"Blacking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... gentleman approaching up the winding street. As he drew nearer he presented rather a shabby, or, at least, rusty appearance. His felt hat was not so black as it had been; his coat was creased and soiled; his boots needed a blacking. He swung a cane as he stumped along, and there was a sort of faded smartness in his bearing and a knowingness in his grim old visage, indicating some incongruous familiarity with the manners of the great world. He came to a halt in ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 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, ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... 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 ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... materials among the debris showed the lading of particular cars. The remains of fruit cans, tin plates, blacking boxes and glassware, told of sutlers who had disposed of their wares at less than the usual exorbitant prices. Heaps of spikes and handleless hammers, and iron bars, reminded us of disconcerted plans in railroad extension, while numberless solid shot, bullets and ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... 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
... brushes the socks, putting each carefully on his hand like a glove and brushing vigorously away. As they are necessarily very thin socks for this hot weather, they are apt to melt away entirely under the process. I say nothing of his blacking the boots inside as well as out, or of his laboriously scrubbing holes in a serge coat with a scrubbing-brush, for these are errors of judgment dictated by a kindly heart. But when Jack puts a saucepan on the fire without any water and burns holes in it, or tries whether plates and dishes ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... at Landport, near Portsmouth, where his f. was a clerk in the Navy Pay-Office. The hardships and mortifications of his early life, his want of regular schooling, and his miserable time in the blacking factory, which form the basis of the early chapters of David Copperfield, are largely accounted for by the fact that his f. was to a considerable extent the prototype of the immortal Mr. Micawber; ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... feeble light 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 evidently not ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... "presented arms," as it were, every time that I came in and went out of the room. I at once decided to try him. It was about nine o'clock in the morning, when I, having many people to see, handed Chanden Sing, for that was his name, a pair of shoes and some blacking. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... continued to be the second moving force of his life. When he was ten years old his father was imprisoned for debt (like Micawber, in the Marshalsea prison), and he was put to work in the cellar of a London shoe-blacking factory. On his proud and sensitive disposition this humiliation, though it lasted only a few months, inflicted a wound which never thoroughly healed; years after he was famous he would cross the street to avoid the smell from ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... menus together. Though they began with propriety, Carol sitting by the kitchen table and Bea at the sink or blacking the stove, the conference was likely to end with both of them by the table, while Bea gurgled over the ice-man's attempt to kiss her, or Carol admitted, "Everybody knows that the doctor is lots more clever than Dr. McGanum." When Carol came in from marketing, Bea plunged into the hall ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... women have a curious custom—now fast dying out—of blacking their teeth and plucking out their eye-brows to prevent, as their husbands say, other men casting "sheep's eyes" ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... passes off the down, and towards Banstead village. He is on the watch for characteristic objects of the countryside, and rustling through the leaves beneath a chestnut avenue he comes upon an old boot. It is a very, very old boot, all its blacking washed off by the rain, and two spreading chestnut leaves, yellow they are with blotches of green, with their broad fingers extended, rest upon it, as if they would protect and altogether cover the poor old boot in its last resting-place. It is as if Mother Nature, who lost sight of her product ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... these young rebels, wondering in whispers over their lessons what this and that Sixth or Fifth Form fellow had done without them. With great glee they imagined Raleigh blacking his own boots and Pembury boiling his own eggs, and the very idea of such wonders quite frightened them. At that rate Saint Dominic's would come to a ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... commodity as the most knowing down-easter, or tricky horse dealer. William's occupation on board the steamer, as they steamed south, was to prepare the stock for the market, by shaving off whiskers and blacking the grey hairs ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... 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, that oil must be ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... in correspondence and to whom 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
... for the little surprise on which she had set her heart; but now dismay fell upon her when the holes refused to be cobbled, and the largest of bows would not hide the worn-out toes in spite of ink and blacking ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... have been ruined in various ways; one pair was spoiled in a possum hunt at Clinton, North Carolina—and it was worth it, and worth the overcoat that was ruined at the same time; two pairs of black shoes have been caked up with layers and layers of sticky blacking, and one pair of russets was ruined by a well intentioned negro lad in Memphis, who thought they would look better painted red. His traveler's checks are running low and he is continually afraid that, amid his constantly increasing piles of notes and papers, he ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... although the 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
... to irrigate them with a little soap and water; but, after all, he knew best; it might have given him cold: and besides, his hair was very thick and long behind, and might perhaps conceal anything that was unsightly. Then Mr. Titmouse drew from underneath the bed a bottle of "incomparable blacking," and a couple of brushes; with great labor and skill polishing his boots up to a wonderful degree of brilliancy. Having replaced his blacking implements under the bed and washed his hands, he devoted a few moments to ...
— Ten Thousand a-Year. Volume 1. • Samuel Warren
... 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; selling magazines or ...
— Popular Law-making • Frederic Jesup Stimson
... 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 ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... half, good measure, from the first tree on the Mill Dam Road, lies the little village (with no refreshments in it but five oranges and a bottle of blacking) of Newton Centre. Here Massachusetts Jemmy and The Gasper had established the turning-point. The road comprehended every variety of inconvenience to test the mettle of the men, and nearly the whole of it ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... heaped with a conglomeration of foils, neckties, dead boutonnieres, visiting-cards, base-balls, odd gloves, notebook, handkerchiefs, railway guides, emptied envelopes, caramel papers, button hooks, fugitive verses, blacking brushes, inkstand, hair brushes—the mother who reads this can complete the inventory, if she has abundant patience, and time is ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... reply. "I think this dose will do me all my life. I am willing to do anything you ask me, even to blacking ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... parts more thin, so that the ting'd light, which is made by trajecting those ting'd bodies, does not receive so deep a tincture; but whitening a colour is onely an intermixing of many clear reflections of light among the same ting'd parts; deepning also, and darkning or blacking a colour, are very different; for deepning a colour, is to make the light pass through a greater quantity of the same tinging body; and darkning or blacking a colour, is onely interposing a multitude of dark or black spots among the same ting'd parts, ...
— Micrographia • Robert Hooke
... little removed from the lawless, the panic and pandemonium that reigned in the dark was hardly to have been expected on the part of the frequenters of the Elysian Fields. But it was the sudden blacking out of the scene which had wrought on the nerves. It was the doubt, the fear of where the next shots might come, which sent men and women, shrieking and shouting, stampeding for the doors ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... resolution were agates, or cornelians; ale and beer; almonds; amber (manufactures of); arrowroot; band-string twist; bailey, pearled; bast-ropes; twines, and strands; beads: coral; crystal; jet; beer or mum; blacking; brass manufactures; brass (powder of); brocade of gold or silver; bronze (manufactures of); bronze-powder; buck-wheat: butter; buttons; candles; canes; carriages of all sorts; casks; cassiva-powder; ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Carver. My father died and as I had no money to buy a coffin, I made it myself. I had to walk thirty miles for the nails. The boards were hand hewed and when the coffin was made, it looked so different from those we had seen, in its staring whiteness, that we took the only thing we had, a box of stove blacking, which we had brought from the east with us and stained the coffin ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... 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 this I will explain. It had been my original intention ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... telegraphed Roberta laconically: "Gray carpet paper shell, mark scales shoe-blacking, lace together sides," and continued to sojourn in ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... 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
... knowledge, fifteen empty Day and Martin's blacking-bottles in one corner, for I used occasionally to walk over them to keep my feet in practice, and it was in this room that Terence last had conscious possession of the hunting-breeches which were never seen after the Captain's birthday, when ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... 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 ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... 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 ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... about fifty feet long, separated from the other little strips by iron hurdles. Mardon had tried to keep his garden in order, and had succeeded, but his neighbour was disorderly, and had allowed weeds to grow, blacking bottles and old tin cans to accumulate, so that whatever pleasure Mardon's labours might have afforded ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... "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 ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... some fine pieces of dry kindling-wood, arranged crosswise to permit a free draft, then a few sticks of hard wood, so placed as to allow plenty of air spaces. Be sure that the wood extends out to both ends of the fire-box. Replace the covers, and if the stove needs blacking, mix the polish, and apply it, rubbing with a dry brush until nearly dry, then light the fuel, as a little heat will facilitate the polishing. When the wood is burning briskly, place a shovelful or two of rather small ...
— Science in the Kitchen. • Mrs. E. E. Kellogg
... is 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, clean-shaven. He spoke English ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... essential things, it is curious that he bore with so many make- shifts: for instance, instead of having a box made of a desired shape, and stained black inside, he would hunt up something like what he wanted and get it darkened inside with shoe-blacking; he did not care to have glass covers made for tumblers in which he germinated seeds, but used broken bits of irregular shape, with perhaps a narrow angle sticking uselessly out on one side. But so much of his experimenting was ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... wanted to go on seeing his faults, but in her changing mood she could see only her own. "He is one of the noblest gentlemen in the world," something inside her said. "You aren't worthy to black his boots!" Then the picture of herself blacking them—the shiny ones that were too tight—rose before her eyes, and she was afraid that she was going to laugh—or else to sob. Anyhow, he was gone, and there was an ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... 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 of references to the ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... the last stages of sunburn, reddened, minute shreds of skin flaking away much as a snake's skin sheds in August. Otherwise he was dressed, like a countless multitude of other men who walk the streets of every city in North America, in a conventional sack suit, and shoes that still bore traces of blacking. The paddlers were stripped to thin cotton shirts and worn overalls. The only concession their passenger had made to the heat was the removal of his laundered collar. Apparently his dignity did not permit him to lay aside his coat and vest. As they cleared the point a faint breeze ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... very sensible man greatly opposed to Jackson; has some little municipal office; well acquainted with the Crooks, Mrs. Marsden, and others. Had tea with the Masons, and had a good deal of talk about old matters in England. Servetus, a very respectable young man carrying on an extensive blacking trade; the sister a very steady girl had lived some time with Mr. Furness. The old man as eccentric as ever, his wife looking ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... boast of being neat seamstresses do confess to a certain degree of pride in the boast. But the satisfaction arises from the well-doing, and not from the fact that it is Sewing well done; for anything well and thoroughly done, even if it be only boot-blacking on a street corner, or throwing paper torpedoes in a theatre orchestra to imitate the crack of a whip in the "Postilion Galop," gives to its doer the same sense of self-satisfaction. It would be folly now, as it may have been in old times, for ...
— The Education of American Girls • Anna Callender Brackett
... 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 as we passed, and then I remembered ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... office and went into Mr Greeley's room to bid him goodbye. He stood by the gas jet, in a fine new suit of clothes, reading a paper, while a boy was blacking one of his boots. I sat down, awaiting a more favourable moment. A very young man had come into the room and stood ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... little street; a garret served as bedroom for the two boys, also as the elder one's laboratory. Servant Mrs. Peak had none. She managed everything herself, as in the old Greenwich days, leaving Charlotte free to work at her embroidery. Godwin took turns with Oliver at blacking the shoes. ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... 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 resisting the ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... 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 ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... column has not escaped ill-treatment either. Numberless ships' companies, travelling cockneys, &c., have affixed their rude marks upon it. Some daring ruffian even painted the name of "Warren's blacking" upon it, effacing other inscriptions,— one, Wilkinson says, of "the second Psammetichus." I regret deeply, my dear friend, that I cannot give you this document respecting a lamented monarch, in whose history I know you take such ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... blacking Ham's boots, and he put them on. He was going to a party at Crofton's, and had already dressed himself as sprucely as the resources of Torrentville would permit. He was seventeen years old, and somewhat ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... 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 ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... yourself to haunts of fashion? Now I begin to understand why you have become so prodigal with the blacking; for some time I have had the intention of reproaching you with your shoes—our finances are not ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... shine, they make themselves as black as colliers. These horsemen wear black clothes, and poor though they be, spend no small time in brushing them. The most of them have black horses,... and delight to have their boots and shoes shine with blacking stuff, their hands and faces become black, and thereof they have their foresaid name."... Fynes ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... mention, and you may take your choice. The first is that which the young lady hinted at;—that these flashes are sudden recollections of a previous existence. I don't believe that; for I remember a poor student I used to know told me he had such a conviction one day when he was blacking his boots, and I can't think he had ever lived in another world where ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Droz and Lepany had taken a fresh turn, and attracted a little circle of listeners, among whom I observed an eccentric-looking young man with a club-foot, an enormously long neck, and a head of short, stiff, dusty hair, like the bristles of a blacking-brush. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... 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 ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was a rare occurrence; for Mr. McSwiver, though he had advertised himself as having "no incumbrance," was by no means an ease-taking man. He united in his august person the duties of coachman, butler, waiter, useful man, and body-servant to Mr. Manning. Seeing him at early dawn, blacking his employer's boots, or, later, attending to the lighter duties of the coachhouse (he had a stable-boy to help him), one could never imagine the grandeur of that same useful individual when dressed in ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... his 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
... 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 ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... the word "blacking." What does Paley say on this subject? Do you, or do you not, approve of Paley's arguments, and why? Do you think that Paley knew ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... describing circle around the head, height of eye (cutting hair). Right hand passed over forehead and face. Left index pointing to black scabbard (blacking faces)—mourning. ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... that Gunther loves you with all the fervor of a true and honest heart. He may have indulged the thought that I would bestow my daughter upon a poor little imperial secretary, whose brother enjoys the privilege of blacking the emperor's boots. Although I laugh at this presumption, I pity his infatuation, for he is an excellent young man. Be careful—or rather, receive him no longer. You see, Rachel, that toward an estimable man, I do not encourage coquetry; on the contrary, ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... vinegar Syrup of vinegar Aromatic vinegar Vinegar of the four thieves Lavender water Hungarian water To prepare cosmetic soap for washing the hands Cologne water Soft pomatum To make soap To make starch To dry herbs To clean silver utensils To make blacking To clean knives ...
— The Virginia Housewife • Mary Randolph
... Herbert, "I needn't starve. If I can't get anything better to do, I can buy a box of blacking and a brush, and set up in business ...
— Try and Trust • Horatio Alger
... if we would really 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. ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... whom nature had not 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 ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... which Richard Frayne had taken a desperate plunge. "Why, a score of his chums had better have died than him! I didn't ought never to ha' left him last night, seeing what a state he was in. You might ha' saved his life, Jerry, and done more good than you'll ever do blacking boots and brushing clothes, if yer lives to a ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... gone to the great city, and back had come his star. He wore it secretly at first, but was moved at length to display it to a few chosen friends; not wisely chosen, it would appear, for now there were mockers of Billy among the irreverent of the town. As he sat aloft on his boot-blacking throne, waiting for crime to be done among us, conning meantime one of those romances in which his heroes did rare deeds, he would be subjected to intrusion. Some coarse town humorist would leer upon him from the doorway—a leer of furtive, devilish cunning—and ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... devoured such books as the 'Vicar of Wakefield,' 'Robinson Crusoe,' and many other famous English books. This was in Chatham. The family next removed to London, where the father was thrown into prison for debt. The little boy, weakly and sensitive, was now sent to work in a blacking manufactory at six shillings a-week, his duty being to cover the blacking-pots with paper. "No words can express," he says, "the secret agony of my soul, as I compared these my everyday associates with those of my happier childhood, ...
— A Brief History of the English Language and Literature, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John Miller Dow Meiklejohn
... need hardly 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 ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... He offered 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 withdraw ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... little 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
... or told to children; one was called, "Tom the Bootblack"; the other, "Dan the Newsboy." My chief objection to these stories was the fact that neither of the heroes rejoiced in his work for the work's sake. Had Tom even invented a new kind of blacking, or if Dan had started a newspaper, it might have been encouraging for those among the listeners who were thinking of engaging in similar professions. It is true, both gentlemen amassed large fortunes, but surely the school age is not to be limited to such dreams and aspirations ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... stairs to meagre garrets, and shut themselves in with the gods. Numbers of the great men, who afterwards illuminated the Victorian era, were at this time living in mean streets in magnificent daydreams. Ruskin was solemnly visiting his solemn suburban aunts; Dickens was going to and fro in a blacking factory; Carlyle, slightly older, was still lingering on a poor farm in Dumfriesshire; Keats had not long become the assistant of the country surgeon when Browning was a boy in Camberwell. On all sides there was the first beginning of the aesthetic ...
— Robert Browning • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... families of professional men who are afflicted with pretension to fashion, of which we shall give abundant examples when we come to treat of gentility-mongers. But the heavy swell, who is of all classes, from the son and heir of an opulent blacking-maker down to the lieutenant of a marching regiment on half-pay, is utterly destitute of brains, deplorably illiterate, and therefore incapable, by nature and bringing-up, of respecting himself by a modest contented demeanour. He is never so unhappy as when he appears the thing he is—never ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... traits of whom are preserved in Mr. Micawber—was imprisoned for debt in the Marshalsea prison, where his wife took lodging with him, while Charles, then a boy of ten, was employed at six shillings a week to cover blacking-pots in Warner's blacking warehouse. The hardships and loneliness of this part of his life are told under a thin disguise in Dickens's masterpiece, David Copperfield, the most autobiographical ...
— Brief History of English and American Literature • Henry A. Beers
... did, when I fell down in a fit in 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 confidence. I remember, when I was a little ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... sent after, and every tool and article belonging to the farm was returned to its own place at exactly such an hour every Saturday afternoon, and an hour before sundown every item of preparation, even to the blacking of his Sunday shoes and the brushing of his Sunday coat, was entirely concluded; and at the going down of the sun, the stillness of the Sabbath seemed to settle down ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... present, skill'd to shift and 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
... 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 that you only bought it ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... The Ghorawalla watches for it, and stopping the good-natured woman, brings her in and submits a request for a bottle of neat's foot oil, for want of which your harness is going to destruction. She has blacking as well as oil, but he will call her in for that afterwards. He never concludes two transactions in one day. When he has succeeded in reducing you to such a state of irritability that it is not safe to mention money in your presence, he stops at once and changes tactics. He brings the horse ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... was now really genuine, as if he was afraid the experiment might be repeated on himself. "Johnnie, my boy, shake hands, I forgive you this once. And you may pass the bottle." Johnnie, who knew himself to be the real offender, made haste to obey. "It's not blacking, of course," continued John, looking at ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... automatic machine on the station platform, making an imbecile choice between a packet of gooseberry nougat and a slab of the gum caramel, you could not help seeing on the level of your eye this notice:—"BLACKING-CREAM. ASK FOR HIGLINSON'S, AND TAKE ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... a lot of good in the Crimea. Soames shifted the ground of consolation. Winifred had heard from Val that there had been a 'rag' and a bonfire on Guy Fawkes Day at Oxford, and that he had escaped detection by blacking his face. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... on her heels, with her blacking-brush in her hand, and laughed, without seeming the least ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... clouds rose ponderously 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 ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... rubbish, the feelings that the fashion of the day created, and the flatteries uttered. Eternity will estimate things at their proper value, and no other. She will not even seek for the newspaper praise of Walter Scott. She will not look for Byron's immortality in the company of Warren's blacking, Prince's kalydor, and Atkinson's bear's grease. She looks for it in his own merit, and her impartial judgment will be ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... are. Mrs. Twiss makes a grievance of it. They won't drink the tea in the kitchen; the currants are not so good. She always gets the matches there, and the blacking. Everything else Mrs. Twiss finds so much ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... all," said Christophe, "what do they give you? A miserable five-franc piece. There is Father Goriot, who has cleaned his shoes himself these two years past. There is that old beggar Poiret, who goes without blacking altogether; he would sooner drink it than put it on his boots. Then there is that whipper-snapper of a student, who gives me a couple of francs. Two francs will not pay for my brushes, and he sells his old clothes, ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... under the Chief's study on Pack Monday night just before twelve. In stockinged feet he had crept downstairs, opened the creaking door without making any appreciable noise, and then waited in the boot-room, which was filled with the odour of blacking and damp decay. There was a small window at the end of it, through which it was just possible to squeeze out on to the Chief's front lawn. After that all was easy; anyone could clamber over the wall by the V. ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... 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. ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... come and find it for me. Everything here is in the vilest mess," cried Carne, growing reckless with wrath and hurry. "I want the despatch of this morning, and I find tailors' bills, way to make water-proof blacking, a list of old women, and a stump of old pipe! Come here, this instant, and ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... underworld, or a sailor that he who wrote 'Hard Cash' had never been to sea. The fact is, information, concerning which dull folks make so much fuss, can be attained by anybody who chooses to spend his time that way; and by persons of intelligence (who are not so solicitous to know how blacking is made) can be turned, in a manner not dreamt of by ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... 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 ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... into a cheap eating-house and saloon, through the "Ladies' Entrance," and while they sat at a table there, she learned by means of resolute and patient questions that the boy earned his living by blacking shoes now and then, and that he did not know who his parents were, as he had been "put" with a family whose ill-usage he had fled from to live in the street. He began to melt under her manifestations of interest in him, and with pretended reluctance he gave his promise to wash his face ...
— Tales From Bohemia • Robert Neilson Stephens
... hair. I yelled, naturally, or unnaturally, and tried to get loose, but another contrivance shot out from the wall somewhere and clutched me by the leg and began to make frantic gestures at my shoes like a wild boot-blacking emporium. I decided to stand still rather than run the risk of getting hit somewhere else. Meanwhile Walter was laughing so hard he couldn't answer my emphatic request to know what the thing was going to do. He finally explained that it was a new device he was experimenting with to give the ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... different tastes or pursuits, very fast friends." In another part he mentions having heard of a bear of this species who delighted in cherry brandy, "and on one occasion, having been indulged with an entire bottle of this insinuating beverage, got so completely intoxicated that it stole a bottle of blacking, and drank off the contents under the impression that they were some more of its favourite liquor. The owner of the bear told me that he saw it suffering from this strange mixture, and evidently with, as may easily be imagined, a ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... accomplishments were of a mechanical nature; he was an extraordinary arithmetician, he was a very skilful chemist, and kept a laboratory at his lodgings—he mended his own clothes and linen with incomparable neatness. Philip suspected him of blacking his own shoes, but that was prejudice. Once he found Morton sketching horses' heads—pour se desennuyer; and he made some short criticisms on the drawings, which showed him well acquainted with the art. Philip, surprised, sought to draw him ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... brow. A passion for blacking is a distinguishing characteristic of his military caste; and his natural love of licking the boots of members of the many royal families of the Fatherland was finding its full expression. In Prince Adalbert ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... him every ten days. As a matter of fact that is how I first knew Mrs. Tippins had these letters. She brought one along to show me, to see if I could get her something special. Part of the letter has been blacked out, but of course I found it very easy to take that blacking out," he chuckled. "And what had been blacked out was as a matter of fact very ...
— Good Old Anna • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... 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 a short bed," said I, "and have snorers close by me; I fear I shall ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... Often one could scarcely make one's way across the muddy yard; in the outer room, behind a canvas screen, with its covering peeling off it, would lie stretched the snoring orderly; on the floor rotten straw; on the stove, boots and a broken jam-pot full of blacking; in the room itself a warped card-table, marked with chalk; on the table, glasses, half-full of cold, dark-brown tea; against the wall, a wide, rickety, greasy sofa; on the window-sills, tobacco-ash.... ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... recollect what you are saying. I would not, for the custom of his Majesty's Lord High Admiral, have any discouraging words be uttered in my house against the reputation of any virtuous and fair-dealing slavers! The Lord protect me from blacking the character of any honest ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... the address of three clergymen and told him to call on them for help if he had any trouble. He looked everywhere for these cards. They couldn't be found. He had been so cocksure of himself he had lost them. He couldn't make up his mind to stoop to blacking boots and cleaning spittoons. He had always lived with aristocrats. He felt himself one to ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... 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 got ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... you for a 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 ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... "And blacking your hands, and spoiling your temper, and waiting for—how many hours does it take for a watched kettle to boil?—and in the end throwing away the result! You're easily pleased, ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... be seen." So he began tapping at the door, which was bolted, and crying, "Will whoever owns this house give me and my people some water to drink, for the sake of kind charity?" But nobody answered, for the Princess, who heard him, was busy up in her room, blacking her face with charcoal and covering her rich dress with rags. Then the Prince got impatient and shook the door angrily, saying, "Let me in, whoever you are! If you don't, I'll force the door open." At this the poor little Princess got dreadfully frightened; and having blacked her face and made herself ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... Then another reason for blacking your face and hands is that, after you have entered the German trench at night, "white face" means Germans, "black face" English. Coming around a traverse you see a white face in front of you. With a prayer and wishing Fritz "the best o' luck," you introduce him to your ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... House in Sacramento Street below Montgomery, a hostelry for men, with moderate prices, notwithstanding many unusual privileges. It has a large reading-room and a library of five thousand volumes, besides a very respectable museum. Guests are supplied with all facilities for blacking their own boots, and are made at home in every way. Incidentally the proprietor made a good fortune, a large part of which he invested in turning his home at Fourteenth and Mission streets into a pleasure resort known as Woodward's Gardens, which ...
— A Backward Glance at Eighty • Charles A. Murdock
... 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
... that 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 give him ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... if you aren't all the greatest pack of naggers!" exclaimed Jack, impatiently, throwing down the blacking brushes and snatching up his hat; then he raced after us down the stairs and brought up the rear as we filed ...
— We Ten - Or, The Story of the Roses • Lyda Farrington Kraus
... 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 ...
— A Tale of One City: The New Birmingham - Papers Reprinted from the "Midland Counties Herald" • Thomas Anderton
... 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 of a little ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... 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 in Dombey and Son, and Mr. Micawber in David Copperfield, were real people ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... his work more than he knew perhaps, or would ever have known, or ever recognized by his own life. In fact, when one comes to read the story of his life, and to know that he was really and lastingly ashamed of having once put up shoe-blacking as a boy, and was unable to forgive his mother for suffering him to be so degraded, one perceives that he too was the slave of conventions and the victim of conditions which it is the highest function of his fiction ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... 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 ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... Rasselas (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 do so—are incomparably less, while the ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... mattered. They were all out. On the landing he saw the housemaid. He felt skittish and irresistible. Should he slip his arm round her waist? Perhaps better not; she might box his ears. And he wanted to smoke on the roof before dinner. So he only said, "Please will you stop the boy blacking my brown boots," and she with downcast eyes, answered, "Yes, sir; I ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... would have died of the Miller of Dee. But the worst was he did not stop at clothes; he loathed ill-blacked shoes. Woe to all foot-leather that did not shine; his own skin furnished a perilous standard of comparison. He was eternally blacking boots en amateur. Fullalove got in a rage at this, and insisted on his letting his fellow-creatures' leather alone. Vespasian pleaded hard, especially for leave to black Colonel Kenealy. "The cunnell," said he pathetically, "is such a tarnation fine ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... great thoroughness, injured himself so badly that he had to be removed to his home. He was taken away at ten in the morning, and at a quarter-past eleven Selina Vickers, in a large apron and her sleeves rolled up over her elbows, was blacking the kitchen stove and throwing occasional replies to the ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... 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 as ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... ounces of mutton suet with twelve ounces of beeswax; add twelve ounces of sugar-candy, four ounces of soft soap dissolved in water, and two ounces of indigo, finely powdered. When melted and well mixed, add one-half pint of turpentine. Lay the blacking on the harness with a sponge, and polish off ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... said Ben, in a low voice, suddenly bringing a blacking-brush, and beginning to polish his master's shoes,—thinking, while he did it, of how often Mars' John had interfered with the overseers to save him from a flogging,—(Lamar, in his lazy way, was kind to his slaves,)—thinking of little Mist' Floy ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... regions of mud, 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 ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... sprites with sympathetic vapour; He rubbed his eyes, and they did not refuse Their office: he took up an old newspaper; The paper was right easy to peruse; He read an article the King attacking, And a long eulogy of "Patent Blacking." ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... ill-clothed, their women and children in no better case, working all day in feverish ecstasy at 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, or death, rather than acknowledge a God in whose existence ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... chairs never match; old patchwork coverlets linger among them; and they have an untidy habit of keeping their wardrobes in hat-boxes. When I recall one old gentleman who is rather choice in his shoe-brushes and blacking-bottle, I have summed up the domestic elegances of that ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... the houses on the other side. There is an immense development of electricity all over America, and in tram-cars, railway-cars, hotels, houses, everything and everywhere, is the electric light prominent. Many of the streets are unevenly paved. Blacking boots is a profession in America—in many hotels a special charge is made for it, or else the visitors are left to their own devices thereon—and boot-blacks have shops and nooks fitted with high, huge easy chairs, elevated like thrones, where their clients can comfortably ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... a guide who agreed to show New York to a stranger and then took up his time by visiting Chinese laundries and boot-blacking "parlors" on the side streets? There is only one excuse for a speaker's asking the attention of his audience: He must have either truth or entertainment for them. If he wearies their attention with trifles they will have neither vivacity ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... the blandishments of girls 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 attained ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... approached Andy's stalled car, for Tom was 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. That was what happened to the ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... furnace; some of them had certainly been blown into champagne bottles, and others into beer bottles, which made a little difference between them. In the world it often happens that a beer bottle may contain the most precious wine, and a champagne bottle be filled with blacking, but even in decay it may always be seen whether a man has been well born. Nobility remains noble, as a champagne bottle remains the same, even with blacking in its interior. When the bottles were packed our bottle was packed amongst them; it little expected then ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... sacred thing that can perhaps be called Anachronism. All that to us is Anachronism was to mediaevals merely Eternity. But the main excellence of the Mumming Play lies still, I think, in its uproarious secrecy. If we cannot hide our hearts in healthy darkness, at least we can hide our faces in healthy blacking. If you cannot escape like a philosopher into a forest, at least you can carry the forest with you, like a Jack-in-the-Green. It is well to walk under universal ensigns; and there is an old tale of a tyrant to whom a walking forest was the witness of doom. That, indeed, ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... 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 himself up to ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... not know, sir," Dodge replied distinctly. "I am of the opinion, sir, that it must have come from the blacking on one of my shoes as I put it ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... change did not escape Mr. Ehrenthal, who mentioned it in his family circle much as a farmer would the promising points of a young bullock; and, at the end of the quarter, announced of his own accord to Veitel that the shoe-blacking and kitchen dinner were to cease, and that he was prepared to give him a place in his office, and a small salary besides. Veitel received the long-desired intelligence with great self-command, and returned his humble thanks, adding, "I have still one very, very great favor to ask. May I have the ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... most popular of the novelists of England, was born in 1812. By hard, persistent work he raised himself from obscurity and poverty to fame and fortune. After only two years of schooling he was obliged to go to work. His first job was pasting labels on blacking-pots, for which he received twenty-five cents a day! He next became office boy in a lawyer's office, and then reporter for a London daily paper. He learned shorthand by himself from a book he found in a public reading-room. In 1841, and again in 1867, he lectured in America. He ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools |
