"Blacking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... become in the hands of the excitable French people. If, in the city where the tragedy was being enacted, the customary baking and brewing, the promenading under the trees, and the dog-dancing and the shoe-blacking on the Pont-Neuf could still continue, it is not strange that those who watched it from ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... me the chance of blacking his boots every day for a week, if I'd lend him the money; but I had to resign the glorious privilege, not havin' been to the bank this mornin' to ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... men down to the wreckage of the masts to cut away a couple of the hempen shrouds and bring them to the camp, and they, appearing about this time, I set to work to unlay the shrouds, so that they might get out the fine white yarns which lay beneath the outer covering of tar and blacking. These, when they had come at them, we found to be very good and sound, and this being so, I bid them make three-yarn sennit; meaning it for the strings of the bows. Now, it will be observed that I have said bows, and ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... washing in the side kitchen, singing loudly as she worked. Mary was on her knees, blacking the stove and scolding violently about the young man who was coming out from town that night. The young man had committed the fatal error of laughing at Mary's ceaseless babble and had never ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... had found the "Star Razor" of Messrs. Kampf, of New York, without fear of reproach for so doing. I know my danger,—does not Lord Byron say, "I have even been accused of writing puffs for Warren's blacking"? I was once offered pay for a poem in praise of a certain stove polish, but I declined. It is pure good-will to my race which leads me to commend the Star Razor to all who travel by land or by sea, as well as to all who stay ...
— Our Hundred Days in Europe • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... a season, abandons wood-sawing for the lighter and more refined occupation of stove-blacking. While engaged in this profession he never fails to assert his profound and lasting conviction that, like sawing, it does not offer a broad and easy road to opulence. His execution of whatever work is ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... cried the Count, giving the man a thousand-franc note. "Take this, but, remember, I give it to you on condition of your spending it at the wineshop, of your getting drunk, fighting, beating your wife, blacking your friends' eyes. That will give work to the watch, the surgeon, the druggist—perhaps to the police, the public prosecutor, the judge, and the prison warders. Do not try to do anything else, or the devil will be revenged on you sooner ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... taken of him, a little robber or a little vagabond." The earlier history of David in David Copperfield is really and truly a history of the real Charles Dickens in London. He was left to the city streets, or to earn a hard and scanty living in a dirty warehouse, by pasting labels on pots of blacking. All of this wretched experience he has written in David Copperfield, and the sad scenes of the debtors' prison he has put into Pickwick Papers and into Little Dorrit. Even Mrs. Pipchin, of whom he told ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... like a concertina: I've a tongue like a button-stick: I've a mouth like an old potato, and I'm more than a little sick, But I've had my fun o' the Corp'ral's Guard: I've made the cinders fly, And I'm here in the Clink for a thundering drink and blacking the Corporal's eye. With a second-hand overcoat under my head, And a beautiful view of the yard, O it's pack-drill for me and a fortnight's C.B. For "drunk and resisting the Guard!" Mad drunk and ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... flannel shirt, a waistcoat, the back of which we are always threatening to renew. Inexpressibles somewhat spotty, darned, and torn, and, thanks to one or two washings, have shrunk, displaying a pair of boots which have not seen a blacking- brush since the day they left England. Coats are put on for meals, to do honour to the ladies, but seldom worn otherwise. The coarser and stronger the clothes are the better. A——'s straw hat is also very lovely, it serves periodically for a mark to ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... "there's a Boston man down below, blacking my other pair of boots, who'd feel hurt if I should let anybody else ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... mind darning even my stockings," he said. "And I'm sure she'd do them well. Just as I wouldn't mind blacking her boots if she wanted ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... sisters from the same furnace, some of which, however, were blown into champagne bottles, others into ale bottles; and that made a difference, since out in the world an ale bottle may contain the costly LACRYMAE CHRISTI, and a champagne bottle may be filled with blacking; but what they were born to every one can see by their shape, so that noble remains noble even ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... fortunate." The visitor advanced a little, drew from a recess a shoe-blacking outfit, pulled over it one of the stiff blankets from a neighboring bunk, and sat down rather cautiously. Little by little James made out more of the look of the man. He was large and rather blond, well-dressed, ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... fed the pigs; and once, on a rainy day, he blacked the Sunday boots of every man, woman, and child in the place. He was not encouraged to repeat that performance. The folks from Maine made it quite clear that if the boots needed blacking at all, which was doubtful, they thought some one else ought to do the blacking—not at all because it seemed to them improper that Roosevelt should black anybody's boots, but because he did it so badly. The paste came off on everything ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... he has gone back to the country—unless he's blacking boots or selling papers downtown somewhere. By Jove, I'd like to come across him with a blacking-brush. He used to put on such airs. I would like to have heard Cousin Hamilton ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... simpler. If not, it is always best to have dumped the grate the night before if coal is used, and to have laid the fire ready for lighting. In the morning brush off all ashes, and wipe or blacken the stove. Strong, thick gloves, and a neat box for brushes, blacking, &c., will make this a much less disagreeable operation than it sounds. Rinse out the tea-kettle, fill it with fresh water, and put over to boil. Then remove the ashes, and, if coal is used, sift them, as cinders can be burned a large part of the time where only a ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... come from the country?" asked the young knight of the blacking-brush, while he was vigorously ...
— The Young Outlaw - or, Adrift in the Streets • Horatio Alger
... upon the hilltops, blacking out the twilight with an abruptness which must have held deep significance for men less occupied. But the dominant overcast of their minds was the coming of the sheriff. For many of them it was far more ominous than any storm ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... father. He is to be hanged tomorrow for the murder of my mother. My father was a good man, but whisky did it. I have three little sisters younger than myself. We are very, very poor, and have no friends. We live in a dark and dingy room. I do the best I can to support my sisters by selling papers, blacking boots, and doing odd jobs; but Mr. Hoagland, we are very poor. Will you come and be with us when father's body is brought home? The governor says we may have his body after ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... of this kind, figures that were originally standing may be forced to sit; babies may be placed in arms which, on the cards they were stolen from, held only cakes of soap, perhaps, or boxes of blacking; heads may be ruthlessly torn from bodies to which they belong, and as ruthlessly clapped upon strange shoulders; and you will be surprised to see what amusing, and often excellent, illustrations present themselves as the result ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... up the Forge to repair the Iron Work; the People employed in Heeling and Boot Topping the Larboard side, Blacking the Yards, etc. ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... said he, sitting down and sulkily drawing on his foot-gear, "why this piece of punctiliousness should have made any more difficulty about bringing me my boots than about blacking them." ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... and elbow sleeves, and a blue sash. She looked very pretty in it, and around her throat she had a string of pink coral and tiny white shells that Ray once brought her from Los Angeles. Mrs. Harsanyi noticed that she wore high heavy shoes which needed blacking. The choir in Mr. Larsen's church stood behind a railing, so Thea did not pay ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... consideration of what use she would make of the precious solution. All regrets for the impossibility of ruining the character of Captain Puffin with regard to intoxicants were gone, for she had an even deadlier blacking to hand. No faintest hesitation at ruining the reputation of Major Benjy as well crossed her mind; she gloried in it, for he had not only caused her to deceive herself about the early hours on alternate ...
— Miss Mapp • Edward Frederic Benson
... rejoined, tapping the floor impatiently with her boot, whose shabbiness French blacking could not wholly conceal, "I shall be civil to him, of course, as Neil's friend, but I would rather he did not come, spoiling everything. I see Neil so seldom that I want him all to myself when he is here. He is the only cousin I ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... the Latin Grammar; and thrashed him three or four times, but not severely. The little chap's good-natured honest face won his way for him. He only got that degree of beating which was, no doubt, good for him; and as for blacking shoes, toasting bread, and fagging in general, were these offices not deemed to be necessary parts of every young English ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... be made with half a pound of black-lead finely powdered, and (to make it stick) mix with it the whites of three eggs well beaten; then dilute it with sour beer or porter till it becomes as thin as shoe-blacking; after stirring it, set it over hot coals to simmer for twenty minutes; when cold it may be ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... can't get work. I've got the strength, though I shan't have it long at this rate. I only want a job. This is the third night running that I've walked the streets all night; the only money I get is by minding blacking-boys' boxes while they go into Lockhart's for their dinner. I got a penny yesterday at it, and twopence for carrying a parcel, and to-day I've had a penny. Bought a ha'porth of bread and a ha'penny ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... have disappeared, beside which was the blacking factory, wherein the novelist's first bitter experiences of London life were felt,—amid a wretchedness only too apparent, when one reads of the miserable days which fell upon the lad at this time,—the market ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... in that city, declared that of those who kept their counting-houses open on the Sabbath not one had escaped insolvency. A poor boy was apprenticed to an apothecary in a large city. To increase his wages and encourage his efforts, his master gave him a recipe and materials for making blacking on his own account. The blacking was made, and placed in pots in the shop window; but day after day passed, and no purchaser appeared. One Sunday morning, while the shop was open for medicine, before the hour of public service, a person came in, and asked for a pot of blacking. The boy was in ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... that stuff you've got there!" he inquired largely, seeing a bottle of somebody's Soothing Syrup by a poor woman's bedside. "Take it and throw it down the sink, and the next time you want a soothing syrup put a little boot-blacking in hot water. It'll do you ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... much boot blacking here. Most of the people grease their boots with fish oil," Katherine said, laughing in spite of herself, only now her amusement was because she knew Jervis Ferrars to be in her father's room, where he could hear every word which ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... its strongly scented blossom and evergreen leaves, made a capital hedge. Great bushes of the Hybiscus, scarlet and buff, glowed in the sun—they were called shoe-flowers, for they were used instead of blacking to polish our shoes. The pink one-hundred-leaved rose grew freely, and blossomed all the year round. Shrubs of the golden Allamander were a great temptation to the cows, if they strayed into the garden. The Plumbago was one of the few pale-blue flowers which liked that blazing ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... aroused, and the next morning, early, he was in the menagerie. The first sight that struck his eye was the elephant, keeled over on one side, and weaving his trunk about, evidently as a signal of distress; while his keeper and another man were—blacking-pot and shoe-brushes in hand—going all over him from stem ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... been celebrated since the middle ages include manufactures of velvet, cotton-, wool-, silk-, hemp- and flax-spinning, and the weaving of hosiery and a variety of mixed fabrics. Manufactures of machinery, chemicals, blacking, polish and sugar, and printing, dyeing and iron-founding are also carried on. Market gardens, known as hortillonnages, intersected by small canals derived from the Somme and Avre, cover a considerable area to the north-east of Amiens; and the city has trade in vegetables, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... should have told you yesterday that all my boys were got up for their work in moustaches and side-whiskers of some sort of blacking—I suppose wood-ash. It was a sight of joy to see them return at night, axe on shoulder, feigning to march like soldiers, a choragus with a loud voice singing out, "March—step! March—step!" in imperfect ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for railroad and telegraph operators are limited in several States, but rather for the purpose of protecting the public safety than the employees themselves.[1] The following other trades are prohibited to women or girls: Boot-blacking,[2] or street trades generally;[3] work upon emery wheels, or wheels of any description in factories (Michigan), and in New York no female is allowed to operate or use abrasives, buffing wheels, or many other processes of polishing the baser metals, or iridium; ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... Penrod. "I found your shoes where you'd taken 'em off in your room, to put on your slippers, and they were all dusty. So I took 'em out on the back porch and gave 'em a good blacking. They shine up ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... succeed, I heard the sound of stumping steps coming upstairs, and perceived a beam of light through the crevices of the door, and in a moment more the door opened and in came two loutish farming lads whom I had observed below, one of them bearing a rushlight stuck into an old blacking-bottle. Without saying a word they flung off part of their clothes, and one of them having blown out the rushlight, they both tumbled into bed, and in a moment were snoring most sonorously. "I am in ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... monsieur; but this morning I was with him as he was dressing, and I let a bottle of blacking fall over his new dress, and he flew at me sword in hand, so that I was obliged to make my escape. That is the reason I could not ask him for a ticket. He ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... supplied with such an ornament were obliged to put on a false one, fastened with pitch, which was liable to cause abcesses on the lip. Sometimes a fine, uniform color was produced in the moustaches of a whole regiment by means of boot-blacking. Broad white belts were crossed upon the breast. The linen gaiters, white on parade, black for the march, came well above the knee, and a superfluous number of garters impeded the step. It was a tedious matter to put these things on; and if a pebble got in through ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... running a ranch was too much for one man to carry around. He wasn't a bad-hearted feller in some ways, yet on the whole he felt it was an honour to a looking-glass to have the pleasure of reflecting him. Looking-glass? I should say he had! And a bureau, and a boot-blacking jigger, and a feather bed, and curtains, and truck in his room. Strange fellers used to open their eyes when they saw that room. 'Helloo-o!' they'd say, 'whose little birdie have we here?' And other ...
— Red Saunders • Henry Wallace Phillips
... Mr. That of the Courier, to propitiate the favour of the critic of the day, and get the editors of the metropolis into a good humour,—above all, to have the name of the person to be puffed perpetually before the public. Artists cannot be advertised like Macassar oil or blacking, and they want it to the full as much; hence endless ingenuity must be practised in order to keep the popular attention awake. Suppose a great actor moves from London to Windsor, the Brentford Champion must state that "Yesterday ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... trick; Some humble part of many trades he caught, He for the builder and the painter wrought; For serving-maids on secret errands ran, The waiter's helper, and the ostler's man; And when he chanced (oft chanced he) place to lose, His varying genius shone in blacking shoes: A midnight fisher by the pond he stood, Assistant poacher, he o'erlook'd the wood; At an election John's impartial mind Was to no cause nor candidate confined; To all in turn he full allegiance swore, And in his hat the various badges bore: His liberal soul with every sect agreed, ...
— Tales • George Crabbe
... is fixing it for Miss Truesdale, even if she ain't a sure-enough scholar yet. Don't make such little, stingy bunches of violets. We picked plenty. I can't coax your toes to shine, Cherry. I'm scared that the blacking won't do any good. You shouldn't have ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... when Soulas exchanged one of his horses, and the perquisite of the manure. The two horses, treated with sordid economy, cost, one with another, eight hundred francs a year. His bills for articles received from Paris, such as perfumery, cravats, jewelry, patent blacking, and clothes, ran to another twelve hundred francs. Add to this the groom, or tiger, the horses, a very superior style of dress, and six hundred francs a year for rent, and you will see a grand ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... understand ourselves, and not to the twentieth, which, though so insignificant in reality, is spread all over the other nineteen, making them appear quite different from what they really are, as the blacking does a boot, or the veneer a table. It is on the nineteen rough serviceable savage portions that we fall back on emergencies, not on the polished but unsubstantial twentieth. Civilization should wipe away our tears, and yet we weep and cannot be comforted. Warfare is abhorrent ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... to the printer's devil with his bill, Whose Midas touch can gild his ass's ears, And load a knave with folly's rich arrears. And lo! a second miracle is thine, For sloe-juice water stands transformed to wine. Where Day and Martin's patent blacking roll'd, Burst from the vase Pactolian streams of gold; Laugh the sly wizards, glorying in their stealth, Quit the black art, and loll in lazy wealth. See Britain's Algerines, the lottery fry, Win annual ...
— Rejected Addresses: or, The New Theatrum Poetarum • James and Horace Smith
... for her work as waitress, than to take one who has clone nothing else but wait at table. Be particular, when engaging a girl, to tell her what she has to do, as many of the lofty kind object particularly to blacking boots; and as it must be done, it is better ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... the fireplace in his office. Brad was blacking a pair of shoes. "Shawn," said the old doctor, "I'm going up to Old Meadows this afternoon to hunt quail, and I want you to go along. Go down and get ready while Brad hitches ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... and knew that some one had entered the house, but Mandy Ann was too busy blacking a pair of boots to go at once, as she had her hands to wash, and yet, although it seemed to him an age, it was scarcely two minutes before she came down the stairs, nimble as a cat, and bobbed before him with a courtesy nearly to the floor. ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes
... dinners?—those monstrous exhibitions of the pastry-cook's art? Who does not know those made dishes with the universal sauce to each: fricandeaux, sweet-breads, damp dumpy cutlets, &c., seasoned with the compound of grease, onions, bad port-wine, cayenne pepper, curry-powder (Warren's blacking, for what I know, but the taste is always the same)—there they lie in the old corner dishes, the poor wiry Moselle and sparkling Burgundy in the ice-coolers, and the old story of white and brown soup, turbot, little smelts, boiled turkey, saddle-of-mutton, and so forth? "Try a ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... your chambers;" and I qualified my words in a great flutter and tremble; I did not care to offend the man—I did not DARE to offend the man. I thought once or twice of jumping into a cab, and flying; of taking refuge in Day and Martin's Blacking Warehouse; of speaking to a policeman, but not one would come. I was this man's slave. I followed him like his dog. I COULD not get away from him. So, you see, I went on meanly conversing with him, and affecting a simpering ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... dust, leather, and blacking, we will now reascend to the higher localities of the human person, and will fasten ourselves round the reader's neck. Do not be alarmed, we only want to catch your attention; we will not extend the word to any thing else. Here, too, ladies are exemplified by their ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... injure that kind of leather. Tell him you don't know how to black morocco; yes, that's morocco. He will get you something himself in Saumur to polish those boots with. I have heard that they put sugar into the blacking to make it shine." ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... an ever-varied and interesting scene from our window. Besides the motley crowd of passers-by, there are booths and tables stationed thick below. One man in particular is busily engaged in selling his store of blacking in the auction style, in a manner that would do credit to a real Down-caster. He has flaming certificates exhibited, and prefaces his calls to buy with a high-sounding description of his wonderful ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... certain that pretty girl would. I've a great mind to throw it up—a great mind to throw it up. It is hardly the work for a gentleman born, and the grandson of a rear-admiral. Tinkers' and tailors' sons get the luck now; and a man of good blood is put on the back shelf, behind the blacking-bottles. A man who has battled for ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... if he had poured liquid shoe-blacking on his meat, thinking it was Worcestershire sauce. "Fancy! Worms! I'd never take a rod in my hands if I had to use worms. Never used a worm in my life. There's no sort of science ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... began to prevail some seven years ago in Paris, had spread since we left the French capital. There it began, we remember, with certain members of the medical profession, who had learned to give calomel in English doses. The public next lauded Warren's blacking—Cirage national de Warren—and then proceeded to eat raw crumpets as an English article of luncheon. But things had gone farther since that time than we were prepared to expect. At the table d'hote of to-day, we found every body had something civil to say about English ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... apart from the lama, and, after listening awhile, passed round a water-pipe whose receiver was an old Day and Martin blacking-bottle. The glow of the red charcoal as it went from hand to hand lit up the narrow, blinking eyes, the high Chinese cheek-bones, and the bull-throats that melted away into the dark duffle folds round the shoulders. They looked like kobolds from some magic ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... dwell on the boot-cleaning process: three good brushes and good blacking must be provided; one of the brushes hard, to brush off the mud; the other soft, to lay on the blacking; the third of a medium hardness, for polishing; and each should be kept for its particular use. The blacking should be kept corked up, except when ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... celluloid in a color to match the shoe. The tags on lacings and the hooks for holding lacings are also enameled. A "box-toe gum" is used to support the box-toe stiffening. Cement covers the stitches; and many sorts of blacking are used in finishing the work. It is by no means a simple operation to make ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... blue smoke drifting and thinning away on the air. While he stood a man drove up with a horse and car. The car was laden with groceries—packets of somebody's tea, boxes of somebody's chocolate, bottles of beer and of mineral water, tins of boot blacking, and parcels of soap; confectionery, and tinned fish, cheese, macaroni, ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... the stove apply oil rather than "blacking." Light paraffin oil may be used for this purpose. Apply the oil with cotton waste, or a soft cloth. (Care should be taken not to apply an excess of oil.) Polish with soft cotton or woolen cloth. One should remember, however, ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... carried it with him all the time. He would ask his little white friends in the street how to spell certain words and the meaning of them. In this way he soon learned to read. The first and most important book owned by him was called the "Columbian Orator." He bought it with money secretly earned by blacking boots on the street. It contained selected passages from such great orators as Lord Chatham, William Pitt Fox, and Sheridan. These speeches were steeped in the sentiments of liberty, and were full ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... lobes. In transecting the upper lobe of the left lung, it was found considerably hollowed out, (to the degree of holding a large orange,) and containing a small quantity of semi-fluid carbon, resembling thick blacking, with the superior divisions of the left bronchus opening abruptly into it. Many large blood-vessels crossed from one side of the cavity to the other, to which shreds of parenchymatous substance were attached. The inferior lobe was fully saturated with the thick black fluid, and it felt solid ...
— An Investigation into the Nature of Black Phthisis • Archibald Makellar
... Gloucester. They salute us with a shout from their low decks; but I understand their "Good evening", to mean, "Don't run against me, Sir." From the wonders of the deep we go below to get deeper sleep. And then the absurdity of being waked up in the night by a man who wants the job of blacking your boots! It is more inevitable than seasickness, and may have something to do with it. It is like the ducking you get on crossing the line the first time. I trusted that these old customs were abolished. They might with the same propriety insist ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... In that house there was no messenger to be procured. The landlady was elderly, and kept no servant—employing only a mysterious female of the charwoman species, who came at daybreak, dyed herself to the elbows with blacking or blacklead before breakfast, and so remained till the afternoon, when she departed to "do for" a husband and children—the husband and children passing all the earlier part of the day in ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... of sponge and rub dry. The best thing to rub dry with is the palm of the hand. When the kid shows symptoms of cracking, rub in a few drops of sweet oil. The soles and heels should be polished with common blacking. ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... L11; the timber trees, L25; a fire engine with carriage, &c., L6 15s. (possibly some sort of steam engine, then called fire engines); the total produce, including counting-house, warehouse, casting, tinning, burnishing, blacking, and blacksmiths' shops, a horse mill, scouring mill, and a quantity of wood sheds and palisading, amounted to nearly L1,150. The prosaic minds of the Commissioners evidently did not lead them to value "the ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... poor girls have to undergo beforehand give a peculiar relish to our fun when we get it. This fact will account for the rapturous mood in which Polly found herself when, after making her bonnet, washing and ironing her best set, blacking her boots and mending her fan, she at last, like Consuelo, "put on a little dress of black silk" and, with the smaller adornments pinned up in a paper, started for the Shaws', finding it difficult to walk decorously when her heart ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... you can, if you've got money enough to buy a stock of papers to start with. You'll be your own boss. Then there's boot- blacking; but ...
— Herbert Carter's Legacy • Horatio Alger
... main textile and clothing industries, the manufacture of buttons, of tape, feathers, and other elements of ornament or trimmings may be regarded as subsidiary. In the same way the manufacture of wall-papers or house paint may be considered subsidiary to the building trades, that of blacking to the shoe manufacture. These subsidiary trades are related to the primary one more or less closely, and are affected by the condition of the latter more or less powerfully in proportion as the subsidiary ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... recollections of the warbler. The most interesting and ugliest negro now in camp, is known as Simon Bolivar Buckner. He is an animal that has been worth in his day eighteen hundred dollars, an estray from the estate of General S. B. Buckner. He manages, by blacking boots and baking leather pies, to make money. He deluded me into buying a second pie from him one day, by assuring me, "on honah, sah, dat de las pie was better'n de fus', case he hab strawberries in him." True, the pie had "strawberries in him," ...
— The Citizen-Soldier - or, Memoirs of a Volunteer • John Beatty
... parlour. "Six foot two, if he's an inch!" I said to myself, longing to play David to his Goliath. "Big, rich, common brute!" I thought. "You snatch our mountain out of our mouths, and then you send for us as if we were servants—men whose boots you ought to be blacking!" I was vindictive. I stared him straight between the eyes—where a stone from David's sling would have fitted ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... earned and paid for. We have to begin with the farmer, who feeds the animal that, after we have eaten a good dish from and think no more of, yet furnishes the hair which is made into brushes by the brushmaker; the carpenter has to make the box to hold them; the blacking-maker also comes to the service; and the tailor to give the uniform red coat worn by the Shoeblack Brigade—yet after all this, you can get your boots blacked, and that well done, for one penny. Out of their earnings, at some stations the boys—so I was told a short time ago—have to pay ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness
... pernicious substance. I sat at one corner of the table, beside Perkins Brown, who took an opportunity, while the others were engaged in conversation, to jog my elbow gently. As I turned towards him, he said nothing, but dropped his eyes significantly. The little rascal had the lid of a blacking-box, filled with salt, upon his knee, and was privately seasoning his onions and radishes. I blushed at the thought of my hypocrisy, but the onions were so much better that I couldn't help dipping into the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... some distance in advance of it, up the slope by this time. As he approached the auto, containing the three disconcerted cronies, something bounded out of Tom's pocket. It was the bottle of stove blacking he had purchased for Mrs. Baggert. The bottle fell in the soft dirt in front of his forward wheel, and a curious thing happened. Perhaps you have seen a bicycle or auto tire strike a stone at an angle, and throw it into the air with great force. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... spell to pay mother out. She won't put more than three lumps of sugar in my tea;"—or, "Mother has got very teazy lately. I want a spell to make her fall downstairs"—or, "Father only gives me twopence a week out of what I earn blacking boots; give me a spell to make him have an accident whilst he's at work." And it was not seldom that the trio were petitioned thus: "Please give us a spell to make our parents die quickly. Teacher says at school 'perfect freedom is the birthright ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... looked in the slightest degree like officers of the Royal Navy. They were dressed in Flushing coats; the lieutenant in a battered old sou'-wester, with a red woollen comforter round his throat; Nettleship had on an equally ancient-looking tarpaulin, and both wore high-boots, long unacquainted with blacking. They carried stout cudgels in their hands, their hangers and pistols being concealed under their coats. In about an hour and a half we reached Passage, when Nettleship and Larry and I ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... shop, with a maw as accommodating and full as any shark's. Cheese, butter, firewood, soap, pickles, matches, bacon, table-beer, peg-tops, sweetmeats, boys' kites, bird-seed, cold ham, birch brooms, hearth- stones, salt, vinegar, blacking, red-herrings, stationery, lard, mushroom-ketchup, staylaces, loaves of bread, shuttlecocks, eggs, and slate pencil; everything was fish that came to the net of this greedy little shop, and all articles were in its net. How many other kinds of petty merchandise were ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... May," remarked Charlie, with a quiet laugh; "she'd say that a mess o' tar an' shoe-blacking was nice if you made it. But I say, Shank, let's see you swim. I'd give anything if I could swim. Do, like a brick as you are. There's a fine deep hole here under ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... to exclaim: 'Humph! And so that's a Mason de Dool! Well! if it's all the same to you, Ma'am, I'd rather die in the country, and be universally lamented after the old fashion; for, as to London, what with the new French modes of mourning, and the 'Try Warren' style of blacking the premises, it do seem to me that before long all sorrow will be sham Abram, and the House of Mourning a regular Farce!' . . . A Canadian Correspondent, in a few 'free and easy' couplets, advises us how much ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, April 1844 - Volume 23, Number 4 • Various
... Amazons of old; she must be courted by the sword. But I have not been severe upon her.' BOSWELL. 'Yes, Sir, you have made her ridiculous.' JOHNSON. 'That was already done, Sir. To endeavour to make her ridiculous, is like blacking the chimney.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell, Edited by Birkbeck Hill
... advertised to start every morning at five precisely!!!—a glaring impossibility. We know that in our enterprising country adventures are sometimes undertaken, in the spirit of competition, which are entirely out of the common course of things: thus, one man will sell a bottle of blacking for ninepence with the charitable intention of ruining his neighbour (so think the worthy public) who has the audacity to charge his at a shilling—the intrinsic value of the commodity being in either case, a fraction less than five farthings. Such a manoeuvre, however, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... gingerly we pushed along, my triumphal chariot in front of the engine, over the shivering embankment, on each side of which were deep-cut channels which seemed to have been hewn through acres of Day and Martin's blacking, so jetty and oily seemed this Irish bog. The subsidence of yesterday had forced the boundary walls of the line into wide semicircles, and it seemed likely to be touch-and-go with the engine, truck, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... long frontispiece and with a button on the top. His coat was what is called a "roundabout," scarcely reaching to his waist, but it abounded with pockets, as did the vest which it partly inclosed. His trousers were coarse, thick, and comfortable, and his large boots were never touched by blacking, Nick's father having no belief in such nonsense, but sticking ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... affair having been succinctly put before him by a committee, of which Lem and Gimpy and Stretch were the talking members, he readily consented to a reopening of business for a scrutiny of the various accounts which represented the boys' earnings at selling papers and blacking boots, minus the cost of their keep and of sundry surreptitious flings at "craps" in secret corners. The inquiry developed an available surplus of three dollars and fifty cents. Savoy alone had no account; the run of craps had recently gone heavily against him. But in ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... fat roly-poly bodies and clumsy baby paws and tails that wagged unceasingly. At sight of the visitors, they deserted the now nearly empty bowl of food and galloped unsteadily towards them, squirming ecstatically over their feet and sampling the blacking on their boots ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... dressed for the day. His long lean wrists and hands protruded far through the sleeves of an old brown jacket. He wore a grey flannel shirt and an old bit of black ribbon done up in a bow by way of a tie; his slouch hat, once black, was now green with age, and his boots were innocent of blacking. But my eyes were dazzled by a heavy gold watch chain across his waistcoat and I thought him the most ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... overwhelmed with so many emotions, the old man rushed headlong, with as much rapidity as his age permitted, from the bed-chamber, shut the door behind him, and, purple, choking and foaming at the mouth, his eyes starting from his head, he found himself nose to nose with honest Basque, who was blacking boots in the anteroom. He seized Basque by the collar, and shouted full in his face in fury:—"By the hundred thousand Javottes of the devil, those ruffians ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... the United States, television reception was blacking out for hours at a time, with no explanation available. The Civil Aeronautics Administration and the Air Force banned all plane movements under instrument flight conditions, because radar navigational equipment had become so unreliable ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... at dinner were excellent; we hardly knew which was best. A peasant boy brought us a bundle of sticks for our fire. The sun became exceedingly hot. Esmeralda and myself went and sat in some shade near our tents." "Noah stood in the shade blacking his boots, and observed to Esmeralda, 'I shall not help my wife as Mr. Petalengro does you.' 'Well,' said Esmeralda, 'what is a wife for?' 'For!' retorted Noah, sharply, giving his boot an extra brush, 'why, to wait upon ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... of large and important shops in central Birmingham has led to the formation of trading establishments and Stores of the latest order of development. There are now large shops of the "universal provider" type, where they sell everything from blacking to port wine, and where you see silk mantles in one window and ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... interpretation, and that not an unnatural one. Borrow had a very rough time during these eight years. His vanity was hurt, and no wonder. It seems a small matter to us now that Charles Dickens should have been ashamed of the blacking-bottle episode of his boyhood. Genius has a right to a penurious, and even to a sordid, boyhood. But genius has no right to a sordid manhood, and here was George 'Olaus' Borrow, who was able to claim the friendship of William Taylor, the ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... cried the Canadian farmer with his barbarian benevolence, "don't let's spoil a jolly evening. What I say is, let's do something for the company tonight. Not blacking faces or sitting on hats, if you don't like those—but something of the sort. Why couldn't we have a proper old English pantomime—clown, columbine, and so on. I saw one when I left England at twelve years old, and it's blazed in my brain like a bonfire ever since. I came back to the ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... their tongues in their cheeks. One of the chiefs was an exceedingly tall man, since he could not have measured less than six feet three inches, and was about 24 years of age. He was painted with red ochre, and his body shone as if he had been polished with Warren's best blacking. His companion was older and of shorter stature. We soon got on good terms with them, and I made a present of a knife to each. They told us, as intelligibly as it was possible for them to do, that ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... canoe and dob his address and general destination onto it with a blacking-brush and a stencil-plate, 'long with a verse from some likely hymn or other, and pint him for the tomb, and mark him C. O. D., and just let him flicker. He warn't distressed any more than you be—on the contrary, just as ca,'m and collected as a hearse-horse; said he ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... unsaleable pictures, and quite possibly they would have killed or wounded anyone who suggested a compromise with the market. When materials and credit failed altogether, they stole newspapers and boot-blacking that they might continue to serve their masterful passion. They were superbly religious. All artists are religious. All uncompromising belief is religious. A man who so cares for truth that he will go to prison, ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... these accessories is nothing; if only I could give an idea of the air of immense importance that Contenson contrived to impart to them! There was something indescribably knowing in the collar of his coat, and the fresh blacking on a pair of boots with gaping soles, to which no language can do justice. However, to give some notion of this medley of effect, it may be added that any man of intelligence would have felt, only on seeing Contenson, that if instead of being ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... boots, putting them on hurriedly.) They're very good. (Wipes his brow, drawing hand across leaving mark of blacking.) ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... starve. If I can't get anything better to do, I can buy a box of blacking and a brush, and set ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... silence in French that would strike terror to the soul of the bravest native. But when she saw that poor, dear, hard-worked garcon blacking boots by the light of the moon, her heart melted with pity; and, resolving to give him an extra fee, she silently retired to her stone-floored bower, and fell asleep in a stuffy little bed, whose orange curtains filled her ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... came upon a little boy, at the corner of a street, blowing his fingers, and stumping up and down the pavement to keep his blood moving while he waited for a job: his brushes lay on the top of his blacking-box on the curbstone. Clare saw that he was both hungry and cold—states of sensation with which he was far too familiar to look on the signs of them with indifference. To give him something to do, ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... had commenced. He had no office to open. His little blacking-box was ready for use, and he looked sharply in the faces of all who passed, addressing each with, "Shine ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... contemptuous amusement. "Excellent young men who make innocent love in rose-gardens, never say 'damn.' And in those days, dear boy, we did not use shoe-blacking. Pray calm yourself, and sit down. You are upsetting the internal arrangements of your Infant. If you swing a baby violently about, it makes it sick. Any old Gamp will ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... the judge's feet were lumpy. But the Wilbur twin was conscientious here, and the judge's heels would be as resplendent as the undulating toes. The task had been appreciably delayed by Frank, the dog, who, with a quaint relish for shoe blacking, had licked a superb polish from one shoe while the other was under treatment. His new owner did not rebuke him. He conceived that Frank had intelligently wished to aid in the work, and applauded him even while securing the shined shoes ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... women, too, were wearing these caps, but theirs were yet smaller and tipped over their noses, like the pork pie hat of our grandmothers. One closely veiled woman showed the silhouette sticking up through her veil just like a blacking tin. ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... 'you're giving way, you're coming down. Ask the perfumers, ask the blacking-makers, ask the hatters, ask the old lottery-office-keepers—ask any man among 'em what my poetry has done for him, and mark my words, he blesses the name of Slum. If he's an honest man, he raises his eyes to heaven, and blesses the name of Slum—mark that! You are acquainted ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... the glasses," said Ole, the watchman of the church tower; "and it applies both to those who use blacking, and to those ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... up on her heels, with her blacking-brush in her hand, and laughed, without seeming the ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... the boots all but forgotten, he found his father, as he knew he would, already started on the business of the evening. He had drawn the chest, the only seat in the room, to the side of the bed, against which he leaned his back. A penny candle was burning in a stone blacking bottle on the chimney piece, and on the floor beside the chest stood the bottle of whisky, a jug of water, a stoneware mug, and ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... the stranger, "in the sense of lacking it, perhaps, but I fear there is no place now for a minstrel, except nigger minstrel. I must apologize for not blacking ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... corner, for he tries to conceal his lameness and decrepitude, especially from his wife, who strains her gaze after him. Just before starting off he takes the superfluous precaution to put some shoe-blacking on his hair which shows white about the temples. He comes back after a six hours' search, about noon, his neglected dinner still in his pocket. He has tramped ten or twelve miles with no open shop for him. He does not blame anyone, but regards ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... was suddenly broken by the creaking and clanging of the front gate, heralding the tardy coming of Easton. Slyme went out into the scullery and, taking down the blacking brushes from the shelf, began cleaning ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... rosettes of red and white wafers; but none of these being applicable to his present case, she sits gazing in resigned imbecility, till finally she desperately resolves to improvise him some gruel, and, after a laborious turn in the kitchen,—after burning her dress and blacking her fingers,—succeeds only in bringing him a bowl ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... first charged for the raw provisions he consumes, and for the rent of his bed- room. This is the proprietor's share. Then, there is a separate charge for each of the remaining items of the entertainment,—for cooking and serving up each meal, for making up your bed, and for blacking your boots; just as distinctly as if you had gone out into the town the previous evening and hired three separate individuals to perform these services for you; and as if you had no right nor reason to expect from the landlord a dinner all cooked and served, but ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... and crying of news, With whitening of buckles, and blacking of shoes, Did Hartley set out, both shoeless and shirtless, And moneyless too, but not very dirtless; Two pence he had gotten by begging, that's all; One bought him a brush, and one a black ball; For clouts at a loss ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... friend the Gong-donkey has in the world, is a sort of Jackall, in a dull, mangy, black hide, of such small pieces that it looks as if it were made of blacking bottles turned inside out and cobbled together. The dearest friend in the world (inconceivably drunk too) advances at the Gong-donkey, with a hand on each thigh, in a series of humorous springs and stops, wagging his head as he comes. The Gong-donkey regarding him with attention ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... (as Miss Byron said of Sir Charles Grandison,) except in the grand article of the waistcoat, a brocade brode of resplendent lustre, which combined both qualities. His shoes were bright with the new French blacking, and his jewellery, rings, studs, brooches, and chains (for he wore two, that belonging to his watch, and one from which depended a pair of spectacles, folded so as to resemble an eye-glass,) were of the finest material and ...
— The London Visitor • Mary Russell Mitford
... stock comprised, besides a respectable skew of cabbages, carrots, lettuces, and other things in season, a barrel of small beer, a side of bacon, a few red herrings, a black looking can of 'new milk,' and those less perishable articles, Warren's blacking, and Flanders' bricks; while the window was graced with a few samples of common confectionary, celebrated under the sweet names of ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... the kings countrey (for the king is a Brama) haue their legs or bellies, or some part of their body, as they thinke good themselues, made black with certaine things which they haue: they vse to pricke the skinne, and to put on it a kinde of anile or blacking, which doth continue alwayes. And this is counted an honour among them: but none may haue it but the Bramas which are of the ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, Volume 10 - Asia, Part III • Richard Hakluyt
... the transcendent mystery of baking bread blinded me so long to the mysteries of sun and sky and wind in the trees? We passed a white farmhouse close to the road. By the gate sat the farmer on a log, whittling a stick and smoking his pipe. Through the kitchen window I could see a woman blacking the stove. I wanted to cry out: "Oh, silly woman! Leave your stove, your pots and pans and chores, even if only for one day! Come out and see the sun in the sky and the river in the distance!" The farmer looked blankly at Parnassus ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... Monsieur de Saint Bertrand. At Plate 81, we find him inditing a circular letter to all the world, running thus: "Sir,—I regret to say that your application for shares in the Consolidated European Incombustible Blacking Association cannot be complied with, as all the shares of the C. E. I. B. A. were disposed of on the day they were issued. I have, nevertheless, registered your name, and in case a second series should be put forth, I shall have the honor of immediately giving you notice. I am, sir, yours, ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... thin superficial coating of dyed felt fibre. In the final spells of dyeing in the dye-beck already referred to, tolerably thick with black precipitate or mud, the application of black to the hat-forms begins, I fear, to assume at length a too close analogy to another blacking process closely associated with a pair of brushes and the time-honoured name of Day & Martin. With that logwood black fibre, anyone could argue as to a considerable proportion of the dye rubbing, wearing, or washing off. Thus, then, we have the second cause of the deterioration ...
— The Chemistry of Hat Manufacturing - Lectures Delivered Before the Hat Manufacturers' Association • Watson Smith
... (those four for some reason stand out in my mind from their fellows in the row), all bought for the modest ten-cent piece per volume—the price of two daily newspapers (for all newspapers in America then cost five cents) or one blacking of one's shoes. Much has, of course, been done of late years in England in popularising the "Classics" in the form of cheap libraries; but the facilities for buying the books—or rather the temptations to ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... perpetuation of his fingers. The reason is this: that the sill is a strong, supporting beam, and that blows of the same emphasis in other parts of his room might knock the entire shanty into hell. Thenceforth, for from three to four hours, he is engaged darkly with an ink bottle. Yet he is not blacking his boots, for the only pair that he possesses are innocent of lustre and wear the natural hue of the material turned up with caked and venerable slush. The youngest child of his landlady remarks several times a day, as this strange occupant enters or quits ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to give the reader a notion of the barbarous manners of the 16th century, with the addition of the arts of the confectioner, the brewer, the baker, the distiller, the gardener, the clear-starcher, and the perfumer, and how to make pickles, puff paste, butter, blacking, &c. together with my Lady Bountiful's sovereign remedy for an inward bruise, and other ever-failing nostrums,—Dr. Killemquick's wonder-working essence, and fallible elixir, which cures all manner of incurable maladies directly minute, Mrs. Notable's ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... younger members of which had by that time ascended, through Christian example and improved education, to a high level in the social scale. Dobbin, in particular, had become a strapping youth of gentlemanly mien, and would as soon have thought of shoe-blacking as of treacle to his bread. He retained a sneaking fondness for it, however, especially when presented in the form of ...
— Philosopher Jack • R.M. Ballantyne
... young and old, of women handsome and once, no doubt, good looking, showered upon him during that winter. But Jarman, as I think I have explained, was no slave to female charms. He enjoyed his good time while it lasted, and eventually married the eldest daughter of a small blacking factory. She was a plain girl, but pleasant, and later brought to Jarman possession of the factory. When I meet him—he is now stout and rubicund—he gives me the idea of a man who has ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... Set up a Philanthropical Society, Professing on a certain plan, To benefit the race of man, And in particular that dark variety, Which some suppose inferior—as in vermin The sable is to ermine, As smut to flour, as coal to alabaster, As crows to swans, as soot to driven snow, As blacking, or as ink, to "milk below," Or yet a better simile to show, As ragman's dolls to images ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... tonite father he caime home mad and sed i was the bigest fool he ever see. he sed i had blacked his boots with stove polish and evrybody laffed at him. so i wont have to get up. i had to black his boots over 2 times with Day and Martins blacking befoar i cood get them to shine. it was a awful long day in the yard. Beany brougt his black and tan terrier over and we got Frank Haines dog over and had a fite but jest as they were going good mother come out and poared a pale ...
— Brite and Fair • Henry A. Shute
... while I faint!" he exclaimed, turning up the whites of his eyes like a dying duck in a thunder-storm, and flinging himself so suddenly backwards into the arms of Harvey that the latter went down stern foremost, landing on the deck with one hand in the beef-kid and the other in the blacking-box, while Markham rolled on the top of him, kicking spasmodically, and simulating the feeble ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... addressed to him, but they had the desired effect, and he waited patiently until his turn came to be shaved. He was a dark-complexioned seafaring man, and had evidently just returned from a long sea voyage, as the beard on his chin was more like the bristles on a blacking-brush, and the operation of removing them more like mowing than shaving. When completed, the barber held out his hand for payment. The usual charge must have been a penny, for that was the coin he placed in the barber's hand. But it was now the barber's turn. Drawing ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... the soapsuds off the decks, and in a short time had a new supply of clear rain water, in which we had a grand rinsing. It was surprising to see how much soap and fresh water did for the complexions of many of us; how much of what we supposed to be tan and sea-blacking we got rid of. The next day, the sun rising clear, the ship was covered, fore and aft, with clothes of all sorts, hanging ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... complete in all its appointments, except, perhaps, that the long towel on the roller has been already this evening used by too many hands. The smell of blacking, too, indicates the wearer's pleasure in his cleaned and polished boots. In that little hall, which seats about three hundred, a lecture is being given to young men, on the care of the body, by Dr.——. This is one of six which are ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... 'em, and that pair belonged to the middlemost, but they fitted the eldest middlin' well, as they let in plenty of air at the toes. And what's the case now? Why, on a Saturday night you can see a whole row of boots standing two and two by the cupboard door, and they shines so bright with blacking, the cat's fit to wear herself out by setting up her back and spitting at her own likeness in 'em. It's the gospel and ...
— True to his Colours - The Life that Wears Best • Theodore P. Wilson
... himself to the bellows, he drops, in rude phrase, a brief judicial remark, and again falls sturdily to work. Again, the shoemaker may be deemed, in the merely mechanical character of his profession, near of kin to the tailor. But such is not the case. He has to work amid paste, wax, oil, and blacking, and contracts a smell of leather. He cannot keep himself particularly clean; and although a nicely-finished shoe be all well enough in its way, there is not much about it on which conceit can build. No man can set up ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... three-cocked hat scarcely covering his crown; so much the thicker the long pigtail, with the slender neck crammed into a very narrow horsehair stock; the felt put under the white spatterdashes, smirched by traces of shoe-blacking, giving to the legs a bigger diameter than the thighs, squeezed into their tight-fitting breeches, could boast of. Hardly, or not at all, able to bend his knees, the whole ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... of the match he could see that he was in a sort of a scullery, which bore traces of recent occupation. A bit of yellow soap, some blacking and a couple of brooms in one corner, a pail and a wooden chair in another, were ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... own clothes? Does the tailor produce the grain which he consumes? Does not your housekeeper cease to make her bread at home, as soon as she finds it more economical to buy it from the baker? Do you lay down your pen to take up the blacking-brush in order to avoid paying tribute to the shoe-black? Does not the whole economy of society depend upon a separation of occupations, a division of labor, in a word, upon mutual exchange of production, by which we, one and all, make a calculation which causes us to discontinue ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... corns give him a lot of trouble. But he likes to talk about boots, and a recurring subject of conversation with him is the difficulty of finding a man who really understands doing them properly. He knows a great deal about blacking and brushes, and is no mean authority on the art of boning or polishing or varnishing refractory footgear of all kinds. To look at him one would think Baxendale has never had a day's illness in his life, but ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... The only unfamiliar thing he saw was a large sheet of brown paper tacked up at the end of the hogshead. On this paper was printed the following notice, the letters having evidently been made by a chewed stick, with liquid blacking ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... I had to stop and go to work to get money to travel on. I hired myself at the American Hotel to a Mr. McCoy to do the work of a porter, to black boots, &c, for which he was to pay me $12 per month. I soon found the landlord to be bad pay, and not only that, but he would not allow me to charge for blacking boots, although I had to black them after everybody had gone to bed at night, and set them in the bar-room, where the gentlemen could come and get them in the morning while I was at other work. I had nothing extra for this, neither would he pay me my regular ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... condition. Buttons and hooks were lacking; a heap of darning lay untouched; Lena's veil, with which she attempted to hide the ruin of her hat, was crumpled into the semblance of a rain-soaked cobweb; and her shoes had gone long without the reassurance of a good blacking. ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... coat. Everywhere they say a second grace at dinner—not at the end—but before the dessert, because two hundred years ago they dared not wait longer lest the parson be under the table: the grace is said to-day before dessert! I tried three months to persuade my "Boots" to leave off blacking the soles of my shoes under the instep. He simply couldn't do it. Every "Boots" in the Kingdom does it. A man of learning had an article in an afternoon paper a few weeks ago which began thus: "It is now universally conceded by the French and the Americans that the decimal system ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... great difficulty in crediting these black charges on Cerinthus, and know not how to reconcile them with the fact that the Apocalypse itself was by many attributed to Cerinthus. But Mr. Hunt is not more famous for blacking than some of ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... minister asked if he was not entitled to some credit for blacking the farmer's eyes. Says he: "When he got over the fence and grabbed the near horse by the bits, and said he would have the whole gang in jail, I felt as though something had got to be done, and I jumped out on the other side of the wagon ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... frost, the road is level and good, and the yadoya people see that I am provided with a substantial breakfast in good season. My boots, I find, have been cleaned even. They were cleaned with a rag, O-hanna apologizing for the absence of shoe-brushes and blacking in pidgeon English: ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... we could appeal are fled or imprisoned. Not a door to knock at. We slept in a stable in the Rue de la Femme-sans-tete. A charitable bootblack, who slept on the same straw with us there, lent my lover one of his boxes, a brush and a pot of blacking three quarters empty. For a fortnight Fortune made his living and mine by blacking shoes in the Place ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France
... were the Wright brothers, who turned men into eagles! Their sister was called 'the little schoolma'am with the crazy brothers!' Robert Burns, the Scotch poet, was the son of a laboring man. Charles Dickens earned money by sticking labels in a shoe-blacking factory. William Shakespeare's father made gloves. Benjamin Franklin was the son of a candlemaker. Daniel Defoe, who wrote that Robinson Crusoe you love so much, helped his father around the butcher shop. John Bunyan was a traveling tinker. And Christopher Columbus ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... borrow?" he said, in the careless tone of one who might have supposed that the blacking of his boots was an every-day matter to this boy. "I always keep my own; it is cheaper than to ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... fowls. Indeed, except in respect of staring about him (a branch of the public service to which the pictorial cherub is much addicted), this domestic cherub discharged as many odd functions as his prototype; with the difference, say, that he performed with a blacking-brush on the family's boots, instead of performing on enormous wind instruments and double-basses, and that he conducted himself with cheerful alacrity to much useful purpose, instead of foreshortening himself in the air with ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... had a new supply of rain water, in which we had a grand rinsing. It was surprising to see how much soap and fresh water did for the complexions of many of us; how much of what we supposed to be tan and sea-blacking, we got rid of. The next day, the sun rising clear, the ship was covered, fore and aft, with clothes of all sorts, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... said Ferguson, "that pill-tenders and blacking manufacturers are most liberal to the editorial profession. I only wish jewellers and piano manufacturers were as free with their manufactures. I would like a good gold watch, and I shall soon want a piano for ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... the dollar he bought a box, three brushes, and some blacking. He then went to the corner of the street, and said to every one whose boots did not look nice, "Black ...
— McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey |
