"Smudge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... being gently admonished concerning a friendship that was thought to be growing too strong, she was quick instantly to resent the slur on her chum. She had been sent for immediately after "evening prep.," and having, as usual, inked her fingers generously, and rubbed an ink-smudge across her face, to say nothing of really disgracefully tumbled hair, she looked a comical enough object standing before the impressive presence of ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... houses, which always seemed divided by absurd distances, and the faces of the negro cooks who met me at the kitchen steps and relieved me of my burden. In the beginning I was accompanied on my rounds by a fat, smudge-nosed youth some six or eight years my senior, who smoked vile tobacco and enlivened the way by villainous abuses of John Chitling and the universe. For the first months, I fear, my outlook upon the customers I served was largely coloured by his narratives, but when at last he dropped ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... hat and umbrella, Thomas after him in full career with the canvas bag. The cashier was sitting with the coin and notes scattered on the table in front of him, looking as if he had been robbed; and as old Svendsen's eye rested on the ruined letter, he discovered that he had a smudge of ink on one of his fingers. Now, it was thirty years since old Svendsen had had any ink on his fingers. Mr. Worse must have made a splutter with his pen when he snatched it so hurriedly; and as the old bookkeeper's eye wandered from the smudge of ink, to the frightful ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... cooked and the boys sat in the protecting smudge of the campfire, the sound of paddles was heard up the river. The swish and splash came on steadily for a ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... possibilities, it was with the most intense and absorbing interest that I watched the plate under the action of the developer. Presently I saw a faint smudge of black appear in the upper part, and after that others, indistinct and wavering of outline. I held the negative up to the light. The marks were rather small, and were almost entirely confined to one end of the plate, but as I have said, ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... suthin' like this, ez he was explainin' it to me. He went to the cathedral durin' service, an' took in the priests and choir-boys in their surplices,—parkas, he called 'em,—an' watched the burnin' of the holy incense. 'An' do ye know, Dave, he sez to me, 'they got in an' made a smudge, and there wa'n't a darned ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... were alike except for the dinginess of the print and the sinister smudge of the portraits. All were sewn roughly together into a mould-stained, marbled cover. He lit a second match, and as he did so glanced as if inquiringly over his shoulder. And a score or so of pages before the end he came at last upon the name he was ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... log; cinder &c (products of combustion) 384; ingle, tinder, touchwood; sulphur, brimstone; incense; port-fire; fire-barrel, fireball, brand; amadou^, bavin^; blind coal, glance coal; German tinder, pyrotechnic sponge, punk, smudge [U.S.]; solid fueled rocket. [fuels for candles and lamps] wax, paraffin wax, paraffin oil; lamp oil, whale oil. [liquid fuels] oil, petroleum, gasoline, high octane gasoline, nitromethane, petrol, gas, juice [Coll.], gasohol, alcohol, ethanol, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... ever because some one calls out, in a foolish voice of terror and regret, 'Too late!' Yet, in reality, we stand still; the rush of the hours is a sham. We see things out of proportion, like trees from the window of a train, their beauty hidden in a long, thick smudge. We do not move; it is the train that hurries us along: the trees are always steadily there—and beautiful. There is enough of everything for everybody—no need to try and get there first. To hurry is to chase your tail, which some ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... "smudge" will sometimes keep the pests away from the neighbourhood of the tent or if we build it in the tent will drive them out, but the remedy is almost as bad as the disease. As a rule they will only be troublesome at night and ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... communication between the man and the spirits who can bless or harm him, and which to his mind are as countlessly numerous as the swarms of mosquitoes which he drives out of and away from his summer cottage by smudge fires in August. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... the fire in the clearing, and she greeted him cheerfully, without the slightest sign of reproach. After a while, though, he noted upon her right cheek a little smudge. It was shaped like a miniature comet; it was, rather, like the slight sediment left upon a window-pane by a drop of rain. Charles-Norton, determinedly, refused to see it. But it was there ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... the rough wall, over a draped dressing-table which had apparently once been boxes. Yes, she did look tired and draggled. Her wild-rose color was nearly gone, and there were big circles under her eyes. And there was a smudge on her face that nobody had told her a thing about. And her hair was mussed too much to be becoming, even to her, who looked best with it tossed a little. And there was not a sign of water to wash ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... course, then," Michael said to himself, observing these, "and quite pretty if that smudge of grime was off ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... evenings the two sat close to the smudge of the camp-fire and talked of many things, while the ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... gum. I carefully sealed the letter, using very little moisture. The gum then separated the two prepared parts. Now if that letter were steamed open the tannin and the sulphate would come together, run, and leave a smudge. You see the blots? ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... we stole from our blind, chilled and stiffened, and wandered back to camp to breakfast and sleep. The former was a fairly successful event, but the latter was made almost impossible by the swarms of mosquitoes that beset us. A smudge fire and canvas head- coverings gave us only a partial immunity. By sundown we were on our way again to the blind, but another cold dreary ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... slightly after, the weather was beautifully calm and the sea like glass. As we were only three miles from the English coast, and close to the mouth of the Tyne, we were extraordinarily lucky to have nothing in sight, if one excepts a long smudge of smoke which trailed across the horizon to ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon
... the wide world that he could paint; flowers and landscapes he only muddled away into a smudge; with people he was helpless and hopeless; also with animals. Skies he could sometimes manage, or effects of wind in foliage, but as a rule he left these all severely alone. He kept to trees, wisely following ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... later, on another foggy afternoon, when she entered her sitting room she found herself confronting a rather pathetic picture. In her own special and pet easy-chair before the bright fire, Becky—with a coal smudge on her nose and several on her apron, with her poor little cap hanging half off her head, and an empty coal box on the floor near her—sat fast asleep, tired out beyond even the endurance of her hard-working young body. She had been sent up to put the bedrooms in order for the evening. There ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... her side and set his foot upon it. There was a thin squeak and then—there was nothing left of the little gray spinner but a tiny gray smudge ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... scare me to have a fire Begin in smudge with ropy smoke and know That still, if I repent, I may recall it, But in a moment not: a little spurt Of burning fatness, and then nothing but The fire itself can put it out, and that By burning out, and before it burns out It will have ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... while her breath seemed to choke her, Adelle saw the man in the glare of the flame pull himself up, inch by inch, until his head was level with the glass, butt his head against the heavy pane, and with a final heave disappear within while a black smudge of smoke poured from the vent ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... population. Nourished by railroads, a division headquarters of the great A. and P., near the soft-coal beds, with a tin-plate factory, a carpet factory, a carriage factory, and a dozen other mills and factories, Torso is a black smudge in a flat green landscape from which many lines of electric railway radiate forth along the country roads. And along the same roads across the reaches of prairie, over the swelling hills, stalk towering poles, bearing many fine wires ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... about is getting out of that hole as fast as he can. He don't like the smoke and the fire, and he won't pay any attention to anything else until he gets outside, but then you want to look out. He goes for the first live thing in sight when he's clear of the cave and the smudge, and he don't go very slow either. Jim Brackett found that out over in Squaw Valley one day. He found a bear in a den, and built a fire at the mouth to smoke him out. The fire was burning rather slowly, Brackett thought, and ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... of a youth in grimy cap, flannels, and overalls, with a pair of smouched soldier gauntlets hiding the white of his hands, and a coating of coal-dust and smudge hiding all but the clear, ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... replied the latter. "It will do, so paint it on, Rob; and all of you be careful not to smudge it. It'll be dry by to-morrow morning, for this fantail rides ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... Everybody said it was one of the sights no one could afford to miss. But by and by a piece began to peel off here and another piece there, and then the nose cracked, and then an ear dropped off, and then one of the eyes began to get mushy and watery looking, and finally it was a mere smudge, a false-face, a scarecrow. My father spent a lot of money trying to fix it up, but what good did it do? By the time he had the nose cobbled the ears were loose again, and so on. In the end he gave it ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... sudden attempt to twist his blade around Cleggett's; followed by a direct thrust, as quick as light, which grazed Cleggett's shoulder; a little smudge of blood ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... that was told to me by two old men. We sat in the smoke of a mosquito-smudge, in the cool of the day, which was midnight; and ever and anon, throughout the telling, we smote lustily and with purpose at such of the winged pests as braved the smoke for a snack at our hides. To the right, beneath us, twenty feet down the crumbling ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... like a pretty expensive sort of smudge, but seeing how much wax Ravick had burned uptown, it was only fair to let him in on some of the smoke. I mentioned that if we got into the building and up to Main City Level, we'd need some way of signaling to ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... no loitering of the shadows. The gloomy isles have changed from black to purple and from purple to blue, and as the imperious sun flashes on the mainland a smudge of brown, blurred and shifting, in the far distance—the only evidence of the existence of human schemes and agitations—the only stain on the celestial purity of the morning—betokens the belated steamer for the coming ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... lift the blotting pad, her forefinger had dropped upon the signature and had been drawn across, leaving nothing more than an indecipherable smudge. ...
— Bones in London • Edgar Wallace
... much," answered the judge, looking it over. "There seems to be a smudge of dirt on ...
— The Boy Scouts Patrol • Ralph Victor
... ring the bell, that they down below may hear that we have found them; and one must climb the Krebsstein and plant the flag there so that they in the valley may see it and fire off the mortars, so that the people searching in the Millsdorf forest may hear it and that they may kindle the smudge-fires in Gschaid, and all those on the mountain may come down to the Sideralp chalet. This is a ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... of twilight begins to smudge the clear-drawn lines of the Big City there is inaugurated an hour devoted to one of the most melancholy ...
— Sixes and Sevens • O. Henry
... built in a day, as I ever heard of," protested Harkness, a smudge over his nose and two long nails between his teeth. "I guess there's truck enough in the attic up there at the Manor to fill this house and a dozen ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... one, stabbing the dusk with their beams, steady, conspicuous. One only, far in the distance, seemed ill-defined—a faint smudge against the twilight. Then ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... he said. "I have it—and those three fellows had it, too. We've overrun 'em. They've turned off, below, and I'll wager they're making for that smudge! Remember that smudge on the map—what looked to be another 'G. H.,' in capital letters? Well, sir, if that sign isn't 'G. W.' instead of 'G. H.' I'll miss my guess. 'G. W.'—'Golden West'! How does that strike ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... smudge at the beginning of the sentence "moment the beautiful lady meditated and then said:" has been corrected to "A". In the sentence "I will arrrange with you to go to your home," the word "arrrange" has been corrected. In the sentence "He learned from her that she had met ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... own great-grand-aunt. I mean a square of black canvas with one round yellow spot in the middle and a dirty white smudge under the spot. There are members of this family—Aunt Eleanour, for instance—who tell me the yellow spot is a man's face and the dirty white smudge is an Elizabethan ruff. Then there is a picture of a man in armour in the oak room, which ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... strips of lemon-colored sky. The ground was soaked, the footprints round the wagons filled with water, the ruts brimming with it. There was a glow of low fires round the camp, for the mosquitoes were bad and the brown smudge of smoldering buffalo ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... caution they had removed their shoes; and each damsel, as she paraded, dangled from each far-extended hand a shoe. And both damsels, whether beneath apple sauce or dust smudge, were suffused with the rapture ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... Casey saw the smoke smudge against the mountains to the south, he remembered his misadventure of the lower desert and swore. When he looked again, the majestic sweep of distance gave him a satisfied feeling of freedom from ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... for Peter; For, of a morning in spring when lay the mist in the valleys— "See," quoth the folk, "how the witch breweth her evil decoctions! See how the smoke from her fire broodeth on woodland and meadow! Grant that the sun cometh out to smother the smudge of her caldron! She hath been forth in the night, full of her spells and devices, Roaming the marshes and dells for heathenish magical nostrums; Digging in leaves and at stumps for centipedes, pismires, and spiders, Grubbing in poisonous pools for hot salamanders ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... never be able to care for Trina again. She would never be the same to him, never so radiant, so sweet, so adorable; her charm for him would vanish in an instant. Across her forehead, her little pale forehead, under the shadow of her royal hair, he would surely see the smudge of a foul ordure, the footprint of the monster. It would be a sacrilege, an abomination. He recoiled from it, banding all ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... anger was added to the uneasiness. Kirk looked down at his clothing. It wasn't new, but there was actually little wrong, other than the slight smudge on a trouser leg, and a few, small spots of dullness on his ...
— Final Weapon • Everett B. Cole
... smudge for so small a paper, and the king sat on the edge of the bed and watched ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... the traplike stair-opening came the head of Mrs. Kantor, disheveled and a smudge of soot across her face, but beneath her arm, triumphant, a violin of one ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... might secure a measure of protection from those terrible mosquitoes which still buzzed angrily about his head. In an hour chance favored him, as he reached a low ridge much rockier than usual in that region. He would have built a little smudge fire to protect himself from the mosquitoes, but it would be sure to draw the lurking sharpshooter, and instead he found a nook in the ridge, under the low boughs of a great oak. Then he took a light blanket which he carried tied to his saddlebags, and ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... 'copter driver, was standing at the entrance to the breakfast nook, a smudge of oil on his cheek and his straw-colored hair in disorder. "How do I go about ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... prudent hesitation, clicked brokenly. Miss Francis looked as though she'd added insomnia to her other abstentions, otherwise she had not changed, even to her skirt and the smudge on her left nostril. "If youve come about the icebox youre a week late. I fixed it ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... strongest got a morsel, or a drink of water. The others died of starvation and the survivors lived only until there were new arrivals, stronger than themselves. The dead bodies were never removed, and horrible stories of necrophily smudge the records of this awful prison and cover its princely keepers ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... expeditions alone, usually joined the throng in the smoking-room after dinner. Being a good talker he never failed of an audience there. But better still he liked an hour sometimes with the prison warders. For the convict prison that dominated that grey smudge in the heart of the moors known as Princetown held many interesting and famous criminals, more than one of whom had been "put through" by him, and had to thank Brendon's personal industry and daring for penal servitude. Upon the prison staff were not a few men of intelligence and ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts
... the day that I rode toward a smudge in the sky, and found men and boys at work burning and cutting. The superb aisle was down. I turned the horse and rode back. I learned that in the fields on either side of the lane a strip of land, fifty or sixty feet wide, had been too much shaded ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... a night in that grass, burning some of it for a smudge to keep mosquitoes at bay, and an hour after dawn, reaching rising ground again, realized that we had our quarry ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... judges are among those who rank him highest, so that he is called pre-eminently 'the painter's painter.' It is impossible for any one but a painter to understand how he used paint. From near at hand it looks a smudge, but at the proper distance every stroke takes its right place. Such freedom was the result of years of careful painting of detail, and is not to be attained by any royal road. Velasquez seldom seems to have made preliminary drawings, ...
— The Book of Art for Young People • Agnes Conway
... understand. He could not, for instance, tell why he thought only with difficulty, with extreme haziness, of the great good he desired to accomplish at Lone Moose, and found his attention focussing sharply upon the people, their manner of speech, their surroundings, even upon so minor a detail as a smudge of flour upon the hand that Mrs. Lachlan extended to him. She was a fat, dusky-skinned woman, apparently regarding Thompson with a feeling akin to awe. The entire family, which numbered at least nine souls, ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... rail and cast a wistful glance at the low-lying shore. He saw one corner of the white Residency, showing through the sparse isisi palm at the end of the big garden—a smudge of green on yellow from ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... these, abruptly and with ceremony, Mr. George Bross, shipping clerk, introduced himself: a brawny young man in shirt-sleeves, wearing a visorless cap of soiled linen, an apron of striped ticking, pencils behind both angular red ears, and a smudge of marking-ink together with a broad irritating ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... build some kind of a smudge when you reach the bottom. That'll show me where you are. Now I'm going to drop the rope to you. Look out it ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... underneath, "Madonna and Child by Raphael. In the possession of Frederick Fairlie, Esquire." "Copper coin of the period of Tiglath Pileser. In the possession of Frederick Fairlie, Esquire." "Unique Rembrandt etching. Known all over Europe as THE SMUDGE, from a printer's blot in the corner which exists in no other copy. Valued at three hundred guineas. In the possession of Frederick Fairlie, Esq." Dozens of photographs of this sort, and all inscribed in this manner, were completed before I left Cumberland, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... set your snapsack back of this forge. Put on this leather apron. Smudge your face ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... best, is a smudge made by building a small fire to the windward of your tent, and nearly smothering it with chips, moss, bark, or rotten wood. If you make the smudge in an old pan or pot, you can move it about as often as the ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... of a gently smouldering smudge fire, battling with invading mosquitoes; the pleasant smell of tobacco, adding to the enjoyment of the crisp Northern air; the resplendent sunset, slashing a broken sky with a sea of multitudinous colours, and lighting a prospect ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... several thousand Dervishes could be seen flying into Omdurman. Pending the answer, we waited; and looking back northwards, across the front of the zeriba, where the first attack had been stopped, perceived a greyish-white smudge, perhaps a mile long. The glass disclosed details—hundreds of tiny white figures heaped or scattered; dozens hopping, crawling, staggering away; a few horses standing stolidly among the corpses; a few unwounded men dragging off their ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... the shadows, let the half tone paper always come as a buffer state between them. Get as much information into the drawing of your lights and shadows as possible; don't be satisfied with a smudge effect. Use the side of your white chalk when you want a mass, or work in parallel lines (hatching) on the principle described in the chapter on ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... the end of his journey. The fog had delayed him a little, but he had paddled steadily, keeping in touch with the south bank. By-and-by daylight came like a glow in a ground glass globe. The shores made on each side of the river a dark smudge, in which one could detect hints of columnar forms and shadows of twisted branches high up. The mist was still thick on the water, but a good watch was being kept, for as Iamb' Itam approached the camp the figures of two men emerged out of the white vapour, and voices spoke ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... them back broken and shattered into a thousand shafts of shimmering light. The air was cool and clear. Here and there in the distance a white sail like a fleeting gull marked the position of a sailing vessel, while a smudge of smoke from a steamer far away to the west lent a ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... looked thoughtful. She was maybe thirty-five or so, clean but not company-dressed. There was a smudge of flour on her cheek and a smile on her face and she looked wholesome ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... our first idea. But see!" Barker drew aside the curtain, and showed that the long, diamond-paned window was open to its full extent. "And look at this!" He held the lamp down and illuminated a smudge of blood like the mark of a boot-sole upon the wooden sill. "Someone has stood there in ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... shifting appears in what is called "fluctuation of attention". Make a light gray smudge on a white sheet of paper, and place this at such a distance that the gray will be barely distinguishable from the white {255} background. Looking steadily at the smudge, you will find it to disappear and ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... right," Mrs. McChesney assured him. Her expression was one of relief as the hall door closed behind him. "Good! There's a spot in the mirror over the mantel. I've been dying to find out if it was a flaw in the glass or only a smudge." ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... income, Company money to spend among the local merchants, work for many applicants, Symes felt that he could do little else than step into the niche which clearly belonged to him. The one smudge upon the picture was Augusta. Her eyes were ever upon him in adoring, dog-like fidelity and it irritated him. Her appearance had altered amazingly, she no longer called him "Mister Symes," and by repeated corrections he had succeeded in inducing her to refrain from folding her hands upon ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... A gray smudge trailing northward showed where the Fa-Hien—Scottish Oriental, sixteen hundred tons—was disappearing from the pale expanse of ocean. The sampan drifted landward imperceptibly, seeming, with nut-brown sail unstirred, to remain ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... a nest of bees. The performer dances around the circle several times; presently he spies the nest and approaches slowly, shading his eyes for a better view. Having satisfied himself that he has really made a find, he lights a smudge, goes through the motion of climbing the tree, and in holding the smudge under the nest he is stung several times and has to retreat. This is repeated until all the bees are smoked out and the honey is ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... bit their pencils and tore their hair, Down, a-down, a-down—hey down! But those blessed bills, they wouldn't come square, With a down; 'Midst muddle and smudge it is hard to fix If a six is a nine or a nine is a six, With ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... the wife of a Standard Oil director in a passing limousine, and one of the season's prettiest debutantes, who was walking; and because he was only twenty-four, and his mother was very, very ambitious for him, he wondered if the tear smudge on the face of his companion had been evident from the sidewalk, and decided that ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... Here we refreshed ourselves with drinking-coconuts, while a cowboy rode a dozen miles to the nearest telephone and summoned a machine from town. The town itself we could see, the Lakanaii metropolis of Olokona, a smudge of smoke on the shore-line, as we looked down across the miles of cane-fields, the billow-wreathed reef-lines, and the blue haze of ocean to where the island of Oahu shimmered like a dim opal ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... on that. Within two hours MacRae was the owner of two motor launches under British registry. Payment in full left him roughly with five thousand dollars working capital, enough by only a narrow margin. At sunset Vancouver was a smoky smudge on a far horizon. At dusk he passed in the narrow mouth of Squitty Cove. The Bluebird was swinging about to go when her sister ship ranged alongside. Vincent Ferrara dropped his hook again. There were forty trollers in the Cove. MacRae called to them. They came in skiffs ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... up for all the soil and smudge, Ju darling," said Elinor softly. "Paint and charcoal and clay are dirty things, but when they're wielded with the force of an Ideal, they ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... hand seized the chain on the feed-door again and jerked it open. She watched him toiling with his scoop, the white glare beating upon the rugged lines of his face till it was a wonder he could stand that fierce heat. There was a funny black smudge running across his nose, and when he bent his back she saw that a buckle was missing from his overalls and he had substituted a piece of coarse twine. Was he married? If he was, why didn't his wife look after those buckles? He worked hard enough to deserve to have little things ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... case it goes through without any public demonstration, and in the other it leaves a smudge on each one of the four which you would ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... responsible for our neighbor." It knows very often that there are continents of dirt underneath—"things," and "systems," and men—which it chooses to patronize; but then, it is covered up, and so it says, "Let it alone; we cannot have a smudge. Let it alone. Peace! Peace! Never mind righteousness—the church must be supported, if the money does come out of the dried-up vitals of drunkards and harlots; never mind, we must have it. Never mind if our songs are mixed with the shrieks of widows and orphans, of the dying and damned! Sing ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... is, that over this canvas the artist has dashed a bucket of soap-suds, and over that a pot of red and yellow ochre. Well, after all, what was a snowstorm but a bucket of soap-suds on a big scale! Call it suds, a mad smudge, anything you like, but it was a miracle of art all the same if it produced the effect aimed at, and gave one some idea of that darkness and whiteness, and rush and mad mingling of elements, and ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... a little murmur of vexation when she was told that it was a half-hour late. The next instant she was asking herself why this delay should seem annoying to her. Then, toward the close of the afternoon, came the City itself. First a dull-gray smudge on the horizon, then a world of grimy streets, rows of miserable tenements festooned with rags, then a tunnel or two, and at length the echoing glass-arched terminal of the station. Lloyd alighted, and, remembering that the distance ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... Thuran, "you see the fate that awaits us all unless we are picked up within a day or two. That there is little hope of that is evidenced by the fact that during all the days we have drifted we have seen no sail, nor the faintest smudge of smoke ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... you discover that you were in error about the fewness of the flies. They are all there—mosquitoes, black-flies, deer-flies, and punkies, besides other species strictly vegetarian. So you drop the tent-bag and build a smudge. Experience has taught you to make a small but hot fire, and when this is well under way you kick open a rotted, moss-grown cedar and scoop up handfuls of damp mould. This, piled on and banked around the fire, provides a smudge that is ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... is a nice clean man," declared Grace, "for there wasn't a smudge on that little note, and I have noticed since that the paper is a fine quality. Oh, I am perfectly sure he is a very nice young man," and the bright-eyed, pink-cheeked girl ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... around her, her eyes dancing with excitement as they glanced slowly around the camp spread out over the oasis—the clustering palm trees, the desert itself stretching away before her in undulating sweeps, but seemingly level in the evening light, far off to the distant hills lying like a dark smudge against the horizon. She drew a long breath. It was the desert at last, the desert that she felt she had been longing for all her life. She had never known until this moment how intense the longing had been. She felt strangely at home, as if the great, ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... income-sheet. But, now that he had laid hold of the local character, it pleased him that it should be so. He would not for the world have his gentle, woolly-minded, unprofitable cottagers transformed into "hustlers"; it would wound his eye to see the smoke of any commercial chimney, the smudge of any dividend-paying factory, staining the pure tints of the sylvan landscape. He had truly learned to ...
— The Market-Place • Harold Frederic
... grime is on the window pane, Pale the London sunbeams fall, And show the smudge of mildew stain, Which ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... behind your load A spell in this road?" "Wal, no, yer can't walk, but git Up on this seat an' ride; git up hyer." "Nop, that ain't what I want, Fur it's in yer dust, that's like a smudge, I want to trudge, for I desarve it." "Wal, pards, I ain't no hog, an' I don't Own this road, afore nor 'hind. So jest git right in the dust An' walk, if that's the way yer 'clined. Gee up, ger lang!" the driver said. The creaking wagon moved amain, While close behind ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various
... were steadily ripping up the sage flats. Men lifted the uprooted brush on forks and piled it for the burning. The two rode down to the fields with the pungent sage smoke drifting in their faces. Harris joined them, a smudge of fire-black across his forehead, and swept his arm across ...
— The Settling of the Sage • Hal G. Evarts
... minute," begged Grace, looking for something on which to cleanse her hands of the brown smudge of chocolate. "This ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... No smoke or smudge which we ourselves could endure was sufficient in the earlier part of that evening to prevent serious annoyance from the same cause; but later a respite ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... flying trees, then came the grandstand, a mere smudge of color, a sea of dimly seen faces and a roar that was like that of a ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... head for?" Shann kept private his personal doubts of their success. The outmost tip of that chain was only a distant smudge ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... intensely black, the sky overcast and starless, the only glimmer of light the reflecting of foam tipped surges. If land was near it remained invisible, nor could he even be sure of the close proximity of a boat. There seemed to be a smudge there at the left, a black, lumping shadow, shapeless against the background of sea; yet he could not be sure. Even as he gazed at it doubtfully, the dim object disappeared, fading away like a mirage. No sound reached him ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... Casey wore a smudge on his upper lip. Gabby's face was still un-hairy, but a little lined by the last few years of bucking the business line for a living. Casey has no cause for wrinkles, having a wealthy Dad. And, anyway, Fat's disposition proofed his map against the ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces
... my sister of her visual peculiarities: 'When I think of Wednesday I see a kind of oval flat wash of yellow emerald green; for Tuesday, a gray sky colour; for Thursday, a brown-red irregular polygon; and a dull yellow smudge for Friday.'" ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... here was the gang that had pursued them—quite a mile out on the prairie, to be sure, but unquestionably Efaw Kotee's band, showing as a black smudge above the grass. Whether this pack of human wolves had lost the trail of Smilax I would not try to guess, for it was enough to know that they ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... only minutes had passed since he had tooled his scout into the rack. Ahead, he could see the smudge of the Black Fleet's smoke on the horizon. Not so very far away, but a lot could happen in the distance still separating ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... choked him. It stung his eyes until they distilled water enough to blind him. He thrashed and fought in the fumes and the murk of it, stumbling and slipping, one moment half-knee deep in quick-springing flames, the next almost overpowered by the smudge that rose from the beaten mat of leaves ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... silent. He walked back, climbed in, got his bag down from the rack, pulled on his jacket. He jumped down to the cinders, followed them to where they ended. He hesitated a moment, then pushed between the knee-high stalks. Eastward across the field he could see what looked like a smudge on the far horizon. ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... finished a picture, which didn't take very long, he carried it round, still wet, to the small dealers, bearing it very carefully aloft, so as not to smudge it. Sometimes (if there were a sailor by Lirieux) he would get five or even ten francs for it; and then it was "Mon Aldegonde" with him all the rest of the day; for success always took the form, in his case, of nasally humming ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... Umbezi's ample proportions with care, but could discover nothing except a large smudge of black mud, as though he had sat down in a half-dried puddle. Then I guessed the truth. The buffalo's horns had missed him. He had been struck only with its muddy nose, which, being almost as broad as that portion of Umbezi with which it came in contact, ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... of the air in front of Seaton, a man materialized: a man identical with him in every feature and detail, even to the smudge of grease under one eye, the small wrinkles in his heavy blue serge suit, and the emblem of the American Chemical Society upon ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... a mash containing one teaspoonful of calcium sulphide for each 25 hens. With a large flock of hens the method successfully employed by one of the large coast ranches in stamping out an epidemic of the disease was to place a sulphur smudge, to which had been added a little carbolic acid, in the poultry house after the fowls had gone to roost. This was allowed to remain till the fowls began to sneeze, when it was instantly removed. The affected fowls were also treated by ...
— One Thousand Questions in California Agriculture Answered • E.J. Wickson
... track," said he, dismounting, "is little more than a dim trail. Sorry I didn't think about it sooner, but we ought to have built a smudge fire where this road intersects the cattle trail. In case the doctor doesn't reach there by noon, I sent orders to fly a flag at the junction, and Joel to return home. But if the doctor doesn't reach there until after darkness, he'll never see the flag, and couldn't follow the ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... latest Art-Hobbies are ambling about with their 'eads in the air, And their riders are tilting like true toothpick paladins. SMUDGE over there Makes a bee-line for SCRATCH in this corner, whilst MUCK and the Mawkish at odds, Clash wildly, and Naturalism pink Sentiment ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... until you've washed that face and those hands that still have the supper smudge on them, in the pool down there. I left the soap and the dry sleeves and bosom of a flannel shirt for you. Don't you pack towels in a kit in your country?" With which laughing answer my Gouverneur Faulkner denied ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... kept shifting his gaze from the woods before him to the tall sapling on Lookout Point. At last a smudge of red showed near the sapling's top for a minute, then disappeared, and he gave a shout of relief. "Walter's there all right," he called to his companions, "I ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... communicate with your friends who are beyond shouting distance, it is much quicker than telephoning to build a clear, hot fire and cover it with green stuff or rotten wood so that it will send up a solid column of black smoke. By spreading and lifting a blanket over this smudge the column can be cut up into pieces, long or short (this is the way it explains it in the book, but it doesn't sound plausible to me), and by a preconcerted code these can be made ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... her a check and went to his own rooms. Bessie faithfully tidied up the studio, set the door ajar for flight, emptied half a bottle of turpentine on a duster, and began to scrub the face of the Melancolia viciously. The paint did not smudge quickly enough. She took a palette-knife and scraped, following each stroke with the wet duster. In five minutes the picture was a formless, scarred muddle of colours. She threw the paint-stained duster into the studio stove, stuck out her tongue at the sleeper, and whispered, 'Bilked!' as she ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... not at his ease with Arctura; he was afraid of her. When a man is conscious of wrong, knows in his history what would draw a hideous smudge over the portrait he would present to the eyes of her he would please, he may well be afraid of her. He makes liberal allowance for himself, but is not sure she will! And before Forgue lay a social gulf which he could pass only ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... coming tonight, Mr. Lovell," the boy answered. "We're warning every one with fruit trees to start a smudge going. And, Mr. Lovell, can I use ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... be said she saw a girl whom under other circumstances she would hardly have recognized. Her heavy hair was dishevelled. Her long, blue broadcloth ulster was stained with salt water and altogether out of shape. A great black smudge ran along her cheek, and on her chin was ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... "toted" a gun, now more than fifty-five years ago. Perhaps he understood how difficult it is to smoke out a pack of wolves, that invariably seek a cave with a depth sufficient to get away from all the influences of the smudge. ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... hydroplanes, at least fifty of them, from all the battleships, now skimmed over the water, and a moment later soared in the air. Flying on beyond the French ships, a smudge of smoke came into view, then another, and then many more. Ships of all kinds, Jack could see, dreadnoughts, cruisers, torpedo boats and ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... but this change seemed to have been very, very sudden! And there was a word or two, prettily written in another hand, on a small slip of paper—'Perhaps you had better send back the book'; and Caldigate, as he read it, thought that he could discern the almost-obliterated smudge of a wiped-up tear. He wrote a cheerful letter to Mrs. Shand, in which he told her that though he had not been absolutely engaged to marry Hester Bolton before he started for Australia,—and consequently before he had ever been ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... gendarmes. I was conscious of a feeling of physical sickness, and Frederick groaned aloud. As the dreadful moment of contact approached we shut our eyes tight and each gripped the other's hand. How long we remained like this I cannot tell, for we were both afraid to look and see the my smudge on the pavement indicating a hero's end; but eventually, by mutual arrangement, we opened our eyes, and then we saw—not a smudge, but Coleopteron still advancing quite unconcerned. It ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... in Tom, who was tinkering with the mechanism of the automobile and had a smudge of ...
— Ruth Fielding in Moving Pictures - Or Helping The Dormitory Fund • Alice Emerson
... Melek suffers, what all great men suffer, from the envy of others who are too obviously fools for him to suppose them human creatures. But there is nothing a fool dislikes so much as to behold his own folly; and as your Melek is a looking-glass for these kind, you may depend upon it they will smudge him if they can. He is the bravest man in the world, and one of the best rulers; but he has no discretion. He is too absolute and loves ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... from the wall and placed it on the easel and stood back, examining it critically. His face lighted and he hummed softly, gazing at the rough outline.... Slowly, in the smudge of the vague face, gleaming eyes formed themselves—Giorgione's eyes! They looked out at him, ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... within its depths we expected to enjoy the letters from home which Mr. Harrell was to bring back from the railway for us. Myriads of mosquitoes gave us something else to think of, for they were exceedingly ferocious and persistent, driving us to a high bluff where a smudge was built to fight them off. We were nearly devoured. I fared best, a friend having given me a net for my head, and this, with buckskin gloves on my hands enabled me to exist with some comfort. The mountains rose abruptly just beyond our camp, and the ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... name on the outside of this paper; and as there's 7 pence to pay, I think it's rather dear for such a smudge." ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... along, and presenting the appearance, from a distance, of a little speck upon the surface of the sea, the U-6 continued toward the east. Frank had taken the bridge half an hour before and now was studying a faint smudge on the eastern horizon. A moment later and a second smudge appeared and then a third, to be followed almost ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... problem. Perry tried to remember, but the names of all those who had given parties during the holidays danced confusedly before his eyes. He could ask Mrs. Nolak, but on looking out the window he saw that the shop was dark. Mrs. Nolak had already faded out, a little black smudge far ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... quite alone, his hands blue-black with the smudge from a refractory typewriter ribbon which he was vainly endeavoring to adjust. It took some time for him to get his hands clean again, and Claire sharpened her pencils while she waited. But there really proved to ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... are very troublesome. Oil of citronella will drive them away for a time but a "smudge" may be necessary. They won't stay in smoke or wind, so hunt the breeze. There are some other flies just as bad to which the same treatment may be applied. "Black-flies" of the northern woods are about the worst insect pest in America, though the mosquitoes in some parts of the South, are nearly ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... wounded, we stifled our compassion and looked on the blazing scene as a jubilant bonfire. All night long the burning village was red against the black sky, and in the morning where had stood Upper Toulgas was now a smoking, dirty smudge ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... 1. of a justifeid man: but how it is suppressed, we know nott—of a man justified, which is extant to this day.—(In the margin,) with a smudge?] Note: This booke was printed 1584, at Edinburgh, by Tho. Utrover: (in the 4to edit.) ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... have dazzled and corrupted some men, retained all the simplicity, the modesty, and the generosity of his character. He felt, as he said, nowhere so much at home as among his own machinery, surrounded by thoughtful mechanics, dressed like them for work, and possibly with a black smudge upon his face. In his person, however, he was scrupulously clean and nice, a hater of tobacco and all other polluting ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... an Eastern girl, slight and supple, and possessing a devilish and forbidding grace. Her short hair formed a black smudge upon the canvas, and cast a dense shadow upon her face. The composition was infinitely daring; for out of this shadow shone the great black eyes, their diablerie most cunningly insinuated; whilst with a brilliant exclusion ...
— The Yellow Claw • Sax Rohmer
... man's pointing finger. "There's only one kind of boat makes a smudge like that," he declared; "and it's a destroyer. Safe and well out of a glorious adventure. Faith, we're the lucky devils; and by this and by that, I'll enlist aboard that destroyer, now that I'm ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... from flies and mosquitoes by a dull fire of chips and leaves called a smudge. We asked for dinner and the way to Indian Lake. They could not give us a dinner nor say definitely how we were to get to Indian Lake. The man said there was another house farther along where we might ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... was no flat-iron in Simon's Bay, only a little smudge of smoke off Cape Hangklip to show that Mr. Davies, the second-class engine-room artificer, was giving her all she could carry. At the Admiral's house, the ancient and retired bo'sun, who had seen many Admirals come and go, brought out his paint and brushes and gave a new coat of pure raw ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... but there was such a smudge in it, and—and I could cry when I think of it—there in the grate were the remains of her beautiful silk blouse, all smoking and ruined. She had tried to burn it, and she had succeeded too. I could not get a piece out ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... where they take out the temite ore, I imagine," said Kincaide, picking up a loose fragment of rock. He pointed to a smudge of soft, crumbly gray metal, greasy in appearance, showing on the surface of the specimen he had picked up. "That's the stuff, sir, that's causing us all this trouble: nearly pure metallic temite." He dropped the fragment, looking about curiously. ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... sometimes there would be half a mile or more of seeming moorland, then a sharply defined change (or it seemed sharply defined from that bird's-eye point of view). A vivid greenness marked these changes, which merged into a dun-colored smudge and again into the brilliant green; then the moor would begin ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... plain, a wagon outfit moves slowly, and the Texan gained rapidly. Hourly the signs he had been following grew fresher. Late in the afternoon he made out a blot on the western horizon—a blot with a hazy smudge above it. It was the wagon train. The smudge was dust, dug up by the feet ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... oil on the water this is prevented. Rain barrels can be freed of the pest in this way also, or perhaps better by covering them with a cloth. The mosquitoes are most troublesome about the home at night. When one sits out doors he should keep a smudge going to drive them away while screens will keep them out ...
— An Elementary Study of Insects • Leonard Haseman
... inspired me with interest and respect; the spars were big, the chains and ropes stout and the whole thing looked powerful and trustworthy. Barely touched by the light her bows rose faintly alongside the narrow strip of the quay; the rest of her was a black smudge in the darkness. Here I was face to face with my start in life. We walked in a body a few steps on a greasy pavement between her side and the towering wall of a warehouse and I hit my shins cruelly against the end of the gangway. The constable ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... once, over and beyond them, Stern saw the blue-curling smudge of the remains of the great ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... to wipe that smudge of paint off your nose, Laura," she said sarcastically. "You don't seem to get on very fast with your lace. How long is it since you began it? Over ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 'orrid, ain't it? And that was a chance shot, too, though he meant it for you. I say, sir, he won't blow up no more magazines;" and Peter made a great smudge across his moist forehead with his powder-blackened hand. For the second spear had found its billet in the chest of the Frenchman, whose ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... way we skirted the hobs of the great witches' caldron of Vesuvius. On this day the resident demons must have been stirring their brew with special enthusiasm, for the smoky smudge which always wreathes its lips had increased to a great billowy plume that lay along the naked flanges of the devil mountain for miles and miles. Now we would go puffing and panting through some small outlying environ of the city. Always the principal products of such ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... become the slave of a Swede foreman. The Great World, as he saw it through a tiny hole in one of the opaque wire-glass windows, consisted of three bars of a rusty fire-escape-landing against a yellow brick wall, with a smudge of black on the wall ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... suddenly than I grew younger the moment I passed through that magic door. Bad habits cling to us, however, with such persistency that I did mechanically pull out my handkerchief and begin to rub off the welcoming smudge, a thing I never would have dreamed of doing in the glorious old days; but an artful scent of violets clinging to the handkerchief brought me to my senses, and with a sudden impulse of scorn, the fine scorn for scent ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... of designing? The Duke of Edinburgh, he is a musician. And it is in these little excursions into art that the family most truly manifests its bourgeois nature. The sincerest bourgeois are those who scribble little poems and smudge little canvases in the intervals between an afternoon reception and a dinner-party. The amateur artist is always the most inaccessible to ideas; he is always the most fervid admirer of the commonplace. A staid German family ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... were as nothing to those which he had yet to encounter. The comparatively broad stream up which he had been steaming came to an end, and his further progress must be through Cypress Bayou, a canal just forty-six feet wide..[??-second period a smudge?] The broadest gunboat was forty-two feet wide, and to enter that narrow stream made retreat out of the question: there could be no turning round to fly. The levees rose on either side of the narrow canal high above the decks of the iron-clads, so that the cannon could not be sufficiently elevated ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... one of the apartments to superintend the cooking of the eggs. It was a mere den, with an earth floor. A fire of twigs was kindled against the farther wall, and a little girl, half-naked, carrying a baby still more economically clad, was stooping down to blow the smudge into a flame. The smoke, some of it, went over our heads out at the door. We boiled the eggs. We desired salt; and the woman brought us pepper in the berry. We insisted on salt, and at length got the rock variety, which we pounded on the rocks. We ate our eggs and drank our milk on the terrace, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... savages as wild-looking, seemingly as fierce, and certainly as avaricious as he was himself. These auxiliaries, through various little circumstances, were known among us that same afternoon, by the several appellations of Smudge, Tin-pot, and Slit-nose. These were not heroic names, of a certainty, but their owners had as little of the heroic in their appearance, as usually falls to the lot of man in the savage state. I cannot tell the designation ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... style and kind. She generally wrote on large note-paper; she twisted up her letter into the shape and sometimes into the size of cocked hats; she addressed them in a sprawling manly hand, and not unusually added a blot or a smudge, as though such were her own peculiar sign-manual. The address of this note was written in a beautiful female hand, and the gummed wafer bore on it an impress of a gilt coronet. Though Eleanor had never seen such ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... are too familiar to the reader to need repeating here." They know that that is not true. It is a low kind of flattery. They know that the reader has forgotten every detail of it, and that nothing of the tremendous event is left in his mind but a vague and formless luminous smudge. Aside from the desire to flatter the reader, they have another reason for making the remark-two reasons, indeed. They do not remember the details themselves, and do not want the trouble of hunting them up and copying them out; also, they are afraid that if they search them ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the night were hot. Then lunging, tottering, falling, rising again, panting, gasping but with never another cry, old Frank fought his way up the river bottoms, past the farm of John Davis, across the field in front of Tom Belcher's store, now a dim smudge in the blackness—dragged himself over the ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... observation-post; the trench is a bent line, studded with vertical plumes of explosion; the great guns of position, coming and going on their motors, repeat themselves as scarabs; and man himself is a small blue smudge, no larger than a foresight, crawling and creeping or watching and running among all ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... in keeping up appearances. When the Prince her brother-in-law howled, she blew her nose. She had brought some tears along with her and kept them up with care; and these, combined with the art of the handkerchief, enabled her to redden her eyes, and make them swell, and smudge her face; but her glances often wandered on the sly to ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon |
