or blacken ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... of America, he does not sigh. He merely says, "That is very good for America, but here different custom," Filipino cooks are not dissatisfied with the terrible fugons which fill their eyes with smoke and blacken the cooking utensils, and have to be fanned and puffed at every few minutes and occasionally set the house on fire. The natural causes of growth are not widely existent, and it is still problematic if they will ever come into being. Meanwhile ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... he would beseech. "She asked me to look after you. Don't go wrong." Or else it would be, "Don't disgrace the general, Ned. You'll break his heart if you blacken the old name." To this theme he recurred repeatedly, and she noticed that when he imagined himself in the East his language was correct and his intonation cultured, though still with a suggestion of a ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... assassinating in order to reign. Premeditation haunts criminals, and it is in this manner that treason begins. The crime is a long time present in them, but shapeless and shadowy, they are scarcely conscious of it; souls only blacken gradually. Such abominable deeds are not invented in a moment; they do not attain perfection at once and at a single bound; they increase and ripen, shapeless and indecisive, and the centre of the ideas in which they exist keeps them living, ready for the appointed day, and vaguely ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... disguise. We hear that you have now on hand five times as much matter against the Sabbath as you have for it. This is all natural enough, God's word has ever been advocated by the minority. And when such blasphemous language against the Saviour we are looking for, was permitted to blacken your columns, and again reiterated that he was right, and you not only let it pass unnoticed, but was endeavoring to screen him by withdrawing his real name from God's children. The inference is, and must be, strong against you. ...
— A Vindication of the Seventh-Day Sabbath • Joseph Bates
... that there should be no one to see her bright handiwork. Yet, sad to tell, there lay the broad sheet of crimson and gold day after day unnoticed and unheeded, till, in despair, it at length began to wither and blacken and die. ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... and sent to him on the day of his trial a full confession of the murder, signed with my name—and that confession he would not use; he would not inculpate his son; for ten years he has chosen rather to labor under the imputation of murder, than blacken the name of a castaway son, whose character was wretched already, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... thousand Frenchmen vomited on our shores, drowning the throne of liberty in floods of blood—such was the odious spectacle on which my eyes first opened! The groans of the dying, the shrieks of the oppressed, tears of despair, surrounded my cradle from my birth... I will blacken those who betrayed the common cause with the brush of infamy.... vile, sordid souls corrupted by gain!"[1117] A little later, his letter to Buttafuoco, deputy in the Constituent Assembly and principal agent in the annexation to France, is one long strain of renewed, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 5 (of 6) - The Modern Regime, Volume 1 (of 2)(Napoleon I.) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... certainly not. You have rejoiced my old heart. I can die; I shall have a successor. Ah! that Gevrol who betrayed you—for he did betray you, there's no doubt about it—that obtuse, obstinate 'General' is not worthy to blacken your shoes!" ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... the Venus of Milo that all who knew her recognized the likeness when the Duc de Riviere sent the beautiful statue to Paris. In a few months sorrows were to dim with yellowing tints that dazzling fairness, to hollow and blacken the bluish circle round the lovely greenish-gray eyes so cruelly that she then wore the look of an old Madonna; for amid the coming ruin she retained her gentle sincerity, her pure though saddened glance; and no one ever thought her less than a beautiful ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... springing to his feet, "if that man be you, a thousand times, yes! Go; do your worst; cast forth my name like waste-paper on the winds, scourge it, brand, blacken it; do what you will. Though you curse me to the confines of purgatory, my daughter never ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... with this. They did everything they could, the Regent aiding them, to blacken the memory of the murdered women. A forged Royal Decree, supposed to have been issued by the King, was officially published, denouncing Queen Min, ranking her among the lowest prostitutes, and assuming that she was not dead, but had escaped, and would ...
— Korea's Fight for Freedom • F.A. McKenzie
... inveigh, If a poor maiden went astray; Not words enough my tongue could find, 'Gainst others' sin to speak my mind! Black as it seemed, I blacken'd it still more, And strove to make it blacker than before. And did myself securely bless— Now my own trespass doth appear! Yet ah!—what urg'd me to transgress, God knows, it was ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... not? and blacken all the skies with smoke of Tophet, pouring its streams of boiling mud once more to dam the Rhine, whelming the works of men in flood, and ash, and fire. Why not? The old earth seems so solid at first sight: but look a little ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... hallowed fane, and sacred wood, And, drunk with fury, swell'd the Nile with blood; Waved his proud banner o'er the Theban states, 440 And pour'd destruction through her hundred gates; In dread divisions march'd the marshal'd bands, And swarming armies blacken'd all the lands, By Memphis these to ETHIOP'S sultry plains, And those to HAMMON'S sand-incircled fanes.— 445 Slow as they pass'd, the indignant temples frown'd, Low curses muttering from the vaulted ground; Long ailes of Cypress waved their ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... justice, are evilly used, whereas the wealthy, having too much, are assailed legally by the gross and powerful for the purpose of extorting their riches. Robbers and assassins lurk in every cave; vast hoards of pirates blacken the surface of every river; and mandarins of the nine degrees must make a livelihood by some means or other. By day, therefore, it is inadvisable to go forth and encounter human beings, while none but the shallow-headed would risk a meeting ...
— The Mirror of Kong Ho • Ernest Bramah |
