"Scum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stains, and the Wanderer marvelled as he bent over the bulwarks and gazed steadily upon the sea. Then he saw that the wide sea round the ship was covered, as far as the eye could reach, as it were with a blood-red scum. Hither and thither the red stain was tossed like foam, yet beneath, where the deep wave divided, the Wanderer saw that the streams of the sea were grey and green below the crimson dye. As he watched he saw, too, that the red froth ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... as the water boils, after the meat is in it, the scum should be carefully removed from time to time, while it is cooking. If the scum be allowed to boil down, it will settle on the joint and discolour it. It is best, however, as a precaution, to wrap the meat in a very clean cloth; ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison
... the gentlemen something of a sight more interesting that this," the newcomer continued. "They don't want to sit down and drink with the scum of ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the same paper a description of the opposing party, the stranger might think it composed of only the degraded and disreputable portion of the nation, and its leader the scum of all its depravity. If curiosity should induce a perusal of some partisan paper of the other party, the same thing could be read in its columns, with a change of names. It would be the opposite party that was getting ...
— Mizora: A Prophecy - A MSS. Found Among the Private Papers of the Princess Vera Zarovitch • Mary E. Bradley
... part away from me the last week or so, the lyin' sneak. I'll show'm a leadin' lady's a leadin' lady. Let 'em go to their hash hotels. I'm goin' to the real inn in this town just to let 'em know that I got my dignity to keep up, and that I don't have to mix in with scum like that. You see that there? She pointed at something in the street. Emma McChesney turned to look. The cheap lithographs of the Sam Levin Crackerjack Belles Company glared at one from ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... thirty of the most worthless and dissolute fellows in Rome for a paltry sum of money obliterate every principle of law and justice, and when that which every man—I had almost said every animal—knows to have taken place, a Thalna, a Plautus, and a Spongia, and other scum of that sort decide not to have taken place. However, to console you as to the state of the Republic, rascaldom is not as cheerful and exultant in its victory as the disloyal hoped after the infliction of such a wound upon the Republic. For they fully expected that when religion, morality, ...
— The Letters of Cicero, Volume 1 - The Whole Extant Correspodence in Chronological Order • Marcus Tullius Cicero
... not only their neighbours of the trade that are scattered about town, but all over England, aye, and beyond sea too, and send abroad their circulators, and, in that manner, get into their hands all that is valuable. The rest of the trade are content to take their refuse, with which, and the fresh scum of the press, they furnish one side of a shop, which serves for the sign of a bookseller, rather than a real one; but, instead of selling, dealing as factors, and procure what the country divines and gentry send for; of whom each hath his book factor, and, ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... implement it is, of brass—and he goes about everywhere now with little glass bottles in his pocket, ready to jump upon any stray polly-woggle he may find, and hale it home and pry into its affairs. Within his study window are perhaps half a dozen jars and basins full of green scum and choice specimens of black mud in which his victims live. He persists in making me look through this instrument, though I would rather I did not. It seems to me a kind of impropriety even when I do it. He gets innumerable ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... compacted. "Why, you booze-bitten, lousy hunky, what in hell do you want? You never saw twenty dollars in a lump you c'u'd call yore own for more'n ten minnits. You boardin'-house loafer an' the rest of you scum o' the seven seas, git yore shovels an' git to diggin', or I'll put you ashore in San Francisco flat broke, an' glad to leave the ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... must taunt me further? Do my innocent children want to look upon the faces of those who robbed them of a father? If there is a spark of manhood left in one of you, show it by leaving me alone! And you other scum, never fear but that you will clutter hell in reward for last night's work. Begone, and leave me with ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... herself, and which represented that juste milieu which maintained the balance of society in France. When the dregs of the bas peuple rose to the surface of the revolution, commenced by the sound middle classes, we regarded the scum of aristocracy as the smaller of the two evils. As soon as the true element had ceased to assert itself in France, I fled forever from a land of bloodshed and misrule, and took shelter under the broad wing of ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... most curious products of the scum that rises to the top of the seething Paris caldron, where everything ferments, prided himself on being, above all things, a philosopher. He would say, without ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... greens; broth. "Kail through the reek," to give one a severe reproof. Kail-brose, pottage of meal made with the scum of broth. Kale-yard, a vegetable garden. Ken, to know. Kend, knew. Kenna, kensna, know not. Kittle, ticklish. ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... Territory. Ma Barstow was a woman of thirty-five who looked sixty; withered by child-bearing; scorched by the sun; beaten by the wind; gnarled with toil; gritty with dust. Ploughing the barren little farm one day Clem Barstow had noticed a strange oily scum. It seeped up through the soil and lay there, heavily. Oil! Weeks of suspense, weeks of disappointment, weeks of hope. Through it all Ma Barstow had washed, scrubbed, cooked as usual, and had looked after the welfare of the Barstow litter. Seventeen years of drudgery dull ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... of the conflict, was heard over the noise of many talkers. But he had no time to finish his speech, for in a moment the barn-door flew open, and more than five-and-twenty dogs, great and small, the very vagrants and scum of the town, offered up as a sacrifice to do honour to the occasion, wallowed in a heap into the yard, howling and yelling, barking, snapping, and snarling; then, as if second thoughts had rather modified their ideas about valour, they all retreated into a safe corner of ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... till you perceive not what it was; take it out and wash it soundly at some running stream, till the Foulness is gone: Then put it in a close Earthen pot; let it stand four or five dayes, look to its Purging, and scum it: When clean, put it into another Earthen Pot, and keep it close ...
— The School of Recreation (1684 edition) • Robert Howlett
... produces the bulbous stalks, and squeezes a portion of the juice into the pot. He now adds the pounded fangs of the labarri and counacouchi snakes,—which he generally has in store, as well as the ants. The ingredients are next boiled over a slow fire, and the scum being taken off, the liquid remains till it becomes reduced to a thick syrup of a deep brown colour. It is now fit for use. The arrows are then dipped into it, and if it is found of sufficient strength, it is poured into small pots, which are covered over with ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... things flourished. There was not room for anything to grow and if there had been the soot from the towering chimneys would soon have settled upon any venturesome leaf or flower and quickly shrivelled it beneath a cloak of cinders. Even the river was coated with a scum of oil and refuse that poured from the waste pipes of the factories into the stream and washed up along the shores which might otherwise ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... girl conversed absorbedly, with their elbows on the table. Their glasses of beer were pushed to one side, scarcely touched, with the foam on them sunken to a thin white scum. Since the stroke of one the stale pleasures of Rooney's had become renovated and spiced; not by any addition to the list of distractions, but because from that moment the sweets became stolen ones. The flattest glass of beer acquired the tang of illegality; the mildest claret ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... real movement of their nation, are fain to get their bread with tongue and pen, by retailing to 'silly women,' 'ever learning and never coming to the knowledge of the truth,' second-hand German eclecticisms, now exploded even in the country where they arose, and the very froth and scum of the Medea's caldron, in which the disjecta membra of old Calvinism are ...
— Phaethon • Charles Kingsley
... the shoes—the cobbler. Cobblers are always philosophers. Not pretty men, but thinkers. In their little, dingy shops they sit all day with their eyes down, isolated from the "hum and scum" about them, to the tune of their "tap, tap, tap," their minds are detached to think ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey
... man of sense and observation; the Marquis de la Sablonniere, a debauched noble whose patrimony was his sword; and a few of less mark,—comprised the leaders of the infant colony. The rest were soldiers, recruited from the scum of Rochelle and Rochefort; and artisans, of whom the greater part knew nothing of their pretended vocation. Add to these the miserable families and the infatuated young women, who had come to tempt fortune in the swamps and cane-brakes of ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman
... of the brook until it was no longer passable. Huge bowlders lay jammed and crowded in clefts of the mountain before them. Penn remembered the spot. He had been there in spring, when down over the rocks, now covered with lichens and dry scum, poured an impetuous torrent. ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... to the head of the pond as much as possible. It is a good thing to place some boards across the head of the pond to give shade and shelter to the fry. It will probably be found that if much artificial food is given to the little fish, a scum will be formed on the surface of the water. This scum is composed of grease, and should be removed, as soon as it is observed, with ...
— Amateur Fish Culture • Charles Edward Walker
... throat; "d'ye want yer nose punched? If you think I'm a thief, just keep it to yerself, or you'll find 'ow bloody well mistyken you are. Strike me blind if this ayn't gratitude for yer! 'Ere you come, a pore mis'rable specimen of 'uman scum, an' I tykes yer into my galley an' treats yer 'ansom, an' this is wot I get for it. Nex' time you can go to 'ell, say I, an' I've a good mind to ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... beggar!" he shouted, once he was outside the door, shaking his fist at Daubrecq's windows. "Wretch, scum of the earth, deputy, you shall pay for this!... Oh, he allows himself...! Oh, he has the cheek to...! Well, I swear to you, my fine fellow, ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... money," Braceway replied without much enthusiasm. "But there are times when it's heart-breaking work, this thing of running down the guilty, the scum of the earth, the failures, the rotters, and the rats. It isn't all a Fourth of July celebration with the bands playing and your name in ...
— The Winning Clue • James Hay, Jr.
... into your three or four gallon pot, three parts filled with cold water, and set it on the fire to boil; remove all the scum that rises to the surface, and then let it boil gently on the hob; when the meat has boiled an hour and is about half done, add the parsnips in a net, and at the end of another half hour put in the cabbages, also in a net. A piece of beef weighing five or six pounds ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... round and round and round And he sniffed at the foaming froth; When I ups with his heels and smothers his squeals In the scum of the boiling broth. ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... said familiarly as he flicked a speck of dust from his sleeve. "I think you will take the easier way. None of these scum will betray you, thinking that you are one of themselves—as I happen to know, some of the best families in Russia are associated with plotters of this type. As for the American, who might be inclined to talk, in a few weeks he will be on his ...
— The Book of All-Power • Edgar Wallace
... Care was not taken to divert those impure Gushings into their proper Channels. Hence it may be inferred, that laying open the most honorary, as well as important and useful Professions of Society, to the Intrusion, or rather pyratical Invasions, of the Scum and Dregs of the People, cannot, however varnished over with the fictitious Colourings of pretended Liberty, consist with ...
— An Essay on the Antient and Modern State of Ireland • Henry Brooke
... winter-resorts of the Florida East Coast, and he was free to go there, and wander about the lobbies and piazzas of the palatial hotels, and watch the idle rich at their diversions. A strange society they were—it seemed as if the scum of the civilization of forty-five states had been blown into this bit of back-water. Here were society women, jaded with dissipation; stock-brokers and financiers, fleeing from the strain of the "Street"; ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... called themselves sailors. Some of 'em don't seem to know the spanker boom from the jib. Of course, that isn't true of all of 'em. Perhaps half of them are fairly good men. But the rest seem to be scum and riffraff." ...
— Doubloons—and the Girl • John Maxwell Forbes
... there are Americans among us, who, knowing this, work upon this sensitive, suspicious feeling, to accomplish their own ends. The politician does it to secure votes; but the worst class is composed of those who edit papers that circulate only among the scum of society, and embittered by the sight of luxuries beyond their reach, are always ready to denounce the rich and excite the lower classes against what they call the oppression of ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... you mean the money-makingest: now listen me! our lairned Profession is a rascally one. It is like a barrel of beer. What rises to the top?" Here he paused for a moment, then answered himself furiously, "THE SCUM." ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... smelling of bilge-water and pent-up gases opened suddenly on to the larger dock. Damp flooring with wide cracks stretched off to the left; on the right the solid planking terminated suddenly in huge piles, against which the water, capped with scum and weeds, splashed fitfully. The river bank, lined with docks, seemed lulled into temporary quietness. Ferry-boats steamed at their labors farther up and down the river, but the currents of travel left here and there a ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... you kin smell money; and I swear they's kind of a scum comes over your eyes when you see it. How do you know ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... Mr Anderson," said the captain, "so at the slightest sign of danger draw back. I don't want a man to be even wounded at the expense of capturing a score of the black scum, even if one of them proves to ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... beachcomber stage of life to that of a leader of the natives in their tribal wars was a simple but natural transition, and Jim Martin, son of a convict father and mother whose forbears were of the scum of Liverpool, and knew the precincts of a prison better than the open air, followed the path ordained for him ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... really as regards the two main sections of the Labour Party?" he asked. "We are absorbing the best of them, day by day," she answered quickly. "What is left of either will be merely the scum. The people will come to us. Their discarded leaders can crawl back to obscurity. The people may follow false gods for a very long time, but they have the knack of recognising the truth when it ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... pig-iron from excess of carbon by adding broken lumps of pure hematite or magnetite iron ore. This causes a violent boiling, which is kept up until the metal becomes soft enough, when it is allowed to stand to let the metal clear from the slag which floats in scum upon the top. The separation of the slag and iron is facilitated by throwing in some lime from time to time. Spiegel, or specular iron, is then added; about 1 per cent. more than in the scrap process. From 20 to ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... ugly clamour of strident noises and hard, shrill voices, jabbering of vulgar, trivial things. A wry, desperate, cursed world, as she had called it, a pot seething with bitterness and all dreadfulness, with its Rosalinds floating on the top like scum. ...
— Dangerous Ages • Rose Macaulay
... of the scum of the earth, neither more nor less, one who had been thrown aside and forgotten. If he succeeded in recalling himself to their remembrance, it would only be the bringing up of the story of a criminal. There was the house ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... any attack on Lord Byron, and would highly relish the opportunity of abusing one who, like yourself, had been identified with all those moral enterprises which elevate the standard of humanity at large, and of womanhood in particular. After this scum had worked itself off, there must necessarily follow a controversy, none the less sharp and bitter, but not depending essentially on abuse. The first point the recusants got hold of was the error of the two years which contrived to run the gauntlet of so many ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... Hector's all too quick decease Made Pergamus an easier prey To wearied Greece. What if, as auburn Phyllis' mate, You graft yourself on regal stem? Oh yes! be sure her sires were great; She weeps for THEM. Believe me, from no rascal scum Your charmer sprang; so true a flame, Such hate of greed, could never come From vulgar dame. With honest fervour I commend Those lips, those eyes; you need not fear A rival, hurrying on to end His ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... out of date and done away with except in India where nothing changes in spite of the shiny, toy-scum stuff that people call "civilization." Any man who knows about the Bisara of Pooree will tell you what its powers are—always supposing that it has been honestly stolen. It is the only regularly working, trustworthy love-charm in ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... where, for long, dreary days, no freshening motion in the atmosphere is perceptible. 'A fire?'—yes; then why is my grate full of grey, cold ashes, and one little spark in the corner? 'A fountain springing into everlasting life?'—yes; then why in my basin is there so much scum and ooze, mud and defilement, and so little of the flashing and brilliant water? 'The power that works in us' is sorely hindered by the weakness in which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... which the water spurted up in jets at each impact of the horses' hoofs. On either hand the bayou, but a plank's thickness below the level of the float-bridge, filmed with green weeds and the bright scum of water, not too stagnant, offered surprises to the watchful eye. One could see many mud-turtles floating lazily, feet outstretched in poise; and bullfrogs and little frogs; and, in the clear places, trim and ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... gallon of apple juice, immediately as it comes from the press, add two pounds of lump sugar; boil it as long as any scum rises, then strain it through a sieve, and let it cool. Add some yeast, and stir it well; let it work in the tub for two or three weeks, or till the head begins to flatten; then skim off the head, draw off the liquor clear, and tun it. When made a year, rack it off, and fine it with isinglass. ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... to get the shadow. Mysterious it is, for a man does not ordinarily empty his pockets of gold in order to fill them with gravel. Mysterious it is, for a thirsty man will not usually turn away from the full, bubbling, living fountain, to see if he can find any drops still remaining, green with scum, stagnant and odorous, at the bottom of some broken cistern. But all these follies are sanity as compared with the folly of which we are guilty, times without number, when, having known the sweetness of Jesus Christ, we turn away to the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... when some twenty thousand diggers were drawn together, with even more than the usual proportion of grog-shanty keepers, loafers, thieves, and low men and women of every description. In fact, the very scum of the roving population of the colony seems to have accumulated in the camp; and crime upon crime was committed, until at length an affair occurred, more dreadful and outrageous than anything that had preceded it, which thoroughly roused the digger population, and a rising ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... departure instantly. "But it will be a fine story that Signor Fenshawe cables from Aden when he tells how the Governor of Massowah aided and abetted this half-crazy poltroon in onslaughts on defenseless women. It was not enough that Italian law should be misused to further his ends, but the scum of the bazaar is enlisted under his banner, and he is supported by the authorities in an act that would be reprobated by any half-savage ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... evidently his coterie. Standing outside, I heard song and ribaldry within. The heir-presumptive to the throne of the Empire was too obviously a drunken brawler; a friend and comrade of the lowest scum in Frankfort. ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... read in the sign foregoing. For what can better fit a generation for such a work, than to be themselves all turned devils, and also succourers of all foul spirits. Wherefore, they must be the wickedest of men that shall do this: the very scum of the nations, and the very vilest of people. Nor is this a new notion: God threatened to give his sanctuary 'into the hands of strangers for a prey, and to the wicked of the earth for a spoil' (Eze 7:21); To robbers, burglars, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... losing patience. 'Be silent, you scum! What do you know about gentlemen's quarrels? Leave ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... their whole flock steep in running streams, While, plunged beneath the flood, with drenched fell, The ram, launched free, goes drifting down the tide. Else, having shorn, they smear their bodies o'er With acrid oil-lees, and mix silver-scum And native sulphur and Idaean pitch, Wax mollified with ointment, and therewith Sea-leek, strong hellebores, bitumen black. Yet ne'er doth kindlier fortune crown his toil, Than if with blade of iron ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... French farce, cannot understand WHY these foolish Neapolitans should laugh and sing and shout in the manner they do, merely because they are glad to be alive. And after much dubious consideration, he decides within himself that they are all rascals—the scum of the earth—and that he and he only is the true representative of man at his best—the model of civilized respectability. And a mournful spectacle he thus seems to the eyes of us "base" foreigners—in our hearts we are sorry for him and believe that if he could manage to ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... grades of butter is renovated, or process, butter. This is obtained by purifying butter that is dirty and rancid and that contains all sorts of foreign material and then rechurning it with fresh cream or milk. The purifying process consists in melting the butter, removing the scum from the top, as well as the buttermilk, brine, and foreign materials that settle, and then blowing air through the fat to remove any odors that it might contain. Butter that is thus purified is replaced on the market, but in some states the authorities have ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... spread outwards from a miniature maelstrom where vast bubbles heaved themselves up and broke; the air was sickly with the smell of benzoline, and mingled with it were the acrid fumes of gas and burnt clothing. A dark scum gathered in widening circles, with here and there the white belly of a dead fish catching the sun: a few scraps of wreckage went by, but no sign of a man or what had once ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... who was laughing boisterously and joking a minute ago, is seen to melt, and the tears start in his eyes. I am now referring to the true Afrikander. Of course, there are many calling themselves Afrikanders who during this War have proved themselves to be the scum of the nation. I wish to keep them distinguished from the true, from the noble men belonging to this nationality of whom I shall be proud as long as I live, no matter what the result ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... least worthy members of the church are often, like Diotrephes, eager for the pre-eminence, while the best are modest and retiring. It is not always the cream that comes to the top, either in civil or religious society; it is sometimes the scum. And my readers must take these things into account while reading my story. The early Methodist churches were blessed organizations, bitterly as Wesley and Fletcher lamented their shortcomings and backslidings. ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... the south, dropped, to follow those slender windrows, Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, left ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... mortar, and scoria, and bricklayer's refuse, on one side, which the clean water nevertheless chastises to purity; but it cannot conquer the dead earth beyond: and there, circled and coiled under festering scum, the stagnant edge of the pool effaces itself into a slope of black slime, the accumulation of indolent years. Half-a-dozen men with one day's work could cleanse those pools, and trim the flowers about their banks, and make every breath of summer air above them rich with cool balm; ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... these fetters and thereafter cut away the irksome cords that bound me. Whiles this was a-doing, she (quick to mark their condition) lashed them with her tongue, giving them "loathly sots," "drunken swine," "scum o' the world" and the like epithets, all of the which they took in mighty humble fashion, knuckling their foreheads, ducking their heads with never a word and mighty glad to stumble away and be gone at flick ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... London streets ferment in full activity; While every thing around was calm and still, Except the creak of wheels, which on their pivot he Heard,—and that bee-like, bubbling, busy hum Of cities, that boil over with their scum:— ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... the offspring of white overseers—and it is a notorious fact that a majority of our professional "nigger-drivers" were from the North. This is no reflection on the character of the Northern people—these fellows were simply the feculent scum, the excrementitious offscourings of civilization. And now I remember that a second-cousin of mine in Kentucky has an overseer from Ohio named Otis. A very thrifty and choleric man was my cousin, and considering a yaller nigger less valuable than a black one, he threatened ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... was digesting the soggy, sweet griddle-cakes which he had eaten for breakfast, and revolving in his mind two errands for his wife—one, a pail of lard; the other, three yards of black dress braid; he was considering the surface scum of existence, that which pertained solely to his own petty share of it; the girl, the clear residue of life which was, and had been, and would be. Each was on the way to humble labor for daily bread, but with a difference ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... several miles under a burning sun, in a region where not a drop of water could be found. When I finally reached it, the only water to be found was in a small, stagnant pool, covered with a green scum nearly an inch in thickness. Warm, brackish, and fever-laden as that water was, I had never before tasted any thing half so sweet. Again, while crossing the Great Plains in 1860, I underwent a severe and prolonged thirst, only quenching it with the bitter ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... of heavy hummocky ice showing evidence of great pressure, but contained also many thick, flat floes evidently formed in some sheltered bay and never subjected to pressure or to much motion. The swirl of the ship's wash brought diatomaceous scum from the sides of this ice. The water became thick with diatoms at 9 a.m., and I ordered a cast to be made. No bottom was found at 210 fathoms. The 'Endurance' continued to advance southward through loose pack that morning. We saw the spouts of numerous whales ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... have to choose between the yoke of law and the iron yoke of lawlessness—is illustrated in the story of almost all violent revolutions. They run the same course. First a nation rises up against intolerable oppression, then revolution devours its own children, and the scum rises to the top of the boiling pot. Then comes, in the language of the picturesque historian of the French Revolution, the type of them all—then comes at the end 'the whiff of grapeshot' and the despot. First the government of a mob, and then the tyranny of an emperor, crush ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... father," said the Citizen Morot quietly. "No titles here, if you please. Tell me, are you quite sure of this scum—this Lerac?" ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... and priggery, as well as blood-and-thunder, those lads round the table d'hote at Strasburg, where Jung-Stilling noticed the entrance of a certain tall, Apolline young man answering to the name of Goethe. Rubbish, of course; but rubbish necessary, yes, every empty bubble and scum and mess thereof, for the making of a great literary period—nay, of a great man of letters. And when, nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine times, there results neither one nor the other, why, there has been the talking itself—exciting ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee
... weight of your Rasberries in fine Sugar, and take some Rasberries and bruise them a little; then take the clearest of the bruised Rasberries, I mean the Juice and the weight of it in Sugar, and your other Sugar named before, and boil it, and scum it, then put in your whole Rasberries, and boil them up once, then let them stand over the fire without boiling till you see it will Jelly, and that it look clear, then take up your Rasberries one by one, and put ...
— The Queen-like Closet or Rich Cabinet • Hannah Wolley
... "O scum of the earth!" cried Sancho at this, "O miserable, spiteful enchanters! O that I could see you all strung by the gills, like sardines on a twig! Ye know a great deal, ye can do a great deal, and ye do a great deal more. It ought to have been enough ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... expansion they would not otherwise have attained. If we can imagine a philosophical auricula falling into a train of theoretical meditation on its original and natural nutriment, till it should work itself up into a profound abomination of bullock's blood, sugar-baker's scum, and other unnatural ingredients of that rich composition of soil which had brought it to perfection[2.1], and insist on being planted in common earth, it would have all the advantage of natural theory ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... blazed the Marquis, unable longer to contain himself. "Am I to have my ears offended by this braying? Miserable scum, you shall be taught what ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... bond of love which Nature makes. Whence in the second circle have their nest Dissimulation, witchcraft, flatteries, Theft, falsehood, simony, all who seduce To lust, or set their honesty at pawn, With such vile scum as these. The other way Forgets both Nature's general love, and that Which thereto added afterwards gives birth To special faith. Whence in the lesser circle, Point of the universe, dread seat of Dis, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... continued, turning abruptly upon Hassen. "You would know whence sprang that evil weed of a Republic! I will tell you. It was the work of foreign spies working with foreign gold amongst the outcasts and scum of Theos. It was not the choice of the people. It was the word of sedition, of cunning bribery, the vile underhand efforts of foreign politicians seeking to weaken by treachery a country they dared not, small though it is, provoke ...
— The Traitors • E. Phillips (Edward Phillips) Oppenheim
... come none of it wi' me!" roared Smith, in a voice of amazing gruffness, and shook an artificially dirtied fist under the Chinaman's nose. "Get inside and gimme an' my mate a couple o' pipes. Smokee pipe, you yellow scum—savvy?" ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... dumpled hag, stood snuffling by, With her three frowsy blowsy brats o' babes, The scum o' the Kennel, cream o' the filth-heap—Faugh! Aie, aie, aie, aie! [Greek: otototototoi], ('Stead which we blurt out, Hoighty toighty now)— And the baker and candlestick maker, and Jack and Gill. Blear'd Goody this and queasy Gaffer that, Ask the Schoolmaster, Take Schoolmaster first. He saw ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... distant Thunder hem, Maryland! The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum. Maryland! She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb— Hnzza! she spurns the Northern scum! She breathes—she burns! she'll come! she'll come! Maryland! ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... awe and fear, concerning the extraordinary knowledge and power of the conjurer, a character peculiar to all times and all ages made his appearance, and soon joined them. This was one of those circulating, unsettled vagabonds, whom, like scum, society, whether agitated or not, is always sure to throw on the surface. The comical miscreant no sooner made his appearance than, like Liston, when coming on the stage, he was greeted with a ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... roved to me, as if he were about to signal to me to let loose; and I half-started forward, releasing the mangled foot under my foot. I was for leaping to complete that half-formed wish of Pilate and to sweep away in blood and cleanse the court of the wretched scum that howled ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... Purple, you graceless scum, let me tell you that we will stand no reference to the ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... this," said Rainer as they hurried through the gardens. "A week ago I got a cable from Paris saying that a kidnapping gang were after Dorothy. I'm a millionaire, and the scum are after ransom. I cabled to McNeill, my Paris agent, to come right here with half a dozen of the best detectives in France, scooped up Mr. Buist of the New York police,"—he nodded towards the short, clean-shaven, grimy man—"borrowed a yacht, ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson
... not confined to the civil government and the courts of law; the army, too, was infected. In the ranks were to be found hired foreigners, unwilling peasants dragged from their farms, and the scum of the city slums. Thousands deserted every year. Had the discontented troops been well commanded, they might still have answered the purpose. But such was not the case. There were certainly enough officers—an average of one general for every 157 privates. But what officers ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... and Dutch, deserters and outlaws, the scum of their nations, made the rich merchant and treasure ships of Spain their prey, slaughtering their crews, torturing them for hidden wealth, rioting with profuse prodigality at their lurking-places on land, and turning those fair tropical islands into a pandemonium of outrage, ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... Of the town, For now is your time or never: Shall your fears Or your cares Cast you down? Hang your wealth And your health, Get renown. We are all undone for ever, Now the King and the crown Are tumbling down, And the realm doth groan with disasters; And the scum of the land Are the men that command, And our ...
— Cavalier Songs and Ballads of England from 1642 to 1684 • Charles Mackay
... sad for some time, Roger, ... come with me to Brussels.... We can make some splendid speculations there. Now-a-days if the aristocracy don't turn their attention to business once in a while, they will be completely swept out by the moneyed scum of the period. Let us make a venture: I hear of twenty acres of land for sale, bordering on the Northern Railroad—there is a clear gain of a hundred thousand francs as soon as the road is finished; I offer you half—it ...
— The Cross of Berny • Emile de Girardin
... of the latter half of the distance was through a low, slimy swamp land, giving rank growth to an almost continuous forest of sycamore, cottonwood, and other trees which love a damp, alluvial soil, whose massive trunks were yet foul and unsightly with filth and scum deposited by the receding waters at the subsidence of the river's great spring freshet a month before. Stagnant ponds and mimic lagoons lay all about us and in our very pathway, some of the deeper ones, however, rudely bridged. Very rapid progress was impossible. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 4, October, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... able to observe the state of things on board they discovered that the brig was in a very bad state of discipline. The crew were a worthless set of vagabonds, the scum of some Spanish port, pirates, slavers, and cut-throats of all descriptions. The officers tried to get obeyed but could not, and at last seemed to give it up as a bad job; some of them, indeed, were very little better than the men. The brig consequently was constantly getting into irons ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... porters, loafers, and the scum, Who have no sense for the diviner weeds, Who drink their muddy beer and muddier rum, Insatiate, like dogs in all ...
— Pipe and Pouch - The Smoker's Own Book of Poetry • Various
... out for Caraquet, with the road choked with snow, even if I could have got by Macartney's garrison at the Halfway. Crossing Lac Tremblant, that by to-morrow would be lying sweetly level under a treacherous scum of lolly and drifted snow, ready to drown us all like Thompson,—I cursed and put that out of the question. That lake that was no lake offered about as good a thoroughfare as rats get in a rain-barrel. Whereas, to hold Macartney at La Chance till ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... outside, and Adelaide (always loquacious), exclaimed, "Here comes the General and his staff!" The words were scarcely uttered before the men jumped from their seats and dashed from the room. We were afterwards convinced that they were some of the scum of Sherman's army, and while we (myself and daughters) were sitting quite unsuspectingly, they were ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... powerful arms swung her lusty broom aloft. "I'll teach you, you scallawag!" Thwack fell the broom, and, releasing Joan, the man sought to protect his head with his arms. "I'll give you a dose you won't fergit, you scum o' creation!" Thwack went the broom again. "Wait till the folks hear tell o' this, you miser'ble, miser'ble cur!" Again the broom fell, and the man turned to flee. "You'd run, would you? Git a fork, Miss Joan!" With a surprising rush the fat creature ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... at the rear may be entirely empty in dry seasons; and after heavy rains may contain a depth of 2 feet. This water now has a greasy looking scum and a ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... history of the barnacle, which traced the lineage of the bird to one of the pedunculated cirripedes, and the lineage of the cirripede to a log of wood. The puffin feeds its young, say the islanders, on an oily scum of the sea, which renders it such an unwieldy mass of fat, that about the time when it should be beginning to fly, it becomes unable to get out of its hole. The parent bird, not in the least puzzled, however, treats the case medicinally, and,—like mothers of another two-legged ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... a tax, because everything is taxed from which the loaf proceeds. In several cases the tax amounts to more than one half of what you pay for the article itself; these taxes go in part to support sinecure placemen and pensioners; and the ruffians of the hired press call you the scum of society, and deny that you have any right to show your faces at any public meeting to petition for a reform, or for the removal of any ...
— Political Pamphlets • George Saintsbury
... for what we do, what would happen to the District.... The lower scum would conquer—those wild-eyed mechanics and common laborers who read the Valencian newspapers and talk about equality all the time. And they would divide up the orchards, and demand that the product of the harvests—thousands and thousands of duros ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... nor has that been your state of mind in listening; but I intended that his many noble achievements might obtain an ever memorable glory in your souls. Who would not feel inclined to make mention of his senators?—how without giving offence he removed the scum that had come to the surface from the factions, how by this very act he exalted the remainder, magnified it by increasing the property requirement, and enriched it by grants of money; how he voted on ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. 4 • Cassius Dio
... blessing it is for us to have, as we may have, a source of joy, frozen by no winter, dried up by no summer, muddied and corrupted by no iridescent scum of putrefaction which ever mantles over the stagnant ponds of earthly joys! Like some citadel that has an unfailing well in its courtyard, we may have a fountain of gladness within ourselves which nothing that touches ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... The lull was over; the south-west wind had begun sighing through the trees again, and gorgeous clouds were piled up from the horizon into the pale blue. She stood by the river watching its grey stream, edged by a scum of torn-off twigs and floating leaves, watched the wind shivering through the spoiled plume-branches of the willows. And, standing there, she had a sudden longing for her father; he alone could help her—just a little—by his quietness, and his ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... to the astonishment of all her backers, Saint Sophy, opening wide her wooden jaws, Like to a pair of German walnut-crackers, Began), "I did not think you had been thus,— O monk of little faith! Is it because A rascal scum of filthy Cossack heathen Besiege our town, that you distrust in ME, then? Think'st thou that I, who in a former day Did walk across the Sea of Marmora (Not mentioning, for shortness, other seas),— That I, who ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... visions come, Save yon exiguous pool's conferva-scum, - No concave vast repeats the tender hue That laves my ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... the water, and add the well-beaten white of an egg (this must be done before the mixture is heated). Then put on the fire in a strong saucepan. Remove all scum as it rises, and when the syrup begins to look clear, take off the fire and strain through muslin. Put the syrup back into the saucepan and let it boil quickly until you find by testing it that it is done. Then add the juice of the lemon and pour on to a buttered dish. Before the mixture sets cut ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... chose for the enforcement of this cruel order. A driving blizzard had raged throughout the night, and the snow had banked up in drifts in places many feet deep. The temperature was freezing, and the strong east wind cut like a knife. It was Ames's desire to teach these scum a needed lesson, and he had chosen to enlist the elements to aid him ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... clowns and jugglers, who made glass balls appear and disappear surprisingly; there were doorways decorated with curious invitations, gossipy barber shops, where, through the liberality of politicians, the scum of a great city was shaved, curled and painted free; and there were public houses, where vagabond slaves and sexless priests drank the mulled wine of Crete, supped on the flesh of beasts slaughtered in the arena, or watched the Syrian women twist to the ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... simultaneously throughout the whole world; but notwithstanding the wrecks it caused, such was the saving already, so healthy was the general situation of business, that, after having thrown out a little scum, the current of affairs resumed its course until 1861, and discounts had already reached the amount of $696,000,000. This amount is greater than that we have noted in 1857, but at that time (whilst the movement continued ...
— A Brief History of Panics • Clement Juglar
... somebody. How to get rid of this taint was a problem which our statesmen found it difficult to solve. In times of war they mitigated the evil by filling the ranks of our armies from the gaols, and manning our navies by the help of the press-gang, but in times of peace the scum ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... The scum of my kitchen! You will make me hate the mischief-making hussy. She shall pack out of the house ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... of people, ain't you?' said Uriah, in the same low voice, and breaking out into a clammy heat, which he wiped from his forehead, with his long lean hand, 'to buy over my clerk, who is the very scum of society,—as you yourself were, Copperfield, you know it, before anyone had charity on you,—to defame me with his lies? Miss Trotwood, you had better stop this; or I'll stop your husband shorter than will be pleasant to you. I won't know ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... strainer, but not too hard, only the clear juice. Take the weight of the juice in fine sugar; boil the sugar candy-height, and put in your juice, and let it scald awhile, but not boil; and if any froth arise, scum it off, and when you take it up, have ready a white preserved quince cut in small slices, and lay them in the bottom of your glasses, and pour your jelly to them, it will candy on the top and keep moist on the bottom ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... roared. "Yield to you, you cut-throat scum? You shall have my sword if you will come for it, but you shall have ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... exchange, which, like the alternate push Of waves conflicting, breaks the learned scum, And defecates the ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... I was the first man there, honey, and there are things you see, that you can't ever make anybody else understand. She loved him Elnora, she just made an idol of him. There was that oozy green hole, with the thick scum broke, and two or three big bubbles slowly rising that were the breath of his body. There she was in spasms of agony, and beside her the great heavy log she'd tried to throw him. I can't ever forgive her for turning against ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... land, we played cards as our coaches passed through famine-stricken villages. The reckoning came. Our punishment was not given into the hands of the bourgeois, who would have dealt justly, but to the scum, the canaille, the demons of the earth. Had our King, had our nobility, been men with the old fire, they would not have stood it. They were worn out with centuries of catering to themselves. Give me a man who ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... children and men, young and old, beggars in sordid rags, beside the shameful poor in threadbare frock-coats, all the waifs and strays of the daily shipwrecks of Paris life, all the laziness and vice, and ill-luck and injustice which the torrent rolls on, and throws off like scum. Some slept on, quite annihilated, with the faces of corpses. Others, lying on their backs with mouths agape, snored loudly as if still venting the plaint of their sorry life. And others tossed restlessly, still struggling in their slumber against fatigue and cold ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... mother is a fool, you are none the less, bound to treat her with humanity. Why did you come here tonight so insolently? 'Give us our rights, but don't dare to speak in our presence. Show us every mark of deepest respect, while we treat you like the scum of the earth.' The miscreants have written a tissue of calumny in their article, and these are the men who seek for truth, and do battle for the right! 'We do not beseech, we demand, you will get no thanks from us, because you will be acting to satisfy your own conscience!' ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... approach to the Chase lay through twenty miles of glorious forest, filled with fallow deer and wild bulls. The house itself, dating from the time of the Plantagenets, was surrounded by a moat covered with broad lilies and floating green scum. Magnificent peacocks sunned themselves on the terraces, while from the surrounding shrubberies there rose the soft murmur of doves, pigeons, bats, owls ...
— Winsome Winnie and other New Nonsense Novels • Stephen Leacock
... that the Imperial Government only troubled itself about the corps d'elite; that the object in the line regiments was to get substitutes as cheaply as possible; consequently, they are filled with men physically and morally the scum of the nation. Semaphore telegraphs have been put up on all the high public buildings. There are also semaphores on the forts. I see that one opposite me is exchanging signals. The crowd watch them as though by looking they would discover ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... roof were murderers and women of the town; and in the morning, when the cell-doors were opened, the scum of the earth, as one authority tells us, collected in the corridor. On each side of this corridor (the only place where the prisoners could take exercise) were small cells, and one of these, separated only by thin walls from the most depraved beings, whose vile language ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 6 of 8 • Various
... drain itself dry may save time, but it will be at the expense of the polish. Spread the dishes out on the table to cool—piling them while hot injures the glaze—and put away the first washing before commencing on the heavy, greasy things. The washing water must be changed as soon as a greasy scum collects around the ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... city crowd gathered about the fighting men and a second later the slum saloon in front of which they were battling, emptied its filthy scum into the street, all anxious to enjoy the combat. Some of the plingers amongst this riff-raff must have recognized their mate, and thinking that the trouble was merely a case of a street beggar insulting a citizen, and noting that this one wore the ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... humming preparatory to their attacks. Add these new trials to the groans of the dying, which, during my residence on board, never ceased, and at night were more awful and painfully distinct. The nurses were all men, obtained from the scum of the sea-ports, for no others would volunteer for the duty—a set of brutes indifferent to the sufferings of others. As long as they were, during the day, superintended and watched by the officers, they did their duty, but at night the neglect was ...
— Borneo and the Indian Archipelago - with drawings of costume and scenery • Frank S. Marryat
... metal is cast into bricks. Here the stealing of ore by workmen is particularly prevalent, and even the searching by the trusty at the gate not entirely effective, for even the skimming off of the scum leaves the floor scattered with chips of silver with a high percentage of gold which even the American in charge cannot always keep the men from concealing. Hence there occurs periodically the scene we were ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... Roman government. In this field too it was Cato, of course, who took the lead as the vigorous champion of his native country against the foreigners. The Greek literati and physicians were in his view the most dangerous scum of the radically corrupt Greek people,(72) and the Roman "ballad- singers" are treated by him with ineffable contempt.(73) He and those who shared his sentiments have been often and harshly censured ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... later 'The Thimble' disappeared in a cloud of grayish vapor, the dull sound of an explosion filled the ear, and the ground under our feet trembled. There was nothing to be seen, even with the glass, save a light scum covering the water and some fragments of charred tree branches. But the air about us was full of a fine dust that powdered Betty's hair, as though for a costume ball, and made me ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... forced by art, and are so ready to lapse into barbarity. This, among the Romans, was the raillery of slaves, of which we have many instances in Plautus. It seemeth to have been introduced among us by Cromwell, who, by preferring the scum of the people, made it a court-entertainment, of which I have heard many particulars; and, considering all things were turned upside down, it was reasonable and judicious; although it was a piece of policy found out to ridicule a point of honour in the other extreme, ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... association without immediately dragging it down, and running the risk of degradation. It is just like a drop of quicksilver which you cannot expose to the air but instantaneously its brightness is dimmed by the scum that forms on its surface. A church as an outward institution is exposed to all the dangers to which other institutions are exposed. And these creep on insensibly, as this abuse had crept on. So it is not enough that we should be at ease in our consciences in regard to our practices ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. John Chapters I to XIV • Alexander Maclaren
... didn't pay a shilling I lost in my life! It's deuced hard, when a fellow is on the square like that, to make two ends meet when he comes across defaulters. Those fellows should be hung. They're the very scum of the earth. Talk of welchers! They're worse than any welcher. Welcher is a thing you needn't have to do with if you're careful. But when a fellow turns round upon you as a defaulter at cards, there is no getting rid of ...
— Mr. Scarborough's Family • Anthony Trollope
... trough, which conducts it into a vat, where it is dosed with quicklime to neutralize its acid, and is then run off into large heated metal vessels. At this stage the smell is abominable, and the turbid fluid, with a thick scum upon it, is simply disgusting. After a preliminary heating and skimming it is passed off into iron pans, several in a row, and boiled and skimmed, and ladled from one to the other till it reaches the last, which is nearest to the fire, and there it boils with the greatest ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... her gracious hand are seen The dregs and scum of earth and seas, Her kindness counting all things clean That lend the ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... great figures who had led the Parisian democracy through massacre to its triumph,—Danton, Robespierre, Marat. And of the three it was Marat who worked deepest on her imagination, Marat always baying for {189} blood, always scenting fresh victims, always corrupting opinion with his scum of printer's ink and poison. To Charlotte Corday it appeared that in this one individual all that was noble and beautiful in the Revolution was converted into all that was hideous and ignoble; and she slowly began to perceive that even a feeble woman like herself could remove that blot from France, ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... using his skill and adroitness; he loved to present the smouldering and flashing of passions, the thrill and sting of which he had never known. Saved as he was by his temperament alike from deep suffering and tense emotion, and from any vital mingling either with the scum and foam or with the stagnancy and mire of life, the books remain as a brilliant illusion, with much of the shifting hues and changing glimmer of his own ardent and restless mind rippling over the surface of a depth which ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... to serve in the army, and this meant a lifetime, or at least twenty-five years, of the most abject slavery imaginable. This grievous measure caused the utmost misery. No Jewish youth leaving home could be sure of returning and seeing his dear ones again. The scum of the Jewish population (poimshchiki, or "catchers") made it their profession to ensnare helpless young men or poor itinerant students suspected of the Haskalah heresy, destroy their passports, and deliver them up as poimaniki (recruits), ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... has been given up. What can be done when the fire is sweeping along a mile broad, and the heat is so great that there is no standing within a hundred yards of it? All the soldiers are there, and the magistrates and the guards, and all the rest of them, but all that can be done is to prevent the scum of the city from sacking and plundering. Scores of men have been scourged and some beheaded, but it is no easy matter to keep down the mob. There are parties of guards in every street. The whole of the Praetorians are under arms, but the terror ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... could be permanent; that any song or story could live to give delight in future ages. But literature is like a river in flood, which gradually purifies itself in two ways,—the mud settles to the bottom, and the scum rises to the top. When we examine the writings that by common consent constitute our literature, the clear stream purified of its dross, we find at least two more qualities, which we call the tests of literature, and which determine ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... and as he gave chapter and verse for his statements, he succeeded in covering the Brethren with ridicule. He accused them of blasphemy and indecency. They spoke of Christ as a Tyburn bird, as digging for roots, as vexed by an aunt, and as sitting in the beer-house among the scum of society. They sang hymns to the devil. They revelled in the most hideous and filthy expressions, chanted the praises of lust and sensuality, and practised a number of sensual abominations too loathsome to be described. At one service ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... sherbet, ices and pastry bearing their trays and barrels through the crowd with strange cries and the jingling of bells; the friars of every order in their various habits, the street-musicians, the half-naked lazzaroni, cripples and beggars, who fringed the throng like the line of scum edging a fair lake;—this medley of sound and colour, which in fact resembled some sudden growth of the fiery soil, was an expressive comment ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... brought his clenched fist crashing down upon the table, while his dark eyes glowed with a fierce and passionate resentment. "For men like de Cambray there is only one caste—the noblesse, one religion—the Catholic, one creed—adherence to the Bourbons. All else is scum, trash, beneath contempt, hardly human! Oh! if you knew how I loathe these people!" he continued, speaking volubly and in a voice shaking with suppressed excitement. "They have learnt nothing, these aristocrats, nothing, I tell you! the ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... In one month from now the news would have spread; and as long as the gold lasted, this place would be turned from a Paradise into a horror. The scum of the American population would float here, with all the lawlessness that was in California in its early days. Drinking-bars and gambling-saloons would rise like mushrooms; and where now all is beauty and peace, there ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... of thoughtful patriots to their country's service, but to the exaltation and glorification of plausible windbags."[592] "The panacea of Labour representation will not remedy those defects. It is in the eternal nature of things that in the electoral competition of rival personalities the scum must rise to the top. So long as self-seeking is rewarded by the highest honours self-seeking will flourish."[593] "A Parliament of Labour members would develop just the same tendency as any other to division into parties commanded by rival ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... easily spare the money, without risk of future repentance; and she went on to infer that in such a case "Mr. Croftangry had grown a rich man in foreign parts, and was free of his troubles with messengers and sheriff-officers, and siclike scum of the earth, and Shanet MacEvoy's mother's daughter be a blithe woman to hear it. But if Mr. Croftangry was in trouble, there was his room, and his ped, and Shanet to wait on him, and tak payment ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... on his knees in the yard, greasing a pair of leather carriage-aprons, while his wife, sunken-lipped and fierce-eyed, stood in the kitchen doorway, abusing him for a profligate, a swine, and the scum of the earth. Gorseth lay there on all-fours, with the sun shining on his bald head, smearing on the grease; but every now and then he would lift his head and snarl out, "Hold your jaw, you ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... slouch hat, pulled now far over his eyes, he searched the faces around him. If he had been asked to pick the actors for a revel from the scum of the underworld, he could not have improved upon the gathering. There were perhaps a hundred men and women in the room, the majority dancing, and, with the exception of a few sight-seeing slummers, they were men and women whose acquaintance with the police was intimate ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... as habit reconciled the visitor to the din, the oaths and objurgations, together with the words "cheat, liar, knave," &c. &c., separated themselves from the rest of the conversation, and swam like a sort of scum upon the top of the buzz. Though all were met there for enjoyment, too, it is worthy of remark, that many of the countenances around bore strong marks of fierce and angry passions, disappointment, hatred, revenge; and many a flushed ...
— The King's Highway • G. P. R. James
... compare my rude singing with that divine voice? Scum of the earth! Toads! And I never divined that they were doing to him here what was done to ...
— Chantecler - Play in Four Acts • Edmond Rostand |
