"Smudge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... possibilities, it was with the most intense and absorbing interest that I watched the plate under the action of the developer. Presently I saw a faint smudge of black appear in the upper part, and after that others, indistinct and wavering of outline. I held the negative up to the light. The marks were rather small, and were almost entirely confined to one end of the plate, but as ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... stair-opening came the head of Mrs. Kantor, disheveled and a smudge of soot across her face, but beneath her arm, triumphant, a violin of one string and a ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... difficult to keep their countenance, and, with one voice, they exploded into a boisterous fit of laughter. Lady Feng as well could not help feeling amused, and smilingly she upbraided her. "You stupid wench!" she said; "Have you by gorging lost your eyesight that you recklessly smudge your mistress' face?" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... horizon appeared a smudge of smoke, which grew and spread until those with glasses could perceive beneath it the low, dark lines of a man-of-war. It was true then! Some had permitted themselves to doubt the story spread so industriously by Monsieur Pelletan and ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... the usual narrow sheet of plate glass at the back of the sideboard, and to this Mr. Bultitude walked, almost under protest, and with a cold dignity. It occurred to him that he might have a smudge on his face or something wrong with his collar and tie—something to account to some extent for his son's frivolous and insulting behaviour. No suspicion of the terrible truth crossed ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... conserving the earth's heat, which could be accomplished by covering plants with cloth, straw, newspaper, or perhaps better still, modern weather-proof sheeting, or in still another way by a cover of moistened dense smoke, generally called a smudge. A second method would be by means of direct application of heat; and this is accomplished in orange groves by means of improved orchard heaters. Large fires waste heat and are neither economical nor effective. A third method would be based upon a mixing of the air ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... take out the temite ore, I imagine," said Kincaide, picking up a loose fragment of rock. He pointed to a smudge of soft, crumbly gray metal, greasy in appearance, showing on the surface of the specimen he had picked up. "That's the stuff, sir, that's causing us all this trouble: nearly pure metallic temite." He ...
— Priestess of the Flame • Sewell Peaslee Wright
... are beyond shouting distance, it is much quicker than telephoning to build a clear, hot fire and cover it with green stuff or rotten wood so that it will send up a solid column of black smoke. By spreading and lifting a blanket over this smudge the column can be cut up into pieces, long or short (this is the way it explains it in the book, but it doesn't sound plausible to me), and by a preconcerted code these can be made ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... ground, rolling over twice, each time clawing at the earth, and then remained still, about four feet from me, in a sort of sitting position. I called to him, "Are you hurt badly, Jock?" but no answer. He was dead. A dark, red smudge was coming through his tunic right under the heart. The blood ran down his bare knees, making a horrible sight. On his right side he carried his water bottle. I was crazy for a drink and tried to ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... second time the King shouted angrily, "Smudge and blazes!" and at a third ring he screamed in a fury, "Hippikaloric!" which must be a dreadful word because we don't know what ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... said. "I have it—and those three fellows had it, too. We've overrun 'em. They've turned off, below, and I'll wager they're making for that smudge! Remember that smudge on the map—what looked to be another 'G. H.,' in capital letters? Well, sir, if that sign isn't 'G. W.' instead of 'G. H.' I'll miss my guess. 'G. W.'—'Golden West'! How does that strike you? It's yonder in the new ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... the battling sea-things which fought for the corpse of their comrade. To them it must have seemed a miracle that I should be able to stand at thrice the range of the most powerful javelin-thrower and with a loud noise and a smudge of smoke slay one of their number with ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... already I had shot away on the steepest glide that I dared to attempt, my engine still full on, the flying propeller and the force of gravity shooting me downwards like an aerolite. Far behind me I saw a dull, purplish smudge growing swiftly smaller and merging into the blue sky behind it. I was safe out of the deadly ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the wall and placed it on the easel and stood back, examining it critically. His face lighted and he hummed softly, gazing at the rough outline.... Slowly, in the smudge of the vague face, gleaming eyes formed themselves—Giorgione's eyes! They looked out at him, ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... a blur of flying trees, then came the grandstand, a mere smudge of color, a sea of dimly seen faces and a roar that was like that of ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... rolled down that lady's august nose, and involuntarily she put up her hand to brush it away. This produced such an all-over smudge on the ink-spotted face that the girls burst into uncontrollable laughter, and the unfortunate teacher rushed ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... mare for the cow-boy camp below the cliff. Half a dozen men lounged round a smudge fire. The old man paused to sort out the scene; the box of a gramaphone laid out for a card table, a bottle of whiskey in the centre, two empty bottles with candles stuck in the necks for lights, a dull smudge fire, four rough fellows sprawling on the ground, one with corduroy velveteen ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... he, grinning, 'you'd better tell her straight off it's bosh, and then she's not likely to make a fool of herself again. Hullo, though, I say,' he exclaimed, picking up a paper in front of him, every smudge and blot of which I knew only too well, 'why, she's at it again. ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... fairly comfortably by putting some straw under our buffalo robes, and our clothes as pillows. The men had to make their couch under the carriage with whatever cloaks we didn't want, to keep the dew off them; and by lighting a large "smudge" to keep off the mosquitoes, we all slept pretty well, though Mother Earth is very unrelenting. If, however, we wanted to change our position we were sure to awake. The following morning, Tuesday, the men ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... ourselves with drinking-coconuts, while a cowboy rode a dozen miles to the nearest telephone and summoned a machine from town. The town itself we could see, the Lakanaii metropolis of Olokona, a smudge of smoke on the shore-line, as we looked down across the miles of cane-fields, the billow-wreathed reef-lines, and the blue haze of ocean to where the island of Oahu shimmered like a dim opal ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... disclosed the owner's presence aboard for an hour or two. That was all, however; and the cliff-watchers at Shotover House and the Fells looked seaward in vain for the big Siwanoa, as yacht after yacht, heralded by the smudge on the horizon, turned from a gray speck to a white one, and crept in from ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... a delegation of his fellow-citizens, to wit: Cap'n Aaron Sproul, first selectman of the town; Hiram Look, Zeburee Nute, constable; and a nervous little man with a smudge of smut on the side of his nose—identity and occupation revealed by the lettering on ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... was brief; but it told what he wanted: gold to buy a riding outfit, his pistols which Perkins had taken from him, and news of Bill's well-being. When the paper would hold no more and hold it legibly, he folded it carefully so that it would not smudge, and gave ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... to remember, but the names of all those who had given parties during the holidays danced confusedly before his eyes. He could ask Mrs. Nolak, but on looking out the window he saw that the shop was dark. Mrs. Nolak had already faded out, a little black smudge far ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... Shafter, you're a Judge— At least you were when last I knew of you; And if the people since have made you budge I did not notice it. I've much to do Without endeavoring to follow, through The miserable squabbles, dust and smudge, The fate of even the veteran contenders Who fight with flying colors and suspenders. Being a Judge, 'tis natural and wrong That you should villify the public press— Save while you are a candidate. That song Is easy quite to sing, and ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... head for?" Shann kept private his personal doubts of their success. The outmost tip of that chain was only a distant smudge lying low on ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... kind of shifting appears in what is called "fluctuation of attention". Make a light gray smudge on a white sheet of paper, and place this at such a distance that the gray will be barely distinguishable from the white {255} background. Looking steadily at the smudge, you will find it to disappear and reappear periodically. ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth
... dressing-table and peered into the mirror. It must be said she saw a girl whom under other circumstances she would hardly have recognized. Her heavy hair was dishevelled. Her long, blue broadcloth ulster was stained with salt water and altogether out of shape. A great black smudge ran along her cheek, and on her chin ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... their houses, which always seemed divided by absurd distances, and the faces of the negro cooks who met me at the kitchen steps and relieved me of my burden. In the beginning I was accompanied on my rounds by a fat, smudge-nosed youth some six or eight years my senior, who smoked vile tobacco and enlivened the way by villainous abuses of John Chitling and the universe. For the first months, I fear, my outlook upon the customers I served was largely coloured by his narratives, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... the virtuous Toinon turned her red and swollen eyes to a miserable photograph hanging against the wall. This blotchy smudge portrayed an exceedingly ugly, dissipated-looking young man, afflicted with a terrible squint, and whose repulsive mouth was partially concealed by a faint mustache. This rake of the barrieres was Polyte ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... I followed the woman into one of the apartments to superintend the cooking of the eggs. It was a mere den, with an earth floor. A fire of twigs was kindled against the farther wall, and a little girl, half-naked, carrying a baby still more economically clad, was stooping down to blow the smudge into a flame. The smoke, some of it, went over our heads out at the door. We boiled the eggs. We desired salt; and the woman brought us pepper in the berry. We insisted on salt, and at length got the rock variety, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Tyrian, one of the old ten-gun brigs which carried the mails, slow and uncomfortable at the best, unseaworthy death-traps in a storm. As she lay rolling in a flat calm with flapping sails, a few hundred miles from England, a smear appeared on the western horizon. The smear grew to a smudge, the smudge to a shape, and soon there steamed up alongside the Sirius, a steamer which had successfully crossed the Atlantic, and was now on her return to England. The captain of the Tyrian determined to send his mails on board. Howe accompanied them, took a glass of champagne ...
— The Tribune of Nova Scotia - A Chronicle of Joseph Howe • W. L. (William Lawson) Grant
... luncheon?' she said, with a sly archness, looking none the less bewitching for a smudge or two on her lovely face, or the blackness of the delicate hands which she held up like two paws ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... is often innocent and romantic; it captivates us with its youthful spell. But it has no structure with which to resist the shocks of fortune, which it goes out so jauntily to meet. It turns only too often into vulgarity and worldliness. A snow-flake is soon a smudge, and there is a deeper purity in the diamond. Happiness is hidden from a free and casual will; it belongs rather to one chastened by a long education and unfolded in an atmosphere of sacred and perfected institutions. It is discipline that ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... he had once rescued from fire endlessly pranced. "This used to be my bank, when I was a little chap," he said. "Like a magpie, I always hid the things I valued most in a hole I made under the third smudge to the left, on Spot Cash's breast. 'Spot Cash' is the old boy's name, you know! When I won the bet and took the ring home, I had a fancy to keep it in this hidie hole, for luck, till I could find the Girl. Mother knew. She was with me at the time. But I was half ashamed ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of Mary, but just as they were all wondering with regard to her absence, the door was opened, and a girl, with a smudge on her face and her hat pushed crooked on her head, entered the room. She held her little sketch-book ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... in that grass, burning some of it for a smudge to keep mosquitoes at bay, and an hour after dawn, reaching rising ground again, realized that we had our quarry within ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... barn George and Louise stood, not daring to talk. She was not particularly comely and there was a black smudge on the side of her nose. George thought she must have rubbed her nose with her finger after she had been handling some ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... On the envelope itself was some iron sulphate under more gum. I carefully sealed the letter, using very little moisture. The gum then separated the two prepared parts. Now if that letter were steamed open the tannin and the sulphate would come together, run, and leave a smudge. You see the blots? ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... him. He stared at them, fairly pouring his gaze upon them. They were beautiful, as the hands of a great lady should be kept, and it was all the more wonderful then that the right should have across the back of it a faint gray smudge, so tiny that only an eye like his, and a concentrated gaze like his, ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and smudge of words, from which adjectives darted out like dim flame amidst smoke. "Gigantic" showed in its entity followed by an unintelligible erasure. At the end this line was the legend "3 Feet High." "Verita Visitor," appeared ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... term. And then the joints will be all raked out roughly, and the brick-work smeared, you know. I have quite a new idea about that. I mean to go in for letting the workmen have the use of all the rooms, with liberty to smudge them as much as they like; and so at the end we shall have a sort of antique effect, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... the whole place is one mellifluous smudge. What do you say we chuck Colversham and get a job here? Think of having pounds of candy—tons of it—around all the time! ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... game. 'Tis easier far Than 'twas of old to be a Star. Hit on some trick crepuscular, Like smudge or smoke, and there you are! They'll mouth, and call you "Master." So You're sure—in time—to be a go. You will catch on, and sell, although Your meaning not a soul may know,— ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, March 5, 1892 • Various
... lesson they had to learn in campercraft. The Mosquitoes were always more or less of a plague. At night they forced the boys into the teepee, but they soon learned to smudge the insects with a wad of green grass on the hot fire. This they would throw on at sundown, then go outside, closing the teepee tight and eat supper around the cooking fire. After that was over they would cautiously open the teepee to find the grass all gone and the fire ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the afternoon hugely. The only fly in her ointment was a greasy smudge bestowed upon her dress—a garment she prized highly—by some cordage coiled on the Panther's deck. The black tender had carried too many cargoes of loggers and logging supplies to be a fit conveyance for persons in party attire. She exhibited ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... head. He was withered, and blind, and senile, gibbering and mowing like some huge ape as ever he turned and twisted, and twisted back again, the suspended head in the pungent smoke, and handful by handful added rotten punk of wood to the smudge fire. ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... the shrubbery, and stood there thinking for a time. She was a queer-looking little figure as she stood thus in her short holland overall, her stout bare legs, brown as berries, slightly apart, her head thrown back, her hair awry, a smudge on her cheek, her black ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... welcomed rain, despite its discomfort, but the sun was in its greatest splendor, and the air was absolutely translucent. The lake and the mountains sprang out, sharp and clear. Far to the south the hunter saw a smudge upon the water which he knew to be Indian canoes. They were miles away, but it was evident that the French and Indians still held the lake, and there was no escape for the three by water. There had been some idea in Willet's mind of ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sign of life here, either, or to the rear where ran the network of other excavations as the result of the almost two years of German digging, the whole thrown in relief on the slope up to the bare trunks of two or three trees thrust upward from the smudge of the ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... was a sudden attempt to twist his blade around Cleggett's; followed by a direct thrust, as quick as light, which grazed Cleggett's shoulder; a little smudge of blood appeared ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... saved a three million dollar fruit crop in Colorado, in 1909, is the story that is oftenest told in the West. Until that year, the frosts in the Spring nipped the buds. No farmer could be sure of his harvest. But in 1909, the fruit-growers bought smudge-pots—three hundred thousand or more. These were placed in the orchards, ready to be lit at a moment's notice. Next, an alliance was made with the United States Weather Bureau so that whenever the Frost King came ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... I rode toward a smudge in the sky, and found men and boys at work burning and cutting. The superb aisle was down. I turned the horse and rode back. I learned that in the fields on either side of the lane a strip of land, fifty or sixty feet wide, had ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... illegible smudge at the beginning of the sentence "moment the beautiful lady meditated and then said:" has been corrected to "A". In the sentence "I will arrrange with you to go to your home," the word "arrrange" has been corrected. In the sentence "He ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... thinking about is getting out of that hole as fast as he can. He don't like the smoke and the fire, and he won't pay any attention to anything else until he gets outside, but then you want to look out. He goes for the first live thing in sight when he's clear of the cave and the smudge, and he don't go very slow either. Jim Brackett found that out over in Squaw Valley one day. He found a bear in a den, and built a fire at the mouth to smoke him out. The fire was burning rather slowly, Brackett thought, ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... you've washed that face and those hands that still have the supper smudge on them, in the pool down there. I left the soap and the dry sleeves and bosom of a flannel shirt for you. Don't you pack towels in a kit in your country?" With which laughing answer my Gouverneur Faulkner denied unto ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... you discover that you were in error about the fewness of the flies. They are all there—mosquitoes, black-flies, deer-flies, and punkies, besides other species strictly vegetarian. So you drop the tent-bag and build a smudge. Experience has taught you to make a small but hot fire, and when this is well under way you kick open a rotted, moss-grown cedar and scoop up handfuls of damp mould. This, piled on and banked around ...
— The So-called Human Race • Bert Leston Taylor
... and tore their hair, Down, a-down, a-down—hey down! But those blessed bills, they wouldn't come square, With a down; 'Midst muddle and smudge it is hard to fix If a six is a nine or a nine is a six, With a down derry, ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... aroma of a gently smouldering smudge fire, battling with invading mosquitoes; the pleasant smell of tobacco, adding to the enjoyment of the crisp Northern air; the resplendent sunset, slashing a broken sky with a sea of multitudinous colours, ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... on the wood now. The green of the trees deepened and blackened, turning into a crooked smudge upon the sky-line. The road fell between them like a long gray ribbon. Nothing was to be seen upon it; nothing was to be heard but the rustle of the early night wind and the pleasant ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... door, perhaps in the expectation of finding finger prints there, and was passing on to other things, when a change in his position caused his eye to catch a large oval smudge on the glass, which was visible when the light struck it at the right angle. Quickly he dusted it over with the powder, and brought out the detail more clearly. As I examined it, while Craig made preparations to cut out the glass to preserve it, it seemed to contain a number of minute ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... which seemed in being. I entered it, for I was told by a soldier companion that from a displaced tile in its roof I might see La Bassee. I looked through that gap, and saw La Bassee. It was very near. It was a terracotta smudge. It might have been a brickfield. But ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... his attention to the other panel. He ran his fingers over it, his eyes following them. What was that? A finger-print? Upon the left side half way up a tiny smudge was visible. Barney examined it more carefully. A round, white figure of the conventional design that was burned into the ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... her a check and went to his own rooms. Bessie faithfully tidied up the studio, set the door ajar for flight, emptied half a bottle of turpentine on a duster, and began to scrub the face of the Melancolia viciously. The paint did not smudge quickly enough. She took a palette-knife and scraped, following each stroke with the wet duster. In five minutes the picture was a formless, scarred muddle of colours. She threw the paint-stained duster into the studio stove, stuck out her tongue at the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... the suitcase and thrust out a hand which still had ground into the knuckles oil and smudge acquired while helping put ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... remaining longer under the same roof with Zoie, he picked up his hat, and started toward the hallway. For the first time his eye was attracted by a thick layer of dust and lint on his coat sleeve. Worse still, there was a smudge on his cuff. If there was one thing more than another that Alfred detested it was untidiness. Putting his hat down with a bang, he tried to flick the dust from his sleeve with his pocket handkerchief; finding this impossible, he removed his coat and ...
— Baby Mine • Margaret Mayo
... then all present seemed to restrain their breathing lest a word of the evidence should be lost. The mention of "blood" in a murder case was a more adroit dodge than Robinson himself guessed, perhaps. Few of his hearers troubled to reflect that a smudge of fresh gore on Grant's cheek could hardly have any bearing on the death of a woman whose body had admittedly lain all night in the river. It sufficed that Robinson had introduced a touch of the right color into the inquiry. Even ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... the rear seat turned for a comprehensive, last survey. Simmering in a calorific envelope the distant roofs and stacks of Stenton were visible, isolated in the white heat of the pitiless day. Above the city hung a smudge, a thumbprint of oily black smoke, carrying the suggestion of an intolerable concentration, a focal point of the fiery discomfort. In the foreground a buzzard ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... not sat down to a meal with him for three weeks. He nearly walked on Max's puppy last week and he has forgotten Charlotte's existence except as a penwiper—she went in to him one morning with a message and came out with an ink smudge on her red dress—she said it was his pen—the dress is the same colour as the penwiper, so she may be right. He paid ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... hands to make the agreement good and to allay his feelings. When requested to sign the document the camel man, who had sounded each coin on the doorstep, and to his evident surprise found them all good, gaily dipped his thumb into the inkstand and affixed his natural mark, a fine smudge, upon the valuable paper, and licked up the surplus ink with his tongue. The man undertook to provide the necessary camels and saddles, and to take me across the Salt Desert in a north-easterly direction, the ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... almost ready; the Red Fox Scouts helped me, and gathered smudge stuff while I proceeded to send up the council signal in the Elks code. Fitz talked while he worked. The general looked on and winced as his ankle throbbed. But he was busy, ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... sailed on its tremendous mission. The smoke of its funnels made but a tiny smudge on the wide, shining Southern skies. But with swift and terrible swirl this cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, grew into a storm whose black shadow shrouded ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... saw nothing. But when he saw anything he saw everything. His eye was caught by the green smudge ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... rowlocks made of loops of twisted osier creaked, but one could not perceive that one was going forwards. The hills lost their solidity, becoming mere holes in the grey blue of the sky, a bright planet made a light smudge on the ruffled water in which the stars could not reflect. As we crept forwards into the river and the mountains closed in, the water became more calm, and the stars came out one by one beneath us, while in the ripple of our wake ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... Adelle saw the man in the glare of the flame pull himself up, inch by inch, until his head was level with the glass, butt his head against the heavy pane, and with a final heave disappear within while a black smudge of smoke poured from ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... slowly around the camp spread out over the oasis—the clustering palm trees, the desert itself stretching away before her in undulating sweeps, but seemingly level in the evening light, far off to the distant hills lying like a dark smudge against the horizon. She drew a long breath. It was the desert at last, the desert that she felt she had been longing for all her life. She had never known until this moment how intense the longing had been. ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... She was maybe thirty-five or so, clean but not company-dressed. There was a smudge of flour on her cheek and a smile on her face and she looked wholesome ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... at once, over and beyond them, Stern saw the blue-curling smudge of the remains of the great fire ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... that he would not long delay his return, and so slipped quickly from under her blanket and hurried down to the water-hole to bathe her hands and face and set herself in order. Her flying fingers found her little mirror; there wasn't any smudge on her face, after all, and her hair wasn't so terribly unbecoming that way; tousled, to be sure, but then, nice, curly hair can be tousled and still not make one a perfect hag. It was odd about his mare being named Helen. He must have thought the name ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... great agitation and almost illegible, and at the bottom of the paper there was a dirty smudge that might have been a tear stain or a finger ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... a little way, almost at once, and the trim-cut, academic face, with the lamplight falling upon the round glasses and blotting them out in a yellow smudge, appeared in the crevice. ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... places mosquitoes are very troublesome. Oil of citronella will drive them away for a time but a "smudge" may be necessary. They won't stay in smoke or wind, so hunt the breeze. There are some other flies just as bad to which the same treatment may be applied. "Black-flies" of the northern woods are about the worst insect pest in America, though ...
— How Girls Can Help Their Country • Juliette Low
... couldn't have been the reason, dear." And she stopped, but to still her own fears hurried on again. "If I'd known you'd been coming, I'd have kept Cecil Tharp. Vic has had such dear little puppies. Would you like one? They've all got that nice black smudge ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... carefully in order not to smudge it, Wallie stepped out of the elevator and stood in the wide doorway, agreeably aware that he was a pleasing figure in his artist's smock and the flowing scarf which he always ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... opposite bank. The air became pungent with the smell of smoke. They were in town, now, and as the wagon wheels sank deeply into the soft sand of the principal street, Patty noted that in front of the doors of most of the houses, slow fires were burning—fires that threw off a heavy, stifling smudge of smoke that spread lazily upon the motionless air and hung thick ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... hours, only minutes had passed since he had tooled his scout into the rack. Ahead, he could see the smudge of the Black Fleet's smoke on the horizon. Not so very far away, but a lot could happen in the distance still separating ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... gently admonished concerning a friendship that was thought to be growing too strong, she was quick instantly to resent the slur on her chum. She had been sent for immediately after "evening prep.," and having, as usual, inked her fingers generously, and rubbed an ink-smudge across her face, to say nothing of really disgracefully tumbled hair, she looked a comical enough object standing before the impressive presence of ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... out, Slit or unslit, with many a various snout, Aquiline, Roman, crooked, square, and snubby. Stumpy and stubby; Some capable of ladye-billets neat, Some only fit for ledger-keeping clerk, And some to grub down Peter Stubbs his mark, Or smudge through some illegible receipt; Others in florid caligraphic plans, Equal to ships, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... of December 19, this year 1675, the bold English and their allies struck the great fortified village at Sunke-Squaw. Out from the heat and smudge of the blazing wigwams fled Philip and Wetamoo and Canonchet, with their shrieking people, into the wintry swamp where the snowy branches of the cedars and hemlocks were their only refuge. Canonchet had lost a third of his nation; large numbers surrendered to the English; but, like his ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... him. How busy he is!" cried Will, with mock seriousness, while the artist made a vermilion smudge on his canvas as the ground ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... construction may be easily seen; this one is being roofed with birch bark. A fireplace may be made by enclosing a bed of mud (Fig. 73) between or inside of the square formed by four logs. On this clay or mud you can build your camp-fire or cooking fire or mosquito smudge with little or no danger of setting fire ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... reached the end of his journey. The fog had delayed him a little, but he had paddled steadily, keeping in touch with the south bank. By-and-by daylight came like a glow in a ground glass globe. The shores made on each side of the river a dark smudge, in which one could detect hints of columnar forms and shadows of twisted branches high up. The mist was still thick on the water, but a good watch was being kept, for as Iamb' Itam approached the camp the figures of two men emerged out of the white vapour, and ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... apparently only a year or two older than herself, and clad in blue jean overalls, blackened and smeared with oil and coal-dust. Even his youthful face, which he turned towards her, had a black smudge running across it and almost obliterating a small auburn moustache. The look of surprise that he gave her, however, quickly passed; he remained patiently and in a half-preoccupied way, holding his hammer in his hand, as she advanced. This was evidently the young fellow who could ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... and soon had a real smudge throwing out a sickly smoke over their blankets. All this time Bill slept peacefully. It seemed that with his head buried in his blankets he was able to stand the gnats, but the smoke got him. Evidently a good ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... on another foggy afternoon, when she entered her sitting room she found herself confronting a rather pathetic picture. In her own special and pet easy-chair before the bright fire, Becky—with a coal smudge on her nose and several on her apron, with her poor little cap hanging half off her head, and an empty coal box on the floor near her—sat fast asleep, tired out beyond even the endurance of her hard-working young body. ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... saying that he had more pleasure and less pain than acting in nature.' After which, he slowly saws their throats, cuts them to pieces, and the corpses, the linen and the clothing, are put in the fireplace, where a smudge fire of logs and leaves is burning, and the ashes are thrown into the latrine, or scattered to the winds from the top of a tower, or buried in ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... think so. After surveying the sketch critically she drew a broad smudge of paint across its surface, and crumpled the ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... his gaze from the woods before him to the tall sapling on Lookout Point. At last a smudge of red showed near the sapling's top for a minute, then disappeared, and he gave a shout of relief. "Walter's there all right," he called to his companions, "I ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... it was dreadful before she said it. But she had warded off reproof by nuzzling against her mother's cheek as it tried to turn away from her. She saw her mother's upper lip moving, twitching. The sensitive down stirred on it like a dark smudge, a dust that quivered. Her own mouth, pushed forward, searching, the mouth of a nuzzling puppy, remained grave and tender. She was earnest and imperturbable in her truthfulness. "Whether you're glad or not you must go," said Frances. ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair
... the calamitous ill all had predicted for Peter; For, of a morning in spring when lay the mist in the valleys— "See," quoth the folk, "how the witch breweth her evil decoctions! See how the smoke from her fire broodeth on woodland and meadow! Grant that the sun cometh out to smother the smudge of her caldron! She hath been forth in the night, full of her spells and devices, Roaming the marshes and dells for heathenish magical nostrums; Digging in leaves and at stumps for centipedes, pismires, and spiders, Grubbing in poisonous ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... Casey saw the smoke smudge against the mountains to the south, he remembered his misadventure of the lower desert and swore. When he looked again, the majestic sweep of distance gave him a satisfied feeling of freedom from the crowded ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... girl's paying for it herself. Smudging herself doing it, too. A woman can't escape the smudge." ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... and made for a striped blue and white skirt that lay motionless on the ground. Across the white apron ran a broad, dirty smudge. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... fifth night of the waning of the moon—and the night was dark. No birds were singing. The lichi tree by the tank looked like a smudge of ink on a background a shade less deep. The south wind was blindly roaming about in the darkness like a sleep-walker. The stars in the sky with vigilant unblinking eyes were trying to penetrate the darkness, in their effort ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... the anchor seemed to glow and grow. No longer a blue smudge on the skin, it was an anchor in the heart, shining through the flesh—the anchor on which this brave old battleship had ridden out ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... a good start," says Auntie, gazin' off where a thin smudge shows on the sky line. "And before they can get near enough to shoot they can't see us. I suppose they'd be just impudent enough to shoot ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the railroad. To the north a little distance the rails ran round a curve. To the south, where the diminishing rails running through the unbroken woodland met in a long, shiny V, he could see a big smoke smudge against the horizon. This smoke Mr. Trimm knew must come from the wreck—which was still burning, evidently. As nearly as he could judge he had come out of cover at least two miles above it. After a moment's consideration he decided to go south toward the wreck. Soon ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... Besides, as I have said, I was greatly helped by the weather, which continuing hazy, though happily never so thick as to oblige me to stop, delivered me to the sight only of such vessels as passed close, and offered me as a mere smudge to the shore. ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... bowed to the wife of a Standard Oil director in a passing limousine, and one of the season's prettiest debutantes, who was walking; and because he was only twenty-four, and his mother was very, very ambitious for him, he wondered if the tear smudge on the face of his companion had been evident from the sidewalk, and decided that ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... Snettishane, a prominent chief in the tribe, by a half-breed mother, and to him the Factor fared casually one summer day to open negotiations of marriage. He sat with the chief in the smoke of a mosquito smudge before his lodge, and together they talked about everything under the sun, or, at least, everything that in the Northland is under the sun, with the sole exception of marriage. John Fox had come ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... men tell us, and grow black in the face with the vehemence of telling, that the Sycamore Ridge of the sixties—a gray smudge of unpainted wooden houses bordering the Santa Fe trail, with the street merging into the sunflowers a block either way from the pump,—is the town that now lies hidden in the elm forest, with its thirty miles of paving and its scores of acres of wide velvet lawns, with its parks wherein fountains ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... larger than those of any other part of Canada, and nothing but smoke will drive them away. Many people who live on the prairies, instead of going for their cattle at milking time, build a smudge (a fire of chips mulched with wet hay or green twigs when well started, to create smoke) near the milk house, and the cattle will come to the fire to obtain relief from the mosquitoes. The black flies are smaller, and the first intimation one has of their attack is a small stream of ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... He was sitting at his desk, tapping the pad before him with the point of a pencil Aunt Josephine sat on the old horse-hair sofa, looking very excited, and Tante, a pile of books still clasped in her arm and a smudge of dust across her straight ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... rich colouring of a Rubens. He began with a streak of scarlet from the eyebrows to the end of the nose. Skipping the mouth, he continued the streak from the lower lip down the chin, under which it melted into a tender half-tint made by a smudge of yellow ochre and charcoal. This vigorous touch seemed to rouse the painter's spirit in Petawanaquat, for he pushed the boy out at arm's length, drew himself back, frowned, glared, and breathed hard. Three bars of blue from the bridge of the nose over each cheek, ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... knight errant could depart without any smudge or stain on his honor, and quickly and resolutely he gave Rocinante the spur, and his steed gathered all the strength he had and turned around. Gallantly saluting the Duke and the whole assembly with a sweep of his ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... caution gave way to haste, and the rusty little tramp began to drive forward for all she was worth. She cleared the three-mile limit safely and then turned south. Not a craft was in sight; not a smudge of ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... smudge of smoke told of what had really been, and a black heap of ruins where the familiar house had stood for so long confirmed their fears for their own property; but to see the village content and smiling, except for a poor building or two, ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... life. Use powdered sulphur—it is far more effective than the sulphur candles which are sold for the same purpose. Stand an old pie plate or other tin in a pan of water; on it build a little fire of paper and fine kindling, pour on the powdered sulphur, and leave to smudge and smoke for twenty-four hours. The closet must be sealed up as tight as possible, every crack, crevice, and keyhole being stuffed with newspaper to prevent the fumes from escaping, the entering door, of course, being sealed ...
— The Complete Home • Various
... travel by canoes during the less heated parts of the day, and tie up at night, making camp on shore in the net-protected tents. As for the Indians, they did not seem to mind the bites of the insects. They sometimes made a smudge fire, Val Jacinto had said, but ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... port and slipped astern. Paris closed up, telescoped its panorama, became a mere blur, a smoky smudge. But it was long before the distance eclipsed that admonitory finger of ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... the old man's pointing finger. "There's only one kind of boat makes a smudge like that," he declared; "and it's a destroyer. Safe and well out of a glorious adventure. Faith, we're the lucky devils; and by this and by that, I'll enlist aboard that destroyer, now that I'm here on ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... Again, a dismal red smudge showed up at the bottom of the sheet. Fenwick could hardly keep from chuckling aloud as he recalled the first time he had seen such a chart. He hoped Baker was putting it over. If the reaction of the gallery were any indication, he ...
— The Great Gray Plague • Raymond F. Jones
... mile out, where the light ripples melted away into a blue and white haze upon the water, a small black smudge, like the back of a porpoise, seemed to be sliding ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... she rushed downstairs and asked if she might send for the parson. The moment happened to be one at which her father's sense of the antique nobility of his family was highest, and his sensitiveness to the smudge which Tess had set upon that nobility most pronounced, for he had just returned from his weekly booze at Rolliver's Inn. No parson should come inside his door, he declared, prying into his affairs, just then, when, by her shame, it had become more necessary than ever to hide ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... face of Age, with a pitiful smudge of Youth, Carmine and heavy and lined, like a jester's mask on Truth; And she laughed from the red lips outward, the laugh of the brave who die, But a ghost in her laughter murmured, ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... the sheet-iron before her in the forge, and had explained things to her. Evidently he had come in straight from the factory; his face looked dark and grimy, and on one cheek near his nose was a smudge of soot. His hands were perfectly black, and his unbelted shirt shone with oil and grease. He was a man of thirty, of medium height, with black hair and broad shoulders, and a look of great physical strength. At the first glance Anna Akimovna perceived that he must be a foreman, who must ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... very fickle, certainly; but this change seemed to have been very, very sudden! And there was a word or two, prettily written in another hand, on a small slip of paper—'Perhaps you had better send back the book'; and Caldigate, as he read it, thought that he could discern the almost-obliterated smudge of a wiped-up tear. He wrote a cheerful letter to Mrs. Shand, in which he told her that though he had not been absolutely engaged to marry Hester Bolton before he started for Australia,—and consequently before he had ever been at Pollington,—yet his mind had been quite made ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope |
