"Blotch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hiding there?" she said, stepping up and inspecting my bare arm. She found an ugly blotch. "Woe is me! A lamentation upon me!" she said, looking aghast. "Who has been ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... in a short-legged reed chair, with a grip-sack open on his knees. His coat and vest were off, and the light from the oil lamp at his side made his linen shirt a blotch ...
— Never-Fail Blake • Arthur Stringer
... between the rafters, the wild indignation of a child in his eye. "D'ye think I'm a thafe to stale me own word? Hut! I'll break ye in two, ye wisp o' straw, if ye doubt me word to a lady. There's me note av hand, and ye shall have me fist on it, in writin', at Freddy Tarlton's office, wid a blotch av red an' the Queen's head at the bottom. McGuire!" he said again, and paused, puffing his lips ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... almost to a level with the prairie. He crossed this opening like a snake, and then arose to his knees beyond, where the gully deepened. He remained poised, motionless, scarcely daring to breathe. Surely that was something else—that shapeless blotch of shadow, barely topping the line of bank! Was it ten feet away? Or five? He could not tell. He stared; there was no movement, and yet his eyes began to discern dimly the outlines—the head and shoulders of a man! The Sergeant crept forward—an inch, two inches, a foot. The figure did not ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... in the middle of the night, David became aware that Hamoud had entered the room without a sound, to watch him from the deepest mass of shadows. One could make out only the pale blotch that was his white skullcap, and the long pale streak that was the uncovered portion of his white under robe. The eyes, the expression of the ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... his front for a moment, flung muzzle over the parapet and butt to shoulder, and snapped a quick shot at one of the darker blotches that lay prone beyond the outer tangles of wire. The blotch jerked and sprawled, and the look-out shouted, slipped out the catch of his magazine cut-off, and pumped out the rounds as fast as fingers could work bolt and trigger, the stabbing flashes of the discharge lighting with sharp vivid glares his tense features, set teeth, and scowling eyes. There was ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... the D'Estang's lookout. Anne and Sara leaned forward and saw that a blundering sailing vessel—her dark sails a blotch against the sky, her hull invisible—was careening just ahead. She had no lights, and curses on the heads of coastwise skippers who take risks and place other vessels in jeopardy merely to save oil, swept through the ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... and dark spots, are made plain, the observer is deeply impressed with the strangeness of the spectacle, and the more so as he reflects upon the enormous real magnitude of that which is spread before his eye. The whole earth flattened out would be but a small blotch ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... scars of wanton wars are vanished; And what blue bruises grappling Sense had left And sad remains of redder stains are banished, And the dim blotch ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... Scotland Yard for teaching idiot policemen Egyptology! Do I know them? When I have carried them about my body, in the desert, for three months; and lay awake night after night to watch them! When I have looked them over with a magnifying-glass, hour after hour, till my eyes ached; till every tiny blotch, and chip, and dinge became as familiar to me as his chart to a captain; as familiar as they doubtless have been all the time to every thick-headed area-prowler within the bounds of mortality. See here, young man, look at these!" He ranged the lamps in a row on the top of the ...
— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker
... ground, The Kid saw, when he urged his horse closer, was the body of a man, face down and arms flung out. A blotch of red on the blue of the shirt told the significant story—a bullet had got in its deadly work. Dismounting, the Texan found that the man was dead and had met with his wound probably twenty-four hours before. There was nothing with which ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... So far as I am concerned, I am willing to take my chance. Look! What is that cloud?" and he pointed to a dark blotch upon the starry sky, some miles astern ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... insignificant between them. A slight tobacco stain in one corner of his mouth did not increase his attractions to Edith, and she positively shrank from the expression of his small, cunning black eyes. He was dressed both showily and shabbily, and a great breastpin was like a blotch upon his rumpled shirt-bosom. ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... soul over the body; for the fair and dainty man, the cavalier, the young blood, died when hope deserted him. Until then the nose of the chevalier was ever delicate and nice; never had a damp black blotch, nor an amber drop fall from it; but now that nose, smeared with tobacco around the nostrils, degraded by the driblets which took advantage of the natural gutter placed between itself and the upper lip,—that nose, which no longer cared to seem agreeable, revealed the ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... uneasiness; one stepped outside to cough, another suddenly attacked the fire and poked it savagely, Buffle impolitely turned his back to the company, while the fourth man lost himself in the contemplation of the king of spades, which card ever afterward showed in its centre a blotch which seemed the result of a drop of water. Finally Buffle broke ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... ceased, and the bakers were shut up; and yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners, and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker's oven, where the pavement smoked as if its stones were ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... Tower of Babel in the near distance; to guard against any too-imposing effect which the outline of the Houses of Parliament might have by covering them with minute ornament, sure to be blackened and corroded into one vast blotch by smoke; to collect the art wonders of Pigtail Place; to make the lions in Trafalgar Square lie like cats on a hearth-rug, instead of supporting themselves on a slope by muscular action, like the lions at Genoa; to perch a colossal equestrian statue ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... there is a little matter which may have escaped the police, may even have escaped you. To that I would now call your attention since through it I have been enabled, after a little necessary groping, to reach the open. You remember the one large blotch on the upper floor where the man dropped the wallet? That blotch, more or less commingled with a fainter one, possessed great significance for me from the first moment I saw it. How came his foot to bleed so much more profusely at that one spot than at any other? There could ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... it all feasting and merrymaking. A heroic band it was that battled with the wilderness, riding the range with heat and cold, starvation and death, and making small pin-pricks in that empty blotch of the United States map that is marked "Great Alkali Desert" blossom into settlements. When the last word has been said about the pioneers of these United States, let the cow-boy be remembered in the universal toast, that bronzed son of the saddle who lived his ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... wide-awake enough all through to profit by suggestions. I let her see a blotch of ink on my finger, and she said that I was a writer.... Except the guess about my sister Helen, who is alive, there was not a single guess which was nearly right. Mrs. Piper is not anaesthetic during the so-called trance, and if you ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... heart took up its halting labors, then began to race, faster and faster, until he felt himself smothering; his frame was swept with tremors. Then the raucous voices grew louder and louder, mounting into a roar, as if he were coming out from a swoon, and all the time that red blotch grew until he could see no other color; it blurred the room and the quarreling gamblers; it steeped the very air. He was still deathly sick, as only those men are whose blood sours, whose bones and muscles disintegrate at the touch ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... made so invisible by his wonderful colour that, when he crouches in the bright sunlight amid the tall brown grass, it is almost impossible to see him. But the zebra and the giraffe are the kings of all camouflagers! So deceptive are the large blotch-spots of the giraffe and his weird head and horns, like scrubby limbs, that his concealment is perfect. Even the cleverest natives often mistake a herd of giraffes for a clump of trees. The camouflage of zebras is equally deceptive. Drummond says that he once found himself in a forest, ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... effort of will, he aroused himself and looked. To his eyesight, twisted and fixed to a shorter focus by the drug he had taken, the steamship was little more than a blotch on the moon-whitened fog; yet he thought he could see men clambering and working on the upper davits, and the nearest boat—No. 24—seemed to be swinging by the tackles. Then the fog shut her out, though her position was still indicated by the roaring of ...
— The Wreck of the Titan - or, Futility • Morgan Robertson
... made by larvae: they are linear, when they are narrow and only a little winding; serpentine, when they are curved or coiled, becoming gradually larger to a head-like end: trumpet-mines, when they start small and enlarge rapidly at tip; blotch mines, when they are irregular blotches tentiform, when the blotch mines throw the leaf into a fold on ...
— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith
... this was the ancient corridor by which the men-at-arms passed from the guardhouse to the other rampart. Sixty-two steps down he counted, and then he reached a level, where he paused a moment to look at the vague blotch of gray which was the starlight. Even with eyes that had now grown accustomed to the darkness he could see nothing, and so deeming himself safe from observation, he struck a match, which struggled a moment against the foul air and then went out. But in the brief moment of partial ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... the darkness a little while, there was a sure reward for you. Presently, a quarter of a mile away you would see a blinding splash or explosion of light on the water—a flash so sudden and so astonishingly brilliant that it would make you catch your breath; then that blotch of light would instantly extend itself and take the corkscrew shape and imposing length of the fabled sea-serpent, with every curve of its body and the "break" spreading away from its head, and the wake following behind its tail ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... however, almost immediately saw a tremendous disturbance of the water just below the spot where Roger had disappeared; and presently a broad blotch of red stained the blue water of the inlet, while a deep groan went up from the assembled crowd on deck. But the groan quickly changed to a mighty cheer as they saw Roger's form appear again at some considerable distance nearer ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... concluded rotation on an axis in a period of 24 hours 4 minutes. The first determination of the kind rewarded twenty years of unceasing vigilance. It received ostensible confirmation from the successive appearances of a dusky streak and blotch in May and June, 1801.[814] These, however, were inferred to be no permanent markings on the body of the planet, but atmospheric formations, the streak at times drifting forwards (it was thought) under the fluctuating influence of Mercurian breezes. ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... short and broad, with a great width of shoulders, and very long arms. He was clad in a peajacket, blue serge trousers, and jack-boots. He had a big, round, brutal head, covered with a tangled mass of yellow hair, but where his face ought to have been there was only a blotch, underlying which Mrs. Gordon detected the semblance to something fiendishly vindictive and immeasurably nasty. But, in spite of the horror his appearance produced, her curiosity was aroused with ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... and misty, and by the time breakfast was over a north wind was raging—a furnace-like blast that bore off the sandy deserts of the interior. The sun was a yellow blotch in a copper sky; the thermometer had leapt to a hundred and ten in the shade. Blinding clouds of coarse, gritty dust swept house-high through the streets: half-suffocated, Mahony fought his way along, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... for them. They saw him in glimpses as he fled from one grassy patch to another, or burst out of a leafy thicket, the great beard streaming over his shoulders like studding-sails, the red turban of calico a vivid blotch of color. ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... general reckoning, they were mid-way between island and continent. They were all wide awake, too weary and miserable to sleep. Suddenly a fog-horn smote the oppressive gloom. It drew near. A huge blotch crossed their bows. They could feel it rather than see it. They heard some order given in a foreign language, and ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... her fingers loosened their grasp. He saw nothing save the dull flash of swirling waters and the amorphous blotch of hull. Slowly her hand tightened again; and then, as he looked he caught above the deck an impression of something moving. It seemed to be something that was revealing itself to the instinct rather than to ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... a blotch of ugly guise On some poor artist's naked floor Becomes a picture in his eyes, And he forgets that he is poor,— So I look out upon the night, That ushers in the dawning year, And in a vacant blur of light I ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... Steve had gone back up the hill before Garry Devereau reached out a hand in the darkness and touched, experimentally, what had seemed to be only a shapeless black blotch at the edge of light, a rod or two from the door. And instantly at his touch the shadow was galvanized into life. It reared and plunged and enveloped the slighter man in a crushing embrace and bore him over backward. With the muzzle of a revolver ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... according to the wise provision of Rule 10, defied by the late jailer for an obvious reason. Thus in an hour after the body of Hawes had passed through that gate a firm and adroit hand was wiping his gloomy soul out of the cells as we wipe a blotch of ink off a ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... windy: presently it blew so strong, that he could hardly keep his legs. But, he got to an arched window in the tower, breast high, and holding tight, looked down upon the house-tops, on the smoking chimneys, on the blur and blotch of lights (towards the place where Meg was wondering where he was and calling to him perhaps), all kneaded up together in a ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... surmised—the lights of the boats had been sighted by the eager look-outs aboard her. Then her mast-head light came into view, followed, a little later, by her port and starboard side lights; and at length the dark, scarcely discernible blotch that represented her hull lengthened out suddenly, revealing a long triple tier of brightly gleaming ports; and a few seconds later the roar of steam escaping as her engines stopped, reached the ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... gurgling mountain brook, I soon caught sight of the little triller, and found that, so far as I could distinguish them with my field-glass, his markings were just like those of his eastern relative—the same mottled breast, with the large dusky blotch in the centre. ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... a high-walled coulee where the evening shadows were mustering for their stealthy raid on the gilded uplands, we circled a grove of rustling poplars and jerked our horses up short at sight of a scarlet blotch among ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... his thumb, as if she was afraid of losing him there in the blackness that lay about them like a great ink-blotch. And she crept closer to him, saying nothing, and all the power in his soul fought in Jolly Roger to keep him from putting his arms about her slim little body and crying out the worship ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... and he reached the Major a folded paper, sealed with a blotch of wax as red as blood. He opened ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Day; and, by Way of Medicine, a Decoction of the Bark, with two Drachms of the confectio cordiaca to each Half Pint, which he took by Spoonfuls. Next Day he complained of a Pain in his Leg; and, on examining it more particularly, I found a large livid Blotch, yellow all round the Edges, on the fore Part, and a Tension all over that Leg. As he was so extremely low, as to be in Danger of fainting whenever he sat up, I was afraid lest a Mortification should ensue; and therefore ...
— An Account of the Diseases which were most frequent in the British military hospitals in Germany • Donald Monro
... approached, Paul was seated on the lower step, touching his guitar, and facing Ida, who sat on the step above leaning back against a pillar. A blotch of moonlight fell upon her dreamy, upturned face. One hand lay in her lap, and the fingers of the other were idly playing with a tress of hair that had fallen over her bosom. How well Miss Ludington remembered that attitude, and ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... perhaps a minute there was no sight nor sound but the lapping water of the lagoon. Then he became aware of a whiteness drifting close, and heard a familiar voice whispering his name. "Jeremy—Jeremy—it's Job!" said the white blotch. It bumped softly along the side, and at last the boy could see the homely features of his old friend, pale through the gloom. There was a loose rope-end dragging over the side, and Job's hand feeling along the woodwork came in contact ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... a canyon where alders, cottonwoods and quaking aspens may not be found. In 1913 either the lack of water, some adverse climatic condition, or some fungus blight caused the aspen leaves to blotch and fall from the trees as early as the beginning of September. As a rule they remain until late in October, changing to autumnal tints of every richness and hue and reminding one of the glorious hues of the eastern ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... surrounded by rusted railings, or flowed down triple layers with a ceaseless murmur. Water everywhere,—in the air, in the ground, whispering, icy, adding to the cold impression of the landscape, where the sun seemed a red blotch ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... hump-backed blotch, that was sprawling blackly beside a misshapen block, was either wriggling on the floor as if trying to stand upright . . . or else there was something wrong with ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... rather tender shrub, growing in favourable situations to about 4 feet in height. It has lanceolate leaves that are glutinous above, and thickly covered with a whitish tomentum on the under sides, and large and showy vhite flowers with a conspicuous purple blotch at the base of each petal. Unless in southern and western England, but particularly on the sea-coast, this handsome Portuguese shrub is not to be depended on, in so far as hardihood ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... trace of the dogs, save a blotch or two of blood upon the rough bark of the log, and that was not visible from the shore. Unless there were other dogs to guide them to the spot, the men might not in the darkness so easily discover these marks. ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... it was neither the sight of the man lying there, apparently dead, nor the agonized expression of his face, which caused both the Ambassador and Duvall to start back with exclamations of surprise. Across the man's lips was a great, dull-red blotch, which at first appeared to be a clot of blood, but which seemed, from its circular form and regular contour, more like a huge seal. And seal it was. Duvall, dropping on one knee beside the body, felt for the man's heart, at the same time looking closely at the mark upon his lips. He was quite ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... Why you maul-headed, misshapen blotch on the face o' nature, what do you mean by callin' this dog a cur! I never saw this dog before to-day; but I'll bet ten to one that I can find out who his great-great-grandfather's great-great-grandfather was; an' I doubt if you know who your ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... of the class Gynandria, or masculine ladies. The pistil, or female part of the flower, rises like a club, is covered above or clothed, as it were, by the anthers or males; and some of the species have a large scarlet blotch in the middle ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... band is bordered on both sides with black, and has a sinus about the middle; cilia fulvous; posterior wing with a black spot near the outer angle: below, the wings are white, except the cilia of the anterior, and a large blotch, red anteriorly, black posteriorly, near the outer angle; head rufous; antennae fuscous; thorax and abdomen white, the former with the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... seen, when I look directly eastward; but by an oblique glance southward (always from my library-window) the checkered farm-land is repeated in long perspective: here and there is a farm-house with its clustered out-buildings; here and there a blotch of wood, or of orcharding; here and there a bright sheen of winter-grain; and the level ends only where a slight fringe of tree-tops, and the iron cordon of a railway that leaps over a marshy creek upon trestle-work, separate it from ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... scurrying to cover, looks up and sees a thunderstorm impending; immediately he is struck by lightning and knocked down in the street; but he finds he can rise and walk home, and seems to have suffered no harm except for a black blotch around one eye. Now, any man who could take lightning that way would be proud to wear the scar. So the dream was wish-fulfilling, and the wish involved was, as ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... rock or with hard incrustations of lime, but at this particular point there had been a drip from the distant roof, which had left a patch of soft mud. In the very centre of this there was a huge mark—an ill-defined blotch, deep, broad and irregular, as if a great boulder had fallen upon it. No loose stone lay near, however, nor was there anything to account for the impression. It was far too large to be caused by any possible animal, and besides, there was ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... come." Furlong opened his eyes. "I have come to wash the stain!" said she, tapping her fingers in a theatrical manner on the table, and, as it happened, she pointed to a large blotch of ink on the table- cover. Furlong opened his eyes wider than ever, and thought this the queerest bit of madness he ever heard of; however, thinking it best to humour her, he answered, "Yes, it was a little awkwa'dness of mine—I upset ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... row of icicles hung from the roof of the corner store, irregular and stained from the shingles above, like an ugly set of ill-kept teeth, dripping disconsolately on the sidewalk below, and making there a bumpy blotch of unsightly ice! ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... "So was Nicholas Weaver, who managed the Brooklyn business for Holland & Mack. Who John Stumpy can be I do not know. Perhaps I would if I saw him face to face. There was another man— he was quite bald, with a red blotch on the front of his hand— who was brought forward by Woodward to prove that he had nothing to do with the presentation of the forged checks and notes, but what his name was ...
— True to Himself • Edward Stratemeyer
... In brief I tell thee, that all these were clerks, Men of great learning and no less renown, By one same sin polluted in the world. With them is Priscian, and Accorso's son Francesco herds among that wretched throng: And, if the wish of so impure a blotch Possess'd thee, him thou also might'st have seen, Who by the servants' servant was transferr'd From Arno's seat to Bacchiglione, where His ill-strain'd nerves he left. I more would add, But must from farther speech and onward way Alike desist, for yonder I behold A mist new-risen on the sandy ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... the pure overflowing of la belle passion, all about Venus, Cupids, bows and arrows, hearts, darts, and them things, which, having copied neatly over on a handsome sheet of foolscap, turned up with gilt, (for, though I say it myself, I scribble a smart fist,) I made a blotch of red wax on the back as large as a dollar, that thereon I might the more indelibly impress a seal, with a couple of pigeons cooing upon it, and 'toujours wotre' for the motto. This I popped into the post-office, and waited patiently—may I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... Once he pulled up as if he would go back, but he thought better of it. It was out of the question to turn those cattle loose. He could not kill them and dispose of the bodies—not when there were seven of them. He might go down and blotch the brands so that they would not read anything at all. He had thought of that before and decided against it. That would put those three on their guard and would probably not benefit him in the long run. They could work the brands on ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... kitten was no ordinary animal. Its little heart beat bravely when it rose to the surface, and, before its young master came up, it had regained the bank. But, alas! what a change! It went into the stream a fat, round, comfortable ball of eider-down. It came out—a scraggy blotch of white paint, with its black eyes glaring like two great glass beads! No sooner did it crawl out of the water than Bob Croaker seized it, and whirled it round his head, amid suppressed cries of "Shame!" intending to throw it in again; but at that ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... their clothing was rent into tatters from cuts and slashes apart from the wash of the water, which had, of course, swept away most of the blood that had probably flowed from the wounds, although there was a large dark blotch on the deck close to the after hatch, testifying that some gory pool had ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... in defaming every honest man; that should prejudge every question, traduce every opponent; that should give no quarter to fair inquiry or liberal sentiment; that should be "ugly all over with hypocrisy", and present one foul blotch of servility, intolerance, falsehood, spite, and ill-manners. The Quarterly ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... flash-light of our camping ground. It was a little blurry, but some of the objects were quite clear. Our tent was a white blotch except for the outlines; the wagons showed plainly. I didn't think much of it as a picture, so I paid scant attention. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy gave it close scrutiny; presently she said, "Oh, yis, I see what it is. It's a puzzle picture and ye find the man. Here he is, hidin' beyont the pine ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... masses, on which the effect of the whole more immediately depends; or he may give the latter, viz. the proportions and arrangement of the larger parts and the general masses of light and shade, and leave all the minuter parts of which those parts are composed a mere blotch, one general smear, like the first crude and hasty getting in of the groundwork of a picture: he may do either of these, or he may combine both, that is, finish the parts, but put them in their right places, and keep them in due subordination to the general effect and massing of the ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... absently. The fire was smoking over a low, red glow of coals, the chimney-place yawned black before him, the hearth was all strewn with pots and kettles, and the shelf above it was piled high with a vague household litter. It had leaked around the chimney, and there was a great discolored blotch on the wall above the shelf, and the ceiling. Two or three hens came pecking around the ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... up and went to the door, and stood looking down the dusk-muffled hill to the white blotch which was the camp; listened to the jumble of voices still upraised in fruitless argument, and ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... no matter what, be removed in any way, even by death, and we fly back to first principles of hope and enjoyment. More than once as we sat around the table, my eyes opened in wonder whether the whole of the past days had not been a dream. It was only when I caught sight of the red blotch on Mrs. Harker's forehead that I was brought back to reality. Even now, when I am gravely revolving the matter, it is almost impossible to realize that the cause of all our trouble is still existent. Even Mrs. Harker seems to lose sight of her trouble for whole spells. It ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... down the beach. He saw through the rain and mist a crowd of yellow-suited figures approaching, dragging something along the sand. He looked out to sea and beheld the blotch that represented the doomed vessel. All thought of the man at the hut was, for the time, ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... a small leather pouch stained with a blotch of reddish brown. His big, clumsy fingers could hardly undo the ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... form the relief and its long radiating spikes of dull red, bead-like flowers attract the brilliant sun-bird, and big blue and green and red butterflies. Even when the sea is lustrous the cavern, with all the artfulness and grace of the decorations of its portals, is a black blotch—the entrance to something unknowable and unknown—at least to the blacks. None had ever ventured near it and they never will. They tell you how it came to be made. How a long, long time ago, a big man, "all a same debil-debil," took out with his mighty fingers a plug of rock and put it ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... respects, than the common Dwarf variety of Tropaeolum majus; the stem rarely measuring more than two feet in length, or rising above a foot in height. The flowers are yellow; the lower petals with a blotch of scarlet at their base, and the upper ones delicately striped ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... her, clumsy as a playful bear. His eyes followed the direction of hers to where a cloud shadow lay across the slope, heavy, palpable, untransparent, like a blotch of ink. ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... are such dreary liars. Our one idea is to lie to ourselves. We have an ideal of a perfect world, clean and straight and sufficient. So we cover the earth with foulness; life is a blotch of labour, like insects scurrying in filth, so that your collier can have a pianoforte in his parlour, and you can have a butler and a motor-car in your up-to-date house, and as a nation we can sport the Ritz, or the Empire, Gaby Deslys and ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... man's executioner for his sentence on himself. I could not fight you now." His eye fell by chance upon the blotch in Law's bloodstained tunic. "And here," he said; "see! You ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... more hops brought it opposite to my post of observation. Here it halted as though it seemed to see me. At any rate it sat up in the alert fashion that hares have, its forepaws hanging absurdly in front of it, with one ear, on which there was a grey blotch, cocked and one dragging, and sniffed with its funny little nostrils. Then it began to talk to me. I do not mean that it really talked, but the thoughts which were in its mind were flashed on to my mind so that I understood perfectly, yes, and could answer them in ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... the right fore-hoof," he whispered again presently; "nothing but that," pointing to another dark red blotch, which the boys would ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... where there's a kind of blotch, is the twins; they must be fighting. Don, the dog, 's mixed up ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... watched him go. From a street corner, where he stopped in the shadow of a tree, Sam could see them there, the wind swinging the lantern in Freedom's hand and the slender little old wife making a white blotch against ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... by Governor Altgeld of that blotch on the American escutcheon verified the brutal frankness of Judge Gary. It was this that induced Altgeld to pardon the three Anarchists, thereby earning the lasting esteem of every liberty loving man and ...
— Anarchism and Other Essays • Emma Goldman
... Vecchio: this time he had not betrayed himself by look or movement, and he said inwardly that he should not be taken by surprise again; he should be prepared to see this face rise up continually like the intermittent blotch that comes in diseased vision. But this reappearance of Baldassarre so much more in his own likeness tightened the pressure of dread the idea of his madness lost its likelihood now he was shaven and clad like a decent ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... reining often to look toward Clark's. Midway of the eastern ridge was a long, buff blotch—the crossing of the coulee road. Would a horse and rider pass across that spot to-day? Probably not. A wave of loneliness and of undeserved injury swept her, welling ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... I wish I could convey to the reader the associations that attach to these soil'd and creas'd livraisons, each composed of a sheet or two of paper, folded small to carry in the pocket, and fasten'd with a pin. I leave them just as I threw them by after the war, blotch'd here and there with more than one blood-stain, hurriedly written, sometimes at the clinique, not seldom amid the excitement of uncertainty, or defeat, or of action, or getting ready for it, or a march. Most of the pages from 20 to 75 are verbatim ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... was April, and the day was blithe, with no blotch in the sky. The country was rough, the road was pebbly in the bottoms and flinty on the hills, but there was a leaping joy everywhere; in the woods where the blue-jays were shouting, down the branch where the woodpecker tapped in an oak tree's sounding board. It must have been ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... his arm, which he held stretched out. Several fingers were wrapped up, the others, which were not injured, were covered with a crust of dirt and blood. But on his coat, on the back, there was a large brown blotch of blood, a very large one, covering almost half of his back and in the midst of the soft cloth it bulged stiffly as if starched. And this horrible spot told the simple story of the battle and the wound. But it was not the stain that made him so peculiarly conspicuous—other ...
— The Shield • Various
... the itinerant batter-sellers. At these the tiny purchaser enjoys the evidently much appreciated privilege of himself arranging his little measure of batter in fantastic forms, and drying them upon a hot metal plate. A turtle is a favorite design, as the first blotch of batter makes its body, and six judiciously arranged smaller dabs soon suggest its head, ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... seen the effect of Olaf's shot, and following the Swede's instructions aimed for his man in the nearest group behind the main line. He did not instantly see the result, as a puff of smoke shut out his vision, but a moment later, aiming again, he saw a dark blotch left in the snow. From his end of the crevice Olaf had seen the man go down, and he grunted his approbation. There were five of the groups bearing tree trunks for battering-rams, and on one of these Philip concentrated the six shots in his rifle. Four of the tree-bearers ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... were to keep a proper Distance between their Lines and hatched Works, so as to produce a clean Impression ... I saw the Almanack in a horrid Condition before I left Paris, the Signs of the Zodiack wore like a Blotch, notwithstanding the utmost Care and Diligence the Printer used to take up very little ...
— Why Bewick Succeeded - A Note in the History of Wood Engraving • Jacob Kainen
... breasts. Once, however, he took careful aim at a white face which lay against the breech of a rifle leveled at him. He aimed for the white space between the eyes quite as coolly as though he were facing a target. Yet he jumped a little in surprise as, following his report, he saw a blotch of red appear where he had aimed—saw it for just a second before the man reeled forward heavily and sunk as ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... of you! And what is that enormous blotch right in the middle of the country, which looks like London and ...
— The Farringdons • Ellen Thorneycroft Fowler
... wild-eyed, almost out of control. Cookie jumped for its bridle as Hahn slumped sidewise in the saddle, clutched for the horn, missed it and was falling when Plimsoll caught him and helped him to the wall of the cabin where he leaned weakly. A blotch of blood showed ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... blotches of various forms. A representation of this eruption is given in Colored Plate III, Fig. 17. It is appropriately named nettle-rash, from its resemblance to the irritation caused by the sting of a nettle. There is the same sharp, tingling sensation and a similar white wheal or blotch, caused by the muscular spasm of the corium, a layer of ...
— The People's Common Sense Medical Adviser in Plain English • R. V. Pierce
... pointing to a spot in the icy wall which was nearest to the vessel. Instantly every eye was turned that way. They saw a very distinct, irregular blotch, surrounded by almost ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... liquid always possess when they fall from a considerable height. Besides I had heard and seen it fall. I put the book down on the table and looked upward at the ceiling. There was nothing visible there save the grey dirt of years. I looked closely at the hideous blotch, and saw it rapidly soaking and widening its way into the paper, already softened with age. As, of course, after this incident I was not inclined to continue my studies of Addison and Steele, I shut the volume and replaced it on ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... smooth lawn stretched like a fine green carpet, its shadowed patches yet bright with dew. There were the tall elms and the copper beech and all the proud company of spreading giants—what were five years to them? There was the clump of rhododendrons, a ragged blotch of crimson, seemingly spilled upon the green turf, and there the close box hedge that walled away the rose-garden. Beyond the sunk fence a gap showed an acre or so of Bull's Mead—a great deep meadow, ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... a rainbow flash. It could not be he from whom the ball had rebounded, and with sickening dread I realized that Lloyd Inwood had come upon the scene. To make sure, I looked for his shadow, and there it was, a shapeless blotch the girth of his body, (the sun was overhead), moving along the ground. I remembered his threat, and felt sure that all the long years of rivalry were about to ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... that time of night to make anything but a black blotch out of the Abbie Rose. Of course I could see that she was pot-bellied, like the rest of the coastwise sisterhood. And that McCord had not stowed his topsails. I could make them out, pursed at the mastheads and hanging down as far as the cross-trees, like huge, over-ripe pears. Then I recollected ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... and was speaking of manifesting himself to his disciples, when he was interrupted by another question. This time it was Judas who spoke. "Not Iscariot," St. John is careful to say, for the name of Iscariot was now blotted with the blotch of treason. He had gone out into the night, and was of the disciple family no more. Judas could not understand in what special and exclusive manner Jesus would manifest himself to his own. Perhaps he expected some setting apart ...
— Personal Friendships of Jesus • J. R. Miller
... she gasped. "I remember now! I saw it—a blotch of red—lying on the floor beside my father's chair! How did it get there, Mr. Lester? Had he been there? Did he follow us?" She stopped again, as she saw the look in Goldberger's eyes, and then the look in mine. With a long, indrawn breath of horror, she ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... shall be finished in perfection; in the perfection of perfections!" cried mademoiselle; and to confirm her promise, she deposited a rosy blotch in the ...
— The American • Henry James
... but all the time it was shelling the open boats, three of them, loaded to the gunwales with survivors. Fortunately the small boats presented a rather poor target, which, combined with the bad marksmanship of the Germans preserved their occupants from harm; and after a few minutes a blotch of smoke appeared upon the eastern horizon and the ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... start with; and about noon the sky, which had been clear during the earlier part of the day, had gradually become veiled by a thick haze through which the sun revealed himself with ever-increasing difficulty merely as a shapeless blotch of whiteness in the midst of the haze before vanishing altogether. Then the wind fell, the atmosphere became so oppressively close that the mere act of breathing became difficult, and a great silence fell upon the scene, for the insects and birds, warned by instinct of what was impending, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... scalding to death, and instead of taking care of himself, turned about to save her. But before he could reach her, she had darted through the bar-room door and disappeared—without so much as a blotch of tallow ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... the lights were on the ground and at least ten miles away. Gradually I got control of myself and tried to find the aerodrome we had just left; it was nowhere to be seen. There was a network of white threads on a black background, an occasional winding silver ribbon with here and there a silver blotch and queer-shaped blacker blacknesses on the general blackness; these were roads, rivers, lakes, and woods as they looked from the ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... the horseman to be Irish, Weary drove in his spurs and galloped forward. Ten leaps perhaps he made, when a rifle shot came sharply ahead. He glanced down and saw horse and rider lying, a blotch of indefinable shape, in the trail. Weary drew his own gun and went on, his teeth set tight together. Now, when it was too late, he understood thoroughly ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... being white and the inner black. His general color is hoary ash, paler, almost white, below, giving out a slight iridescence in the sunshine; his wings are blackish, with white trimmings; his flanks are stained with salmon-red, and when his wings are spread, there appears a large blotch of scarlet at the inner angle of the intersection with the body. One individual that I afterwards saw wore a scarlet epaulet, which was almost concealed by the other plumes when the wing was closed, but was clearly seen when it was extended. An orange or scarlet gem adorns the crown, ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser |
