"Dirt" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was the type that inevitably prospers—industrious, good, intelligent, and painstaking, but as a young boy in the working world he had early seen the terrors in the lives of men about him: drink, dirt, unemployment and disease, debt and dishonour. Wolf was not quick of thought; he had little imagination, rather marvelling at other men's cleverness than displaying any of his own, and he had reached perhaps his twenty-second or twenty-third summer before he realized that these ...
— The Beloved Woman • Kathleen Norris
... shook away from her painted muslin robe, the butter-cups, heavy with moisture and radiant with sunshine, which I had laid upon her knee. "She ought to have been an Irish child and born, in a hovel, don't you think so, papa?" and she put me aside superciliously. Dirt and Nature were synonymous terms ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... I sat at the open door, and smoked and watched, with my fire blazing merrily away; then, before it was too late, I stripped off, and went out and let the rain wash off the dust and dirt of a day's journey under a fierce, baking sun. How cool, delightful, ...
— "Five-Head" Creek; and Fish Drugging In The Pacific - 1901 • Louis Becke
... hundreds upon fish, Yet pen them cooked within too small a dish. So too it turns the stomach, if there sticks Dirt to the bowl wherein your wine you mix; Or if the servant, who behind you stands, Has fouled the beaker with his greasy hands. Brooms, dish-cloths, saw-dust, what a mite they cost! Neglect them though, ...
— The Satires, Epistles, and Art of Poetry • Horace
... pleasant one, and for a brief instant the young captain of Company D thought that the bottom had dropped out of everything, and that he would surely be killed. He tried to catch hold of something, but all he could reach was the major's shoulder, and then both landed with a thud on the soft dirt left at ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... in to meet him. There was a swift flying of arms, a pounding of the great fists, and Pete suddenly shot back from the melee and landed on his back in the dirt. One of the Frenchman's great swings had landed. But he was up in an instant and went after his ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... came to the illuminated work from Ghent and Bruges, my heart sank. Mine was dirt by the side of it. For the first minute I could almost have cried; but I prayed for a better spirit, and presently I was able to enjoy them, and thank God for those lovely works, and for those skilful, patient craftsmen, whom I own my masters. Well, the coloured work was so beautiful ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... was younger kids were kids, in Kansas or in Cadiz; now all the boys are gentlemen, and all the girls are ladies. Where are the kids who climbed the trees, the tousled young carousers, who got their faces black with dirt, and tore their little trousers? Where are the lads who scrapped by rounds, while other lads kept tallies? The maids who made their pies of mud, and danced in dirty alleys? They're making calf-love somewhere now, exchanging cards and kisses, they're all fixed up in Sunday togs, and ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... With the grime and dirt off his face he was pale and haggard. There were big blue marks under his shifting gray eyes and his hair hung ragged and ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... department at which carrion is purchased and boiled down for fattening pigs. My hostess seemed quite alive to the unwholesomeness of such a practice, and we had a long talk about pigs, of which I happen to know something; that they are dirt-loving animals is quite a mistake; none more thoroughly enjoy a good litter of clean straw. I was glad to find this good woman entirely of the same opinion. She informed me with evident satisfaction that fresh straw was always thrown down on ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... provoking deliberation—the impatience of my host had infected me—the clay-eater slowly proceeded to mount the horse of the negro, his dirt-bedraggled wife, and clay-incrusted children, following close at his heels, and the younger ones huddling around for the tokens of paternal affection usual at parting. Whether it was the noise they made, or their ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... contain free carbon in the elemental state. The black mark on a ceiling over a source of light is caused by a rising current of hot air and combustion products set up by the heat accompanying the light, which current of hot gas carries with it the dust and dirt always present in the atmosphere of an inhabited room. As this current of air and burnt gas travels in a fairly concentrated vertical stream, and as the ceiling is comparatively cool and exhibits a rough surface, that dust and dirt are deposited on the ceiling above the flame, but ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... were not a thing of beauty. An old buffalo bull with broken horns and numerous scars from a hundred fights, with woolly head and shaggy mane, his last year's coat half shed and half hanging from his sides in ragged patches and strips flying in the breeze, the whole covered over with dirt and patches of dried mud, presented a picture ...
— A Gold Hunter's Experience • Chalkley J. Hambleton
... "Soldiers of the Saddle,"—"who looked upon that wonderful panorama, can ever forget it. On the great field were riderless horses and dying men; clouds of dirt from solid shot and bursting shells, broken caissons, and overturned ambulances; and long lines of dragoons dashing into the charge, with their drawn and firmly grasped sabres glistening in the light of the declining sun; while far beyond the scene of tumult were ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... could possibly have the same charm, for here dirt, hunger, and rags are always apparent, while there the dirt is lost in the glorious sunshine, and, instead of rags, we find bright colours, while the people, though often poor, seldom, if ...
— Burma - Peeps at Many Lands • R.Talbot Kelly
... small rocking-chair on the piazza; "there's folks that think the creation of the world in six days is nothin' but science, but they're not people for Christians to be goin' pardners with. If Gawd has put a hundred feet of dirt on top of that water, I tell Jawn he had his reasons, and I can't think it's right for anybody whose treasure ought to be laid up in heaven to go pryin' into the bowels of the earth huntin' for things that our ...
— The Wizard's Daughter and Other Stories • Margaret Collier Graham
... saw thee, O king, surrounded in thy court by kings! What peace can my heart know in not beholding thee such now? I beheld thy body, effulgent as the sun, decked with sandal paste! Alas, grief depriveth me of my senses in beholding thee now besmeared with mud and dirt! I saw thee before, O king, dressed in silken clothes of pure white! But I now behold thee dressed in rags? Formerly, O king, pure food of every kind was carried from thy house on plates of gold for Brahmanas by thousands! And, O king, food also of the best kind was ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... wash, so her wrinkles, and what Dumpty called her "laughing lines," were marked quite black with dirt. Her lips were not rosy and fresh like mummie's or Dumpty's, but they were of a purple-grey colour, and when she opened her mouth, instead of a row of pearly white teeth showing, there was only one very large yellow ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... warmly; "you're as cheap as dirt, and as good as gold, and the very sight of you is a comfort to us. There's a fast train at ten; I'll drive you to the station after breakfast myself. Your fees—they are nothing to us. We love him, and we are the happiest house in Christendom; ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... and a stricken dog rolled in the dirt, to be pounced upon and torn to pieces by the pack of Indian dogs that waited. White Fang was wise. He had long since learned that the gods were made angry when their dogs were killed. The white men were no exception to this. So he was content, ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... kind, or have you ever studied Gloger's or Brehm's works? I was interested in your account of the martins, for I had just before been utterly perplexed by noticing just such a proceeding as you describe: I counted seven, one day lately, visiting a single nest and sticking dirt on the adjoining wall. I may mention that I once saw some squirrels eagerly splitting those little semi-transparent spherical galls on the back of oak- leaves for the maggot within; so that they are insectivorous. A Cychrus rostratus once squirted into my eyes and gave me extreme pain; and I must ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... remarking the contrast between Rincurran Castle and Mr Schank's neat little cottage in Lincolnshire—the cleanliness and comfort of one, and the dirt and disorder and discomfort of my grandfather's abode. My mother, who had sufficient means to live comfortably by herself, had had no intention of remaining long with her parents, but had purposed taking a cottage in the neighbourhood. When she discovered the state ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... later, our eccentric chum was quietly sitting on the prostrate and helpless carcase of his late antagonist. With his usual dainty care he was ridding himself of the dust and dirt that had soiled him when he fell. The Wairoa man was regarding him in blank astonishment. Clearly, Dandy Jack was an entirely new species of the genus homo to him. Thus spake the bull-fighter, with elaborate affectation of languor ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... into his brain, Mislikes the place, and fled into his feet; And there it wanders up and down the street,[474] Dabbled in the dirt, and soaked in the rain. Doubtless his wit intends not to aspire, Which leaves his head, ...
— The Works of Christopher Marlowe, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Christopher Marlowe
... at any signs of life, and were continually answered by the zip-zip of bullets as they flew past our heads, or buried themselves in the rails above us. Thus the conflict continued; grape and solid shot tore frantically over us, plowing up the dirt and crashing through the woods in the rear, filling our ears with the most frightful din. Our greatest difficulty was in loading, for if so much as a hand was exposed to view, such a rain of lead would be sent our way that it took some minutes ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... sensible," said Wade. "You could just sort of sweep the dirt down the front stairs and right out of ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... cotton to a man that speaks his mind. Sorter clears him out, you know, of all the slumgullion that's in him. It's just like washin' out a pan o' prospecting: you pour in the water, and keep slushing it round and round, and out comes first the mud and dirt, and then the gravel, and then the black sand, and then—it's all out, and there's a speck o' gold ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... Timaeus for his partiality against Agathocles, whom he himself allows to be the most cruel and impious of all tyrants, says: if he took refuge in Syracuse, as asserted by that historian, flying the dirt and smoke and toil of his former profession of a potter; and if proceeding from such slender beginnings, he became master, in a little time, of all Sicily; brought the Carthaginian state into the utmost danger; and at last died in old age, and in possession of sovereign dignity: ...
— An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals • David Hume
... the dirt away That hangs upon your face; And stop and eat, for well you may Be in ...
— Graded Poetry: Seventh Year • Various
... creatures, pats gently their little golden heads, and watches with unfailing pleasure their ways, their sports, their jokes, laughter, caresses. Enfans terribles come home from Eton; young Miss practising her first flirtation; poor little ragged Polly making dirt-pies in the gutter, or staggering under the weight of Jacky, her nursechild, who is as big as herself—all these little ones, patrician and plebeian, meet with kindness from this kind heart, and are watched with curious ...
— John Leech's Pictures of Life and Character • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thing to do first is for the nurse to examine a little her mental equipment, see what she has stored away in her mind that can help the next patient, or that can assist in fighting the battle of hygienic cleanliness versus disease-bearing dirt. Let her consider whether she reads aloud acceptably, understandingly. Has she a good list of books which most women would enjoy? Does she know what books to suggest for the children? Can she tell what would interest the boys, or ...
— Making Good On Private Duty • Harriet Camp Lounsbery
... other light. The sooner we get the ideal, fanciful, and romantic side of a vagrant's and vagabond's life removed from our vision, and see things as they really are, the better it will be for us. For the life of me I cannot see anything romantic in dirt, squalor, ignorance, and misery. Ministers and missionaries have completely failed in the work, for the simple reason that they have never begun it in earnest; consequently, the schoolmaster and School-board officer must begin to do ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... shatter the marble or other stone, which remains over and above what is needed for the figure which it contains, by manual exercise, accompanied often by profuse sweating, mingled with dust and transforming itself into dirt; and his face is plastered and powdered with the dust of the marble, so that he has the appearance of a baker, and he is covered with minute chips, and it appears as if snow had fallen on him, and his dwelling is dirty and full of chips and ...
— Thoughts on Art and Life • Leonardo da Vinci
... out of London all that year, and he promised to come with me and look at the field, and tell me what was going to happen there. It was late in July when we went. The pavement, the air, the houses and the dirt had been all baked dry by the summer, the weary traffic dragged on, and on, and on, and Sleep spreading her wings soared up and floated from London and went to walk beautifully in ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... (who desires to reach the portal of woman) meets people who are alone in the rooms and carry on dirty work. Dirt and masturbation are wont to be closely associated psychically. The dirty work is "only appearance and individual fantasy," and "has no foundation in Nature." The wanderer knows that "such practices vanish like smoke." He has done it ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... a creature stripped from me my dirt-encrusted shirt that I had worn since my entrance to solitary, and exposed my poor wasted body, the skin ridged like brown parchment over the ribs and sore- infested from the many bouts with the jacket. The examination was ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... but to receive and make it his. With joy he recognized the higher dignity of the shepherd of a few poor, lean, wool-torn human sheep, than of the man who stands for himself, however "spacious in the possession of dirt." He who holds dead land a possession, and living souls none of his, needs wake no curse, for he is in the very pit of creation, a live ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... through the door. He is soaked through and through with mud and dirt, it was clear that no roof had covered his head during last night's tempest. His feet peeped from out of his boots, his damp hair seemed glued to his temples, his eyes were sunken, his cheeks were mere bone, his lips ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... lay dead on the ground in front of the house, the slim, strong paw, like a right hand, which she had reached out to welcome me, drabbled with dirt where it had dragged behind the "carabaos" cart in which she had been brought, and which had been hardly large enough to hold ...
— Anting-Anting Stories - And other Strange Tales of the Filipinos • Sargent Kayme
... than whom, no sluice of mud With deeper sable blots the silver flood. 'Here strip, my children! here at once leap in, Here prove who best can dash through thick and thin, And who the most in love of dirt excel, Or dark dexterity of groping well: Who flings most filth, and wide pollutes around The stream, be his the Weekly Journals bound; A pig of lead to him who dives the best; A peck of coals a-piece shall glad the rest.' "In naked majesty ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 358, August 1845 • Various
... "It was meaner'n dirt for him to set down side of me, and not even say how d'ye do! I hate mean folks. I ain't mean myself. There ain't a mean bone in my body—no, there ain't, if I do say it, that oughtn't ...
— Desk and Debit - or, The Catastrophes of a Clerk • Oliver Optic
... feather, Mr. Skinner? Who came creeping and sniveling, and took my hand under the counter, and pressed it to give me courage, and then was absurd enough to make apologies, as if sympathy was as common as dirt? Give me your hand directly, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... undoubtedly are; and here let me remark, my friends, the excellent and nice distinction which this phrase makes between the man and the soil, between the noble intellect and the high soul, and the mere dirt and dust upon which we daily tread. This very phrase, my friends, is a fine embodiment of that democratic principle upon which the glorious constitution is erected. But, as I was saying, my friends, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... food more savoury and digestible; but his stomach was in such a state that he could not eat even that. At length he became accustomed to the situation, though the place was a sort of hell, in which he was surrounded by criminals in rags, dirt, and vermin, and, worst of all, distinguished for their abominable vileness of speech. He was shortly after seized with a serious illness, when he was sent to the hospital, where he found many Huguenot convicts imprisoned, like himself, ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... when papa brings home YOUNG PEOPLE Alice asks if there is any more of "Biddy O'Dolan" in it. We all liked that story very much. We live in the coal regions, within sight of the breaker, and the coal-dirt banks that look like mountains. I have never been down the slope—I am afraid—but I have stood at the top, and seen the empty cars go down and the full ones come up. I studied algebra this winter, and went as far as cube root. I have house ...
— Harper's Young People, May 25, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... flue, he stole softly back again, and laid great flakes between the legs of the chest and the wall, stuffed light fragments into the interstices of the carving, and laid them upon any projecting ledge that was likely to have caught such light dirt as it filtered ...
— The Secret Chamber at Chad • Evelyn Everett-Green
... Senate, chosen, refreshed, and replenished from among the people; on a body which should be at the same time august and popular—as far removed on the one side from the tyranny of individuals as on the other from the violence of the mob; but on a Senate freed from its corruption and dirt, on a body of noble Romans, fitted by their individual character and high rank to rule and to control their fellow-citizens. This was Cicero's idea, and this the state of things which he endeavored to achieve. No doubt he dreamed that his own eloquence and his own example ...
— Life of Cicero - Volume One • Anthony Trollope
... so poor and scarce in the West—all ignorant Paddies, as we called them then—she sent to me and I sped Essie out to her, and a good job, too, for she was in no state to be worrying out her precious health over dust and dirt and victuals! ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon
... and that I do not choose to be a party to a contest between the two Houses or to an Appeal to the Country for a Measure of which I decidedly disapprove; and that I cannot enter into a career which would lead me to such a position, that, in short, I do not choose to be dragged through the dirt by John Russell. I reminded Aberdeen that on accepting his offer of Office, I had expressed apprehension both to him and to you, that I might find myself differing from my Colleagues on the ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria
... I suspect! I never had but one orderly I could bear about me, and he's dead, poor fellow! I shall see him again, though, I do trust, let believers in dirt say what they will! Never till I myself think no more, will I cease hoping to see my old Archie again! Fellows must learn something through the Lufas, or they would make raving maniacs of us! God be thanked, ...
— Home Again • George MacDonald
... we were: clerks in bowler hats; "knuts" in brown suits, brown ties, brown shoes, and a horse-shoe tie-pin; tramp-like looking men in rags and tatters and smelling of dirt ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... reviewing stand with the halo of the Unknown behind his head is one thing; the lady of Family who sits beside you at a boarding-house and discusses the weather and the journey is quite another. They were prepared to hear Mrs. Brice rail at the dirt of St. Louis and the crudity of the West. They pictured her referring with sighs to her Connections, and bewailing that Stephen could not have finished his course ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... without her, for she is a splendid cook, and keeps my clothes in first-rate order. I can't bear the thought of the cookery I should have to eat, and the dirt and disorder I should see around me, if she does go away. But she's a regular Tartar, and I've no authority at ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... children, with elaborate explanations—the thing "took" and the people fell into the spirit of it. The jail was the only accessible building, and was strangely empty. It was of adobe, a jail of one room, with a dirt floor. There were no windows, ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... their heads. I saw a chief, who was wearing a shirt black and matted with filth, and when asked how it came to be so dirty, he replied, with surprise, "Do not you see it is an old one?" Some of the men have shirts; but the common dress is one or two large blankets, generally black with dirt, which are thrown over their shoulders in a very inconvenient and awkward fashion. A few of the principal chiefs have decent suits of English clothes; but these are only worn ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... good-by to them as was once my friends. I'm leavin' Linrock. An' I'm askin' some of you to take thet good-by an' a partin' word to them as did me dirt. ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... four requisites are seldom fully attended to. Often a large dog is kept in a back yard in London chained up week after week—kept alive, it is true, by food and water, but without exercise, and with no means of ridding himself of dirt and insects by a plunge now and then into a pond or river. No wonder his piteous howls disturb the neighbours, and he is spoken of as "that horrid dog!" as if it was his fault poor fellow! that he feels miserable and uses his ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... completeness. On this condition everything is welcome,—without it, nothing. Thus, a broken, weedy bank is more picturesque than the velvet slope,—the decayed oak than the symmetry of the sapling,—the squalid shanty by the railroad, with its base of dirt, its windows stuffed with old hats, and the red shirts dependent from its eaves, than the neatest brick cottage. They strike a richer accord, while the others drone on a single note. Moonlight is always picturesque, because it substitutes mass and breadth for ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... become expert. I set up an exchange, around the laboratory, of ten instruments. I would then go out and get each one out of order in every conceivable way, cutting the wires of one, short-circuiting another, destroying the adjustment of a third, putting dirt between the electrodes of a fourth, and so on. A man would be sent to each to find out the trouble. When he could find the trouble ten consecutive times, using five minutes each, he was sent to London. About sixty men were sifted to get twenty. Before ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... of her fortune, before he committed himself. Depend upon it, whatever esteem Mr Elliot may have for his own situation in life now, as a young man he had not the smallest value for it. His chance for the Kellynch estate was something, but all the honour of the family he held as cheap as dirt. I have often heard him declare, that if baronetcies were saleable, anybody should have his for fifty pounds, arms and motto, name and livery included; but I will not pretend to repeat half that I used to hear him say on that subject. It would not ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... thin, bony arm from under his coverlid, and, through all the dirt and the pallor of his face, the smile of heaven I am sure was on it, as he looked and pointed ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... of Dahomeys Dale, Sir Thomas Davis, Joseph and Jefferson, plantation policy of Delaware, slaves and free negroes in forbids export of slaves Depression, financial, in Mississippi in Virginia Dirt-eating, among Jamaica slaves Discipline, of slaves Diseases, characteristic, in Africa among Jamaica slaves venereal Doctors, black, in Jamaica in South Carolina in Virginia "Doctoress," slave, in Georgia Drivers (plantation foremen) ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... to be a new kind of gun," he said, "though I didn't notice that the men brought one with them. It went off close to an old stump; and you should have seen the wood and dirt fly. The noise has given me a headache. That is why ...
— The Tale of Billy Woodchuck • Arthur Scott Bailey
... untrimmed, in the attire of a suppliant, to beg the people's grace. But Clodius met him in every corner, having a band of abusive and daring fellows about him, who derided Cicero for his change of dress and his humiliation, and often, by throwing dirt and stones at him, interrupted ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... entry gives the total number of airports. The runway(s) may be paved (concrete or asphalt surfaces) or unpaved (grass, dirt, sand, or gravel surfaces), but must be usable. Not all airports have facilities for refueling, ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... Pool! lord! Ay, kennel, puddle, sink, whose filth and dirt Troubles the silver spring where England drinks. Now will I dam up this thy yawning mouth For swallowing the treasure of the realm; Thy lips that kiss'd the queen shall sweep the ground; And thou that smil'dst ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... do no more at Paris, because they are too sharp on the look-out; let us go to Lyons!" There are, finally, the patriots: on the evening of the insurrection, between the Pont-au-Change and the Pont-Marie, the half-naked ragamuffins, besmeared with dirt, bearing along their hand-barrows, are fully alive to their cause; they beg alms in a loud tone of voice, and stretch out their hats to the passers, saying, "Take pity on this poor Third-Estate!"—The ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... be hardy, vigorous, large, and strong; of great endurance as to climatic change, and able to stand any amount of manure of the right kind. It should be a prolific bearer, with stalks of sufficient length to keep the fruit out of the dirt, and bear its berries of nearly uniform size to the end. Any serious departure from such necessary qualities would be fatal ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... o' canteen porter, I finished o' canteen beer, But a dose o' gin that a mate slipped in, it was that that brought me here. 'Twas that and an extry double Guard that rubbed my nose in the dirt; But I fell away with the Corp'ral's stock and the ...
— Verses 1889-1896 • Rudyard Kipling
... reached this, they cannot tell; for here, as on all the plain over which they have passed, is spread the same coating of half-dried dirt, fast becoming drier and firmer as the ascending tropical sun, with strengthened intensity, pours his hot beams upon it. It has smothered up the Indian's trail as completely as it snow several inches deep lay upon it. No track there, no sign to show, ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... power of money. He knew they were mistaken. Money was king. No amount of it, cash in hand, would purchase happiness, perhaps, but lack of it made a man fall an easy victim to dire misfortunes. Without money a man was less than the dirt beneath the feet of such as Robbin-Steele and Hurley and Gower, because their criterion of another man's worth was his ability to get money, to beat ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... than we were before. Before we had washed them, they had been very, very dirty, it is true; but they were just wearable. AFTER we had washed them - well, the river between Reading and Henley was much cleaner, after we had washed our clothes in it, than it was before. All the dirt contained in the river between Reading and Henley, we collected, during that wash, and worked it ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... had procured for him, which was that of a laborer about the quays; and, as he was a man who did perfectly whatever he attempted to do, he had succeeded in rendering himself unrecognizable. His hair and beard were rough and matted; his hands were soiled and grimed with dirt; he was really the abject ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... was suspected, but later it appeared that Edwards had dug himself into the ground and died of suffocation, as his nostrils and mouth were filled with dirt. ...
— The Bell Tone • Edmund H. Leftwich
... color of soil, streets, houses, dress, and people gives one an impression of a more squalid poverty even than that of the overcrowded Chinese in Shanghai. These latter have more clothing and no dust, and their dirtiness seems a less objectionable form of dirt. ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... her car to a stop, and alighted to help lift in the unconscious girl. Between them Amy and Grace held her in the tonneau, her head resting on Amy's shoulder, a damp handkerchief covering the cut to keep any dirt from getting in it. Mollie again took her place at the steering wheel, and when Betty had gotten in the girls started ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... a dozen to take them. The writer of Mexico's Baedeker speaks of the city as well-to-do. Either it has vastly changed in a few years or he wrote it up by absent treatment. Hardly a town of India exceeds it in picturesque poverty. Such a surging of pauperous humanity, dirt, and uncomplaining misery I had never before seen in the Western Hemisphere. Plainly the name "republic" is no cure for man's ills. The chief center was the swarming market. Picture a dense mob of several thousand men and boys, gaunt, weather-beaten, their tight ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... taking off the rind or skin, put them into a platter or trough, with water, out of which I have seen both men and hogs eat at the same time. I once saw them make a batter of fruit and roots diluted with water, in a vessel that was loaded with dirt, and out of which the hogs had been but that moment eating, without giving it the least washing, or even washing their hands, which were equally dirty; and when I expressed a dislike, was laughed at. I know not if all are so. The actions of a few individuals are not ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... encouragement for the development of our water power. While steam still plays a dominant part, this is more and more becoming an era of electricity. Once installed, the cost is moderate, has not tended greatly to increase, and is entirely free from the unavoidable dirt and disagreeable features attendant upon the burning of coal. Every facility should be extended for the connection of the various units into a superpower plant, capable at all times of a current increasing uniformity over the ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Calvin Coolidge • Calvin Coolidge
... with a very high degree both of efficiency and honesty; and I am immensely struck by the character of American employees who are engaged, not merely in superintending the work, but in doing all the jobs that need skill and intelligence. The steam shovels, the dirt trains, the machine shops, and the like, are all filled with American engineers, conductors, machinists, boiler-makers, carpenters. From the top to the bottom these men are so hardy, so efficient, so energetic, ...
— Letters to His Children • Theodore Roosevelt
... his uses from the police point of view; and while evidence of this kind often figured in reports made to the Chief Inspector, he personally avoided contact with such persons, as he instinctively and daintily avoided contact with personal dirt. But now, something so big was at stake that his ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... grave— Till now unknown, by any chance or luck, Even to the hearts at which you, feebly struck? You whip a rascal out of office?—you Whose leadless weapon once ignobly blew Its smoke in six directions to assert Your lack of appetite for others' dirt? ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... am very sorry I have been the cause of your late stay," said Mrs. Maroney. Then, pointing to some dirt on the Madam's dress—which had come from the cellar—she exclaimed: "What's that ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... pounds! Being no heirs, the Crown takes the lot! Thank you, sir," accepting a tip, "I suppose I could not tempt you with a splendid fur-lined overcoat? Cost a hundred—but you can have it for six. It belonged to a lord—I got it off his man. Well, maybe it's a bit warmish, but it's dirt cheap and ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... put a man in jail for spakin' his moind, nor for spakin' the truth. If ye had given me a chance I'd been civil and obadient the rist o' me days. But whin ye act to'ard a man as if he was a lump o' dirt that ye can kick out o' the way, and go on, ye'll foind that the lump o' dirt will lave some marks on yer nice clothes. I tell ye till yer flinty ould face that ye'r a hard-hearted riprobate that 'ud grind ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Herminia had ever yet taken. Was it the natural fastidiousness of her condition, she wondered, or was it really the dirt and foul smells of the place that made her sicken at first sight of the wind-swept purlieus? Perhaps a little of both; for in dusty weather Perugia is the most endless town to get out of in Italy; and its capacity for the production of unpleasant odors is unequalled no doubt from ...
— The Woman Who Did • Grant Allen
... to a tree near at hand, the horseman walked slowly about. A gold pan lay rusting, half filled with rock and dirt, by a bench before the cabin. It was well worth cleaning and taking away, together with some of the ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... attending on the marriage of the Duke of Orleans, the first ten years of Louis Philippe's reign were full of vicissitudes. France after a revolution is always an "unquiet sea that cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt." Frenchmen do not accept the inevitable as Americans have learned to do, through ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... appreciated the comforts of refined life, yet they were happy and content amidst the horror and dirt of a common lodging-house! Why was it that these fellows failed, and were content ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... Militaire the French Navy is about to try the experiment of enlisting black sailors. We should say that they will be found to make the most admirable stokers, not showing the dirt like the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... slime, inert, Bedaubed with iridescent dirt. The oil upon the puddles dries To colours like a peacock's eyes, And half-submerged tomato-cans Shine scaly, as leviathans Oozily crawling through the mud. The ground is here and there bestud With lumps of only part-burned coal. His duty is to glean the ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... position, the Rebels would be defeated,—how a few minutes of resolute work would save the army. He saw their courage revive. They dug a trench, cut down trees, rolled up logs, filled the barrels with dirt, and worked like beavers. Others wheeled up the great guns, and Paul put them into position. Others brought shot and shell, and laid them in piles beside the guns. The storm was coming nearer. The lines were giving way. Regiments ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... them. They wear Shooes, of Bucks, and sometimes Bears Skin, which they tan in an Hour or two; with the Bark of Trees boil'd, wherein they put the Leather whilst hot, and let it remain a little while, whereby it becomes so qualify'd, as to endure Water and Dirt, without growing hard. These have no Heels, and are made as fit for the Feet, as a Glove is for the Hand, and are very easie to travel in, when one is a little us'd to them. {Indians washing in the River.} When these Savages live near the Water, they frequent the Rivers in Summer-time ...
— A New Voyage to Carolina • John Lawson
... I have a floor of ash and black walnut which has been oiled with raw linseed oil once. How can I finish it so as to get a hard, smooth finish that will not be scratched by boot heels nor be sticky or retain the dirt as a waxed floor does? A. Oil raises the fiber of black walnut and gives it a rougher surface than when free from it. To polish any wood, it is only necessary to fill the pores well, and then rub it down to a smooth surface. Thus painters prefer to put on a coat of shellac varnish ...
— Scientific American, Volume XXXVI., No. 8, February 24, 1877 • Various
... might cost, depend upon it the investment would be a good one. I weigh my words when I say that if the nation could purchase a potential Watt, or Davy, or Faraday, at the cost of a hundred thousand pounds down, he would be dirt-cheap at the money. It is a mere commonplace and everyday piece of knowledge, that what these three men did has produced untold millions of wealth, in the narrowest ...
— Science & Education • Thomas H. Huxley
... is broadly convex or nearly plane, glabrous, slightly viscid, white, but usually defiled by adhering dirt; the margin at first strongly involute, then spreading or reflexed; flesh firm when young, ...
— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard
... that the whole village has been trying on my new hunting-cap, that an Arab woman has just completed; this was brought to me to-day, thick with butter and dirt from their greasy pates. This is a trifle: yesterday Florian was ill and required some tea; his servant tried the degree of heat by plunging his dirty ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... that she has to," he answered her look, "but she thinks she has to. See? Once we were poor. For twenty years we were poor as dirt. Then she did have to do things like that. Then I struck it. Or rather, it struck me. Oil. Oil on a bit of land I had. I had just sense enough to make the most of it; one thing led to another—well, you're not interested ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... pursuit of him. He found Pheraulas with his face covered with blood and dirt, and asked him if he had received a blow. "I have," said Pheraulas, "as you see." "Then," said the Sacian, "I make you a present of my horse." Pheraulas asked an explanation. The Sacian accordingly gave him an account of what had taken place between himself ...
— Cyrus the Great - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott |
