"Scum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of water, and, having warmed it, add half a teacupful of wine. Put into this mixture a quantity of red-hot iron; allow it to stand for five or six days, when there will be a scum on the top of the mixture, which should then be poured into a small teacup and placed near a fire. When it is warm, powdered gallnuts and iron filings should be added to it, and the whole should be warmed again. The liquid is then painted on to the teeth by means of a soft ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... desire is to "sugar off" perpetually. He boils his kettle down as rapidly as possible; he is not particular about chips, scum, or ashes; he is apt to burn his sugar; but if he can get enough to make a little wax on the snow, or to scrape from the bottom of the kettle with his wooden paddle, he is happy. A good deal is wasted on his hands, and the outside ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... thunder-hum, Maryland! The old Line's bugle, fife, and drum, Maryland! She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb; Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum! She breathes! She burns! She'll come! ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... scum and rotten Sewer, where ordures best forgotten And unmentioned still descend! Filth and garbage, stench and poison. Thou dost bear in fetid foison! Here I stop lest ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various
... He spent money on me, an' he give me money to spend—that had never had a cent to call my own—an', Mis' Cullom, he took me by the hand, an' he talked to me, an' he gin me the fust notion 't I'd ever had that mebbe I wa'n't only the scum o' the earth, as I'd ben teached to believe. I told ye that that day was the turnin' point of my life. Wa'al, it wa'n't the lickin' I got, though that had somethin' to do with it, but I'd never have had the spunk to run away's I ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... oath and obscenity as their elders, fair young faces and forms, some of them, debauched out of all that was childlike. Every fetid alley and filthy court near which this procession had passed had vomited its scum to swell the crowd. In the center of it rocked and swayed a coach. Hands were plenty to help the frightened horses, hands to push, hands to grip the spokes and make the wheels turn faster. The driver had no driving to do, so roared a song. The inmate of the coach might be dumb with fear, half ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... time, but it will be at the expense of the polish. Spread the dishes out on the table to cool—piling them while hot injures the glaze—and put away the first washing before commencing on the heavy, greasy things. The washing water must be changed as soon as a greasy scum collects around ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... foreigners? They were the most mongrel race that ever lived upon the face of the earth; there was no such thing as a true-born Englishman; they were all the offspring of foreigners; what was more, of the scum ...
— Daniel Defoe • William Minto
... has been beaten, the coolies remove the froth and scum from the surface of the water, and then leave the contents to settle. The fecula or dye, or mall, as it is technically called, now settles at the bottom of the vat in a soft pulpy sediment, and the waste ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... at his feet sang its queer, crooning moor-song as it rambled onward, chuckling to meet a bed of pebbles somewhere out of sight, whispering mysteriously to the rushes that fringed its banks of peat, deepening to a sudden contralto as it poured over granite boulders into a scum-flecked pool below. ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... grown out of all knowledge since I first made its acquaintance in 1877. It was then a cluster of evil-looking shanties, the abode of the scum of the Levant, who waxed fat by the profits of the gambling hells and the sale of pornographic photographs. It has now donned the outwardly respectable look of middle age; it has laid itself out in streets; the gambling dens have disappeared, ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... inducia scum avibus, quamdiu cuculus cuculat;" but it appears to me that during that period many little birds are taken and destroyed by birds of prey, as may be seen by their feathers left ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... enough among the noblemen of the South, which they can fill up, in the place of the French scum who now riot over Wessex. And if that should not suffice, what higher honor for me, or for my daughter the Queen-Dowager, than to devote our lands to the heroes who have won ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... Northward. Our Course and distance sail'd since Yesterday is North-North-West, 69 Miles; Longitude in 221 degrees 27 minutes West. The Sea in many places is here cover'd with a kind of a brown scum, such as Sailors generally call spawn; upon our first seeing it it alarm'd us, thinking we were among Shoals, but we found the same depth of Water were it was as in other places; neither Mr. Banks nor Dr. Solander ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... thy garden from disgrace.' 'What arrogance!' the snail replied; 'How insolent is upstart pride! Hadst thou not thus with insult vain, Provoked my patience to complain, I had concealed thy meaner birth, Nor traced thee to the scum of earth. 30 For scarce nine suns have waked the hours, To swell the fruit, and paint the flowers, Since I thy humbler life surveyed, In base, in sordid guise arrayed; A hideous insect, vile, unclean, You dragged a slow and noisome train; And from your spider-bowels ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... at Virginia and clenched her hands. All this was contrary to her social code of conduct. How could society excuse familiarity with the scum of the streets? What would Virginia's action cost the family in the way of criticism and loss of standing, and all that long list of necessary relations which people of wealth and position must sustain to the leaders of society? ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... the demoralisation of the army. He says that the Imperial Government only troubled itself about the corps d'elite; that the object in the line regiments was to get substitutes as cheaply as possible; consequently, they are filled with men physically and morally the scum of the nation. Semaphore telegraphs have been put up on all the high public buildings. There are also semaphores on the forts. I see that one opposite me is exchanging signals. The crowd watch them as though by looking they would discover what they mean. "A first success," says a National ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... delighted, for that meant a float-bridge through the cracks of which the water spurted up in jets at each impact of the horses' hoofs. On either hand the bayou, but a plank's thickness below the level of the float-bridge, filmed with green weeds and the bright scum of water, not too stagnant, offered surprises to the watchful eye. One could see many mud-turtles floating lazily, feet outstretched in poise; and bullfrogs and little frogs; and, in the clear places, trim and self-sufficient mud hens. From ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... the village, had to pass a wretched hovel which was called Mucklemire. The people who lived there were a disreputable lot—the kind of scum of the earth which must have sprung into being when our Lord's eyes were turned, or when he ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... autumn, to lie there self-buried and die to live again next spring in a new and fairer shape. And if you cannot reach even there, go to the water-but in the nearest yard, and there, in one pinch of green scum, in one spoonful of water, behold a whole "Divina Commedia" of living forms, more fantastic a thousand times than those with which Dante peopled his unseen world: and then feel, as you should feel, abashed at the ignorance and weakness of mortal man; ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... snakes' fangs, ants and pepper are bruised and thrown into it. It is then placed on a slow fire, and as it boils more of the juice of the wourali is added, according as it may be found necessary, and the scum is taken off with a leaf: it remains on the fire till reduced to a thick syrup of a deep brown colour. As soon as it has arrived at this state a few arrows are poisoned with it, to try its strength. If it answer the ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... yellow stockings—this man dragged wearily the wheelbarrow in the grim silences under the sinister skies of Dartmoor, with warders to taunt, or insult, or browbeat the Irish felon-patriot—with the very dregs and scum of our lowest social depths for companions and colleagues—and then think of this same man standing up before the supreme and august assembly where the might, sovereignty, power, and omnipotence of this world-wide ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor
... that the scum of the irregular troops was left behind, and that better feeling, and stricter discipline, existed nearer the main body; our students left on the morrow;—placed themselves under the command of one of the noted leaders of the Revolution:—and had shortly the satisfaction of crossing swords ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... "thou art somewhat rash in this matter, for Interpreter's fee is but a trifle; and I can tell thee, that if by mischance thou shouldst come to lose thy way in the Fair, thou mayst chance to be very roughly handled. There is always a scum of villains there on the outlook to decoy strangers, and, if they will not consent to be cheated, to flout and mock them with gibes and scurril jests. 'Twas but the other day they put Truepenny into the STOCKS, and kept him there till he thought he should never get out again; and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... with foul clay—thrust it into the fire and that will burn all the blackness out of it. Get the love of God into your hearts, and the fire of His Divine Spirit into your spirits to melt you down, as it were, and then the scum and the dross will come to the top, and you can skim them off. Two powers conquer my sin: the one is the blood of Jesus Christ, which washes me from all the guilt of the past; the other is the fiery influence of that Divine Spirit which makes ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... compacted. "Why, you booze-bitten, lousy hunky, what in hell do you want? You never saw twenty dollars in a lump you c'u'd call yore own for more'n ten minnits. You boardin'-house loafer an' the rest of you scum o' the seven seas, git yore shovels an' git to diggin', or I'll put you ashore in San Francisco flat broke, an' glad to leave the ship, at ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... quart of cold water, one even teaspoon of salt, and half a saltspoon of pepper. Let the meat stand till the water is slightly colored with its juice; then put upon the fire, and let it come slowly to a boil, skimming off every particle of scum as it rises. The least neglect of this point will give a broth in which bits of dark slime float about, unpleasant to sight and taste. A cup of cold water, thrown in as the kettle boils, will make the ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... you already know. And upon the word of yon scum, you have judged. By the glint o' hate, as you looked into my eyes, I know—for one does not so welcome a stranger beyond the outposts. But, since you have asked, I will tell you; my name is MacNair—Robert ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... moment it would be difficult to find fit words of panegyric. The republic stood alone, abandoned by France to the hot rage of Clement and the cold contempt of Charles, deserted by the powers of Italy, betrayed by lying captains, deluged on all sides with the scum of armies pouring into Tuscany from the Lombard pandemonium of war. The situation was one of impracticable difficulty. Florence could not but fall. Yet every generous heart will throb with sympathy while reading the story of that final stand for independence, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... strange have been the theories promulgated as to the character of the manifestations called sun-spots. The dark spots in the sun have been supposed to be "solid bodies revolving very near its surface," "Smoke of volcanoes;" "Scum floating upon an ocean of fluid matter;" "Clouds;" "Opaque masses floating in the fluid matter of the sun, dipping down occasionally," "Fiery liquid surrounding the sun which, by its ebbing and flowing, the highest parts of it were occasionally uncovered, and appeared under the ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... Gods are, such will the man be; down to that lowest point which too many of the Chinese seem to have reached, where, having no Gods, he himself becomes no man; but (as I hear you see him at the Australian diggings) abhorred for his foul crimes even by the scum of Europe. ...
— The Roman and the Teuton - A Series of Lectures delivered before the University of Cambridge • Charles Kingsley
... round and round and round, And he sniffed at the foaming froth; When I ups with his heels, and smothers his squeals In the scum of the boiling broth. ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... being set in the basin-holes, with the wood-ash under them, which I showed you in the back-kitchen. And they must have very little heat, not enough to simmer even; only just to make the bubbles rise, and the scum upon the top set thick; and after that, it clots as firm—oh, as firm as my ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... of the puffin, sufficiently apocryphal to remind one of the famous passage in the history of the barnacle, which traced the lineage of the bird to one of the pedunculated cirripedes, and the lineage of the cirripede to a log of wood. The puffin feeds its young, say the islanders, on an oily scum of the sea, which renders it such an unwieldy mass of fat, that about the time when it should be beginning to fly, it becomes unable to get out of its hole. The parent bird, not in the least puzzled, however, treats the case medicinally, and,—like ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... for yourself and me,' he replied. 'Here now has been a wretch of an Arab, a fellow of no appearance, a mere camel-driver, desiring to see you. I told him flatly that you were not to be seen by scum such as he. I advised him to be gone, before he might have to complain of a broken head. And what do you suppose was the burden of his errand? Why truly to ask of the most noble Piso concerning his wife and child! I begged him to consider whether, supposing you did know aught concerning ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware
... pointed out as the spot where the invisible poisoned arrow, discharged by the sorcerer, entered the man. The next thing is to detect the culprit. For this purpose a pot containing a decoction of leaves is set to boil on a fire. When it begins to boil over, the side on which the scum first falls is the quarter in which the supposed murderer is to be sought. A consultation is then held: the guilt is laid on some individual, and one of the nearest relations of the deceased is charged with the duty of finding and killing him. If the imaginary culprit cannot be found, ...
— The Belief in Immortality and the Worship of the Dead, Volume I (of 3) • Sir James George Frazer
... tells how the Governor of Massowah aided and abetted this half-crazy poltroon in onslaughts on defenseless women. It was not enough that Italian law should be misused to further his ends, but the scum of the bazaar is enlisted under his banner, and he is supported by the authorities in an act that would be reprobated by any half-savage state ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... world, than was formerly the case. Society is decidedly less graceful, more care-worn, and of a worse tone to-day, than it was previously to the revolution of 1830. I presume the elements are unchanged, but the ebullition of the times is throwing the scum to the surface; a natural but temporary consequence of the present ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... scum!" exclaimed Sambuc, wiping the sweat from his forehead, "he gave us trouble enough! Say, Silvine, light another candle, will you, so we can get a good view of the d——d pig and ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... mean idea you would have, Sir William Rumbold. They say scum rises. You grew a handle to your name during the war, but you ain't grown manners to go with it. War changes them that's changeable. T'others are ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... "original," English translation of a French farce, cannot understand WHY these foolish Neapolitans should laugh and sing and shout in the manner they do, merely because they are glad to be alive. And after much dubious consideration, he decides within himself that they are all rascals—the scum of the earth—and that he and he only is the true representative of man at his best—the model of civilized respectability. And a mournful spectacle he thus seems to the eyes of us "base" foreigners—in our hearts we are sorry for ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... dragged down upon their shoulders, in consequence of which they were called ringrim, or the large ears. Their chief was called Zapalla Inca[30], or the only king; though others say that he was named Inca Vira cocha, or the king from the scum of the lake, because the astonished natives, not knowing the origin of their invaders, believed that they had started into existence from the scum or mud of the great lake. This great lake of Titicaca is about eighty leagues in circumference, from which ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... in plenty, with rich dress and shining mail; black Africans with blubber lips and mats of furzy hair; sleek Jews slithering in and out the groups, inciting to devil's work; figures of nobles and gentlemen of France or Espagne, dishonoured and merged in the depth of the lowest scum there present; great Saxon churls and Danes, standing stern and resolute, but barbarous, as lions in the ranks ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... chemically separable out of the putrescent mess: by the faith that is in it, what life or good it can still keep, or do, is possible; by the miscreance in it, what mischief it can do, or annihilation it can suffer, is appointed for its work and fate. All strong character curdles itself out of the scum into its own place and power, or impotence: and they that sow to the Flesh, do of the Flesh reap corruption; and they that sow to the Spirit, do of the ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... man, who had grown up, and was well-known here. With nothing special, perhaps, to record, I would give a word or two to his memory. He seem'd to me not an inappropriate specimen in character and elements, of that bulk of the average good American race that ebbs and flows perennially beneath this scum of eructations on the surface. Always very quiet in manner, neat in person and dress, good temper'd—punctual and industrious at his work, till he could work no longer—he just lived his steady, square, unobtrusive life, in its own humble sphere, doubtless ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... at the rear may be entirely empty in dry seasons; and after heavy rains may contain a depth of 2 feet. This water now has a greasy looking scum and a sour, ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth, The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth;— Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth! ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... asked to determine the origin of this race, I should have pronounced it to be a mixture of Naples lazzaroni with the scum of an Irish regiment. The ruddy complexions of some of the women, and the swarthy look of many of the men, might fairly warrant such a conclusion. They were so importunate and offensive as they pressed round me that I hurried over my sketch of the temple, and made my escape from them, ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... fixt, move not a foot, nor speak not, For if thou doest, upon this point thy death sits. Thou miserable, base, and sordid lecher, Thou scum of noble blood, repent and speedily, Repent thy thousand thefts, from helpless Virgins, Their innocence betrayed to ...
— Beaumont & Fletcher's Works (1 of 10) - The Custom of the Country • Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher
... them well, when all are broken turn into a bowl covered with cheese cloth. Drain well and when cool squeeze out all the juice. Put the blueberry juice on to boil, add one pint of sugar to each pint of juice and remove all scum. Allow one quart of sliced pears to one pint of juice. Use hard pears not suitable for canning. Cook them in the syrup, turning over often and when soft and transparent skim them out into the jars. Boil down the syrup and strain over the fruit. Fill ...
— Good Things to Eat as Suggested by Rufus • Rufus Estes
... These soft-hearted folk ain't goin' to let ye chaw the gentleman up to-day, but, if ever I set eyes on either of the scum agin, I'll give the varmints what's comin' to 'em, and I'll do it sudden-like, and I'll do it so it stays done, and there won't be nobody to stop me next time. If ye don't believe it, jest give me the chance. And to think I had to waste a perfectly ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... the high stars alone, Nor in the cups of budding flowers, Nor in the redbreast's mellow tone, Nor in the bow that smiles in showers, But in the mud and scum of things ...
— Four American Leaders • Charles William Eliot
... excuse the liberty,—but may I have the igstreme honour to request you to take my arm in the full view of all this here assembled rabble?' So arm-in-arm it is, up the deck, and 'Ladies an' Gentlemen'—meanin' 'Attention, pray, all you scum o' the earth'—'I'll trouble you to observe strick silence while this lady, with whom you ...
— Hocken and Hunken • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... of labour troubles then. The Cargadores of the port formed, indeed, an unruly brotherhood of all sorts of scum, with a patron saint of their own. They went on strike regularly (every bull-fight day), a form of trouble that even Nostromo at the height of his prestige could never cope with efficiently; but the morning after each fiesta, before the Indian market-women had opened ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... alone, and bearing, as he undoubtedly did, a large sum of money. The man had a fine nerve, at all events; for on the other side he would plunge into the wildest part of northern Italy, where the human scum that ever hovers on frontiers had many a fastness. Villainy always requires ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... was, by affidavits, motions, pleas, demurrers, flaws, and appeals, to protract the question from term to term, and from court to court. It would, as Mr. Tyrrel argued, be the disgrace of a civilized country, if a gentleman, when insolently attacked in law by the scum of the earth, could not convert the cause into a question of the longest purse, and stick in the skirts of his adversary till he had ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... "Scum of the earth, most of them," he said, his plain face glowing. "Dirty little beggars off the street. At first they stole my tobacco; and one of them pawned a medical book or two! Then they got to playing the game right. By Jove, Harmony, I wish you ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... England was less tragic; indeed, in a sense it was comic. Wellington, himself an Irishman though of the narrower party, was preeminently a realist, and, like many Irishmen, was especially a realist about Englishmen. He said the army he commanded was the scum of the earth; and the remark is none the less valuable because that army proved itself useful enough to be called the salt of the earth. But in truth it was in this something of a national symbol and the guardian, as it were, of a national secret. There is a paradox about the English, ...
— A Short History of England • G. K. Chesterton
... moralists, it was dark enough. For obvious reasons it is desirable not to elaborate. It is perhaps more profitable, as well as refreshing, to consider the brighter side. That there were noble women and good wives, and that the froth and scum and dregs of idle town-life did not make up the existence of the contemporary Roman world, may be seen from passages like the following, which are either quoted or condensed from a letter of Pliny ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... followed, Challes remarked that "prentices were but the scum of the world." This led to a general rising of apprentices, and much disorder throughout the city. ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams
... Hence it is Shepherds their whole flock steep in running streams, While, plunged beneath the flood, with drenched fell, The ram, launched free, goes drifting down the tide. Else, having shorn, they smear their bodies o'er With acrid oil-lees, and mix silver-scum And native sulphur and Idaean pitch, Wax mollified with ointment, and therewith Sea-leek, strong hellebores, bitumen black. Yet ne'er doth kindlier fortune crown his toil, Than if with blade of iron a man dare lance The ulcer's ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... toffs, fair top new 'uns, mixed hup with the welcher, the froth with the scum; There wos duchesses, proud as DIANNER, and she-things as sniffed of the slum; There was "champions" thick as bluebottles, and plungers as plenty as peas, With stoney-brokes, pale as a poultice, and "crocks," orful ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... "Step lively, you blasted scum of the seas," he bawled to the mate, and the crew gathered around the gun. "Lug up a case of ammunition and we'll shell that bush until even a parrot won't be ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne
... and of water, mingled and mixed together in the wildest chaos, like a portion of some world in the process of formation. Here and there on the dun-coloured surface of this great marsh there had burst out patches of sickly yellow reeds and of livid, greenish scum, which only served to heighten and intensify the gloomy effect of the ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... putridly and tepidly and frothily through all veins: spit on the great city, which is the great slum where all the scum ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... anything;—so that there was much excuse for the men of the second stage. But then came Dr. Lionel Giles* who belongs to the third stage, and perhaps is the third stage. He shows that though there is in the Book of Liehtse a residue or scum of immoral teaching, it is quite in opposition to the tendency of the teaching that remains when this scum is removed; and deduces from this fact the sensible idea that the scum was a later forgery; the rest, the authentic work of a true philosopher with an original mind ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... his next book, the Ebb-Tide (in collaboration with Osbourne) to little better than a mud-bath, for we find ourselves, as it were, unrelieved by dredging among the scum and dregs of humanity, the 'white trash' of the Pacific. Here we have Stevenson's masterly but utterly revolting incarnation of the lowest, vilest, vulgarest villainy in the cockney, Huish. Stevenson's ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... chest, and the nifty shoulder-straps—why should he glare at me in that cold, suspicious way? I wasn't tryin' to break into the army with felonious intent. How could he be sure, just from a casual glance, that I was such vicious scum? ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... sake, ask any more of the scum," Allen said, adding, that if she had not invited any of them no ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... think," Jimmy would go on quietly, "of the dirty, lousy crowd of German waiters you remember at home in the days before the war. Do you remember their greasy-looking clothes, and their greasy-looking faces, and the way you used to treat 'em as the scum of the world? Would you have one of them, MacNab, cut the hands off your kid; would you, ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... dissolving in the wind. As they approached a dark patch of oil spread outwards from a miniature maelstrom where vast bubbles heaved themselves up and broke; the air was sickly with the smell of benzoline, and mingled with it were the acrid fumes of gas and burnt clothing. A dark scum gathered in widening circles, with here and there the white belly of a dead fish catching the sun: a few scraps of wreckage went by, but no sign of a man or what had once been ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... from dwelling on the lawless characteristics of the frontier, because they are sufficiently well known. The gambler and desperado, the regulators of the Carolinas and the vigilantes of California, are types of that line of scum that the waves of advancing civilization bore before them, and of the growth of spontaneous organs of authority where legal authority was absent. Compare Barrows, "United States of Yesterday and To-morrow"; Shinn, "Mining Camps"; and Bancroft, "Popular Tribunals." The humor, bravery, and ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... spacious fireplace and chimney to accommodate the great iron pot in which the sap was boiled down into sugar. While the sap was running freely, the pot had to be kept boiling uniformly and the thickening sap kept skimmed clean of the creaming scum; and therefore, during the season, some one had to be always living in ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... hard and you sleep on the soft side of a board—if you're lucky enough to find a board. You ride till your seat is blistered and until you can sleep in the saddle. You drink mud green with scum if that's all you can find to drink, and you think it's mighty fine drinkin', too. This ain't—" Drew's thoughts flitted back to his meeting with Aunt Marianna on the Lexington road—"all saber wavin' and chargin' the enemy and playin' hero to the ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... gold and happy robberies. By this desertion they weakened the colony, which waited for their return with the provisions, and they made implacable enemies of the Indians by their violence. "These are that scum of men," which, after roving the seas and failing in their piracy, joined themselves to other pirates they found on the sea, or returned to England, bound by a mutual oath to discredit the land, and swore they were drawn away by famine. "These are ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... disorders of the stomach with which his men had of late been much afflicted. They had been in the habit of dipping up the water of the river inadvertently, and drinking it; and he had now no doubt but the sickness was occasioned by a scum which covered its surface along the southern shore. Always after this the men agitated the water, so as to disperse the scum, before they drank of it, ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... Warre, the fair Rowena's sire, Of haughty Norman birth, With pure descent, Held Saxon, high or low, as scum of earth; And deemed his name more worth and honour lent, Than line directly traced from Alfred ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... clothes-prop for their flag, he'll ride along the front of his ridgement of cavaliers, and he'll shout to 'em in that big voice of his as I've followed many's the time; and 'Don't draw, gentlemen,' he'll say; 'ride the scum down, and make the rest run;' and then they'll all roar with laughing loud enough to drown the trumpet charge. My word, I'd a gi'n something to ha' been there to see the rebels fly like dead leaves before a wind in November. But it were a mean and a ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... pottle of water, and put into it two handful of Mary-golds, and cover it with a tile or what you think fit, and set it again on the fire, where it is to boil softly for half an hour, about which time the scum will turn yellow, then put into it half a pound of Copporis beaten smal, and with it the hair that you intend to colour, then let the hair be boiled softly till half the liquor be wasted, & then let it cool three or four hours with your hair in it; and ...
— The Complete Angler 1653 • Isaak Walton
... BEEF STOCK.—Take six pounds of soup meat, cut it up into good sized pieces, break the bones into small pieces, place them in the stock pot, and add five quarts of cold water and two ounces of salt; boil slowly for five hours, remove the scum as fast as it rises; cut up three white turnips and three carrots, add these to the soup with two stalks of celery, one large onion quartered, six cloves, teaspoonful of whole peppers, and ...
— Fifty Soups • Thomas J. Murrey
... nor has that been your state of mind in listening; but I intended that his many noble achievements might obtain an ever memorable glory in your souls. Who would not feel inclined to make mention of his senators?—how without giving offence he removed the scum that had come to the surface from the factions, how by this very act he exalted the remainder, magnified it by increasing the property requirement, and enriched it by grants of money; how he voted on an equality with the senators and had their help in making changes; how he communicated to ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... sepoy, who appeared a most pugnacious customer, cuffed some of them, and made desperate flourishes at others with a big stick, and seemed altogether so anxious to prevent, as he said, the "cherishers of the poor," from being inconvenienced by the "scum of the earth," that we suspected something wrong, and on inquiring, ascertained, that out of the amount due to the seven, viz. one rupee five annas, or about two shillings and eightpence, the organ of government had ...
— Diary of a Pedestrian in Cashmere and Thibet • by William Henry Knight
... same as those for which the apostles and bishops were put to death by the Roman government. In this field too it was Cato, of course, who took the lead as the vigorous champion of his native country against the foreigners. The Greek literati and physicians were in his view the most dangerous scum of the radically corrupt Greek people,(72) and the Roman "ballad- singers" are treated by him with ineffable contempt.(73) He and those who shared his sentiments have been often and harshly censured ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... lentils, or the green German lentils may be used for this soup. If the latter, soak overnight. Stew the lentils very gently in the water for 2 hours, taking off any scum that rises. Well wash the vegetables, slice them, and add to the soup. Stew for 2 hours more. Then rub through a sieve, or not, as preferred. Add the lemon juice, herb powder, and butter (nut or ...
— The Healthy Life Cook Book, 2d ed. • Florence Daniel
... once he was outside the door, shaking his fist at Daubrecq's windows. "Wretch, scum of the earth, deputy, you shall pay for this!... Oh, he allows himself...! Oh, he has the cheek to...! Well, I swear to you, my fine fellow, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... doing. I hated myself, but there was no choice. Things came to a climax last night. I don't like to talk about it—think about it—but you're bound to hear. I consented to go out with him. He dragged me through the dance-halls and the saloons—made me drink with him, publicly, and with the scum of the town." Noting the expression on her hearer's face, the Countess laughed shortly, mirthlessly. "Shocking, wasn't it? Low, indecent, wretched? That's what everybody is saying. Dawson is humming with it. God! How he humiliated me! But ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... better purpose than their own hanging; and incendiaries, that are snapping the flint upon wet tinder. You'll as soon raise the dead as raise the Highlands—you'll as soon get a grunt from a dead sow as any comfort from Wales or Cheshire. You think because the pot is boiling, that no scum but yours can come uppermost—I know better, by—. All these rackets and riots that you think are trending your way have no relation at all to your interest; and the best way to make the whole kingdom friends again at once, would be the alarm of such an undertaking as these mad ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... said the captain, "so at the slightest sign of danger draw back. I don't want a man to be even wounded at the expense of capturing a score of the black scum, even if one of them proves ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... there? If my mother had seen that wretched servant girl brushing my hair the old lady would have died—I, the child of many prayers, the hope of a house, and stumping home on a foggy morning after sitting among the scum of earth all night. I mean to be a philosopher, but what a beastly, silly school to cultivate political philosophy in! What do I know more than I knew before?—that one vulgar girl maintains three vulgar criminals, and that all the four will come whining to the workhouse ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... latter half of the distance was through a low, slimy swamp land, giving rank growth to an almost continuous forest of sycamore, cottonwood, and other trees which love a damp, alluvial soil, whose massive trunks were yet foul and unsightly with filth and scum deposited by the receding waters at the subsidence of the river's great spring freshet a month before. Stagnant ponds and mimic lagoons lay all about us and in our very pathway, some of the deeper ones, however, rudely bridged. Very rapid ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... all this, we were induced to think that nothing remained to be added; and yet we are still very ignorant in regard to the internal construction of the sun." "The spots have been supposed to be solid bodies, the smoke of volcanoes, the scum floating on an ocean of fluid matter, clouds, opaque masses, and to be many other things." "The sun itself has been called a globe of fire, though, perhaps, metaphorically." "It is time now to profit by the observations we are in possession of. I have availed ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... upon the case given previously to their retiring; if these men of learning can not be found, as in most cases, let others who, for the above qualifications minus learning, be substituted in their stead. In the selection of the jury in the most cases they come as the most refined element of the scum and refuse of the party class, whose labor in the election of some democratic officer, can only be rewarded under these terms; being unqualified to fill even the most inferior office of their party, in a majority of cases, not even one of these ...
— Twentieth Century Negro Literature - Or, A Cyclopedia of Thought on the Vital Topics Relating - to the American Negro • Various
... be reduced to the extremity of using stagnant or even putrid water; but this should never be done without first boiling it. Some charred wood from the camp fire should be boiled with the water; then skim off the scum, strain, and set in water aside to cool. Boiling sterilizes, and charcoal ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... set of people, ain't you?' said Uriah, in the same low voice, and breaking out into a clammy heat, which he wiped from his forehead, with his long lean hand, 'to buy over my clerk, who is the very scum of society,—as you yourself were, Copperfield, you know it, before anyone had charity on you,—to defame me with his lies? Miss Trotwood, you had better stop this; or I'll stop your husband shorter than will be pleasant to ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... get Hanna a saucer of milk?" said Cousin Emelene now, seeing the maid's round eyes glaring startled from the dining-room door. "And just warm it a little bit, don't scald it. She won't touch it if there's the least bit of a scum on it. Just take that ice-box chill off. Here, I'll go with you this time. Since we're going to live here now, you'll have to do it a good many times, and I'd better show you just how to do ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... I would have made way for him," said my aunt, indignantly, "he called me a bad name, and looked as if I were the very scum of ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... we will. Contempt to a superior officer—clerk and caterer, indeed! The service has come to a pretty pass—you villains! You may grin—I'll tear the eyes out of some of you, that I will. Come, Mr Skrimmage, let us go on the quarter-deck, and see if the service is to be trifled with. Dirty scum, indeed—" and the lady stopped for want of breath occasioned by ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... bag as if she hadn't noticed scum of the earth like us, and then she deliberately picked up a bunch of long white flowers that lay by the bag—lilies, I think you call them—and stood up, and looked right past me, as if she was struck with the landscape, ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... boy's desire is to "sugar off" all the time. He boils his kettle down as rapidly as possible; he is not particular about chips, scum, or ashes. ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... itself did not seek to restrain the feelings of the audience. The exclamations, the insults addressed to Benedetto, who remained perfectly unconcerned, the energetic gestures, the movement of the gendarmes, the sneers of the scum of the crowd always sure to rise to the surface in case of any disturbance—all this lasted five minutes, before the door-keepers and magistrates were able to restore silence. In the midst of this tumult the voice of the president was heard to exclaim,—"Are you playing ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... could be no piling that ill-assorted company on horses and putting out for Caraquet, with the road choked with snow, even if I could have got by Macartney's garrison at the Halfway. Crossing Lac Tremblant, that by to-morrow would be lying sweetly level under a treacherous scum of lolly and drifted snow, ready to drown us all like Thompson,—I cursed and put that out of the question. That lake that was no lake offered about as good a thoroughfare as rats get in a rain-barrel. Whereas, to hold Macartney at La Chance till I ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... Corson limousine rolled into the square and sought to part its way through that scum somebody in the crowd made a proposition that was promptly favored as far as the votes by voices went: "Tip the lapdog kennel ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... seven vessels was not well manned. His own account of the crews is thus worded in the Apology: 'A company of volunteers who for the most part had neither seen the sea nor the wars; who, some forty gentlemen excepted, were the very scum of the world, drunkards, blasphemers, and such others as their fathers, brothers, and friends thought it an exceeding good gain to be discharged of, with the hazard of some thirty, forty, or fifty pound.' He was himself Admiral, with his son Walter as captain ...
— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse
... the pavement derisively. They were scrambled for, as when a pack of wolves are diverted by a garment dropped from the flying sledge, but the unluckier hands came after his heels in fuller howl. He noticed the singular appearance of the streets. Bands of the scum of the population hung at various points: from time to time a shout was raised at a distance, "Abasso il zigarro!" and "Away with the cigar!" went an organized file-firing of cries along the open place. Several gentlemen were mobbed, and compelled to fling the cigars from their teeth. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... called the scum o' the earth. I've been kicked out of her house as a fellow not decent enough to mix with honest folks. Only yesterday I got a letter from some of her people warning me to leave the country while I was still alive. This Pesquiera is ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... pot boils the scum rises to the surface, and the first result of these disloyal murmurings and agitations was to bring into prominence the two brothers, Francisco and Diego de Porras, who, it will be remembered, owed their presence with the expedition entirely to the Admiral's good nature in complying with ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... girl conversed absorbedly, with their elbows on the table. Their glasses of beer were pushed to one side, scarcely touched, with the foam on them sunken to a thin white scum. Since the stroke of one the stale pleasures of Rooney's had become renovated and spiced; not by any addition to the list of distractions, but because from that moment the sweets became stolen ones. The flattest glass of beer acquired the tang of illegality; the mildest claret punch ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... boils, after the meat is in it, the scum should be carefully removed from time to time, while it is cooking. If the scum be allowed to boil down, it will settle on the joint and discolour it. It is best, however, as a precaution, to wrap the meat in a very clean cloth; this will effectually ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... expected. A batch of colored folks had drifted into the place under the impression that a certain planter was going to give them work at big wages. They were a worthless lot, the scum of other plantations, and nobody ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... they went on and came to a spring and drank of its water and afterwards the woman bathed in it and the blood stained water flowed over all the country and so we see stagnant water covered with a red scum. Going on from there they reached a low lying flat and halted; almost at once they saw a thunder storm coming up from the South and West; and the ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... man, there must be some red blood in your veins. By God, if I was two years younger, I'd go along just for the joy of smashing them." He was trembling, leaning forward in his chair. "Go now, go and trap the filthy scum." ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... scum of society should be kept in its place," observed another, scarcely less bitter than young Richmond in his jealousy of the lad who claimed so much of the attention of the ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... justice cannot stoop so low, to reach The groveling sin of crowds: but curst be they, Who trust revenge with such mad instruments, Whose blindfold business is but to destroy; And, like the fire, commissioned by the winds, Begins on sheds, but, rolling in a round, On palaces returns. Away, ye scum, That still rise upmost when the nation boils; Ye mongrel work of heaven, with human shapes, Not to be damned or saved, but breathe and perish, That have but just enough of sense, to know The master's voice, when rated, to depart. [Exeunt MUSTAPHA ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... gluten are both coagulable by heat; if, therefore, we raise the liquor to the boiling point prior to applying the lime, taking care to remove the scum as soon as it shows signs of breaking, and continuing the boiling until the scum thrown to the surface becomes inconsiderable, we shall find that the albumen and gluten, in coagulating and rising, have carried ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... and ill-favoured. I wonder what the Lady Mabel saw above his shoe to wed with an ugly toad spawned i' the Welsh marshes. Had ye seen her first husband, Sir William Bradshaigh—rest his soul! he was killed in the wars—you would have marvelled that she drunk the scum after the broth." ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... Opium six ozs., Molasses four pints, Alcohol eight ozs., Water six pints, Carbonate Potash four drms., Oil Sassafras cut with Alcohol one drm. Dissolve the Potash in water, add the Molasses; heat over a gentle fire till it simmers, remove the scum, add the other ingredients, the oil dissolved ...
— One Thousand Secrets of Wise and Rich Men Revealed • C. A. Bogardus
... 'The Thimble' disappeared in a cloud of grayish vapor, the dull sound of an explosion filled the ear, and the ground under our feet trembled. There was nothing to be seen, even with the glass, save a light scum covering the water and some fragments of charred tree branches. But the air about us was full of a fine dust that powdered Betty's hair, as though for a costume ball, and made ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... from the pool, which I was rather surprised to find quite pure. These pools are, of course, sometimes fouled for a time by the movements of alligators and other tenants in the fine mud which settles at the bottom, but I never observed a scum of confervae or traces of oil revealing animal decomposition on the surface of these waters, nor was there ever any foul smell perceptible. The whole of this level land, instead of being covered with unwholesome swamps emitting malaria, forms in the dry season (and in the wet also) a most healthy ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... myself. For my part, I had thought it praiseworthy, but he says none of the rest of us care a rush for my mother, and so the only one of us good for anything has to be the victim. But don't plume yourself. You'll be the scum of the earth when he has you before him. Poor old boy, it is a sore business to him, and it doesn't improve his temper. I believe this place is a greater loss to him than to my ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... his brother, and his brother's set, to believe that Dissenters were, morally and intellectually, the scum of the earth. Here were men who, though not Dissenters themselves, held doctrines practically undistinguishable from theirs, and yet united the highest mental training with the service of God and the imitation of Christ. There was in the Cleaver household none of that reserve which the ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... prison is prison. As for talking politics, I never, during those three years, exchanged as many sentences with any of my fellow-prisoners. What had I to say to them? Poachers and petty thieves—the scum of misery, ignorance, and rascality throughout the country. If my heart yearned toward them at times, it was generally shut close by the exclusive pride of superior intellect and knowledge. I considered it, as it was, a degradation to be classed with such; never ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... begins to undergo a peculiar change. No matter how clear it might be at starting, yet after a few hours, or at most a few days, if the temperature is high, this liquid begins to be turbid, and by-and-by bubbles make their appearance in it, and a sort of dirty-looking yellowish foam or scum collects at the surface; while at the same time, by degrees, a similar kind of matter, which we call the "lees," ...
— Lectures and Essays • T.H. Huxley
... numbers and position, Aremberg was disposed only to skirmish. He knew better than did his soldiers the treacherous nature of the ground in front of the enemy. He saw that it was one of those districts where peat had been taken out in large squares for fuel, and where a fallacious and verdant scum upon the surface of deep pools simulated the turf that had been removed. He saw that the battle-ground presented to him by his sagacious enemy was one great sweep of traps and pitfalls. Before he could carry the position, many ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... the atmosphere is perceptible. 'A fire?'—yes; then why is my grate full of grey, cold ashes, and one little spark in the corner? 'A fountain springing into everlasting life?'—yes; then why in my basin is there so much scum and ooze, mud and defilement, and so little of the flashing and brilliant water? 'The power that works in us' is sorely hindered by the weakness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... to put in all the deep disgust that Piddie expresses; for, along with his fondness for gettin' next to swell people, he seems to have a horror of mixin' at all with the common herd. "Waiters!" he sniffs. "The scum of mankind. If they had a spark of courage, or a gleam of self respect, or a teaspoonful of brains, they wouldn't be ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Galsworthy. The only work which all the prisoners had to perform in turn was the drawing of water from a well in the keep. The water of the moat, as I had seen when we crossed it on entering, was covered with a green scum, the rivulet which fed it not being of sufficient volume to keep ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... are as well aware as I am that the subject has been mixed with a heap of nonsense both by Jews and Christians. And as to the connection of our race with Palestine, it has been perverted by superstition till it's as demoralizing as the old poor-law. The raff and scum go there to be maintained like able-bodied paupers, and to be taken special care of by the angel Gabriel when they die. It's no use fighting against facts. We must look where they point; that's what I call rationality. ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... saw I wasn't a first-hander or a thoroughbred, and they made it easy for me. No, it was a happy time for me—and, by George, how they fed us! I expect the women looked after all that. I daresay that, as far as economics go, it was all wrong, and that these people are only a sort of scum on the surface of society. But it is a pretty scum, shot with bright colours. Anyhow, it is no good beginning by trying to alter them! If you could alter everything else, they would fall into line, because they are good-humoured and sensible. And as long as people are kindly and full of life, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... the metal is cast into bricks. Here the stealing of ore by workmen is particularly prevalent, and even the searching by the trusty at the gate not entirely effective, for even the skimming off of the scum leaves the floor scattered with chips of silver with a high percentage of gold which even the American in charge cannot always keep the men from concealing. Hence there occurs periodically the scene we ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... cobbler. Cobblers are always philosophers. Not pretty men, but thinkers. In their little, dingy shops they sit all day with their eyes down, isolated from the "hum and scum" about them, to the tune of their "tap, tap, tap," their minds are detached to ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... afraid," said the tall officer, laughing, "I meant to say that no one here shall harm you, my young ambassador. But look here, how comes it that you, who are evidently a gentleman, are taking sides with that beggarly scum of tatterdemalions who have taken up ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn |
