"Smudge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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 ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... he always carries a case of them around with him. You know, he bought a thousand once with his monogram printed in gold on them, and he never will get rid of them all. He thought it would be a good thing to bring them to camp with him so as to use them for a smudge ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... night in that grass, burning some of it for a smudge to keep mosquitoes at bay, and an hour after dawn, reaching rising ground again, realized that we had our ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... the oasis—the clustering palm trees, the desert itself stretching away before her in undulating sweeps, but seemingly level in the evening light, far off to the distant hills lying like a dark smudge against the horizon. She drew a long breath. It was the desert at last, the desert that she felt she had been longing for all her life. She had never known until this moment how intense the longing had been. She felt strangely at home, as ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... candlelight fell upon a face that was grimy and scratched. His rosy lips were blackened with heat, the smoke of gun-powder. Dirt and rust tarnished the lustre of his short beard. His shirt collar and cuffs were crumpled; the blue silken tie hung down his breast like a rag; a greasy smudge crossed his white brow. He had not taken off his clothing nor used water, except to snatch a hasty drink greedily, for some forty hours. An awful restlessness had made him its own, had marked him with all the signs of desperate ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... in the wide world that he could paint; flowers and landscapes he only muddled away into a smudge; with people he was helpless and hopeless; also with animals. Skies he could sometimes manage, or effects of wind in foliage, but as a rule he left these all severely alone. He kept to trees, wisely following an instinct that was guided by ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood
... Farfadet having by accident rubbed against the damp and dirty wall, his shoulder has brought away from it a smudge so big and black that it can be seen even here. Farfadet, so careful of his appearance, growls, and in avoiding a second contact with the wall, knocks the table so that his spoon drops to the ground. Stooping, he fumbles among the loose earth, where dust and spiders' webs for years have silently ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... footnote) It is difficult to tell — it may be merely a smudge — and if not, it is probably an error, but the first "c" in "concilium" seems ...
— A Vanished Arcadia, • R. B. Cunninghame Graham
... designing? The Duke of Edinburgh, he is a musician. And it is in these little excursions into art that the family most truly manifests its bourgeois nature. The sincerest bourgeois are those who scribble little poems and smudge little canvases in the intervals between an afternoon reception and a dinner-party. The amateur artist is always the most inaccessible to ideas; he is always the most fervid admirer of the commonplace. A staid German family dabbling in art in its leisure hours—the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... him—under my supervision, of course; and just because I let fall a word that showed I was not altogether satisfied with the likeness, what should the wretched man do but catch up a brush full of filthy black paint, and smudge the face ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... capers in a Mandarin's palace, Helen herself was reading, over and over again, a most wonderful letter that had fallen from her sky. It had all the appearance of any ordinary missive. The King's face on a penny stamp, or so much of it as was left uninjured by a postal smudge, looked familiar enough, and both envelop and paper resembled those which had brought her other communications from "The Firefly." But the text was magic, rank necromancy. No wizard who ever dealt ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... fire called a "smudge" will sometimes keep the pests away from the neighbourhood of the tent or if we build it in the tent will drive them out, but the remedy is almost as bad as the disease. As a rule they will only be troublesome at night and the net over our bed will enable ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... 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
... wondered; for surely here was the gang that had pursued them—quite a mile out on the prairie, to be sure, but unquestionably Efaw Kotee's band, showing as a black smudge above the grass. Whether this pack of human wolves had lost the trail of Smilax I would not try to guess, for it was enough to know that they had found ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... then get excited and insist that it is a fact. You need have no conscientious scruples on the subject, because the thing's nose really does resemble its father's—at all events quite as much as it does anything else in nature—being, as it is, a mere smudge. ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... eyebrows grew closer and closer together. Far away, at a certain spot in the clear evening sky, was a little speck of black, hidden every now and then by the mast of the ship as she rolled, but distinctly there all the time, a little smudge in an amber setting, too small for a cloud, yet a visible and tangible object. Katharine felt her companion's arm tighten upon hers, and she saw his face grow like ...
— The Box with Broken Seals • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ridge was unoccupied and that several thousand Dervishes could be seen flying into Omdurman. Pending the answer, we waited; and looking back northwards, across the front of the zeriba, where the first attack had been stopped, perceived a greyish-white smudge, perhaps a mile long. The glass disclosed details—hundreds of tiny white figures heaped or scattered; dozens hopping, crawling, staggering away; a few horses standing stolidly among the corpses; a few unwounded men dragging off their comrades. The ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... rested for a moment, panting as if the night were hot. Then lunging, tottering, falling, rising again, panting, gasping but with never another cry, old Frank fought his way up the river bottoms, past the farm of John Davis, across the field in front of Tom Belcher's store, now a dim smudge in the blackness—dragged himself over the ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... longer smooth and glossy, but frowsy and loose, and the rest of her hair was ruffled until it looked something like the Bird Fairies' soft plumage. Eric's head, too, was shaggier than ever, and a smudge from firebuilding had darkened one of his cheeks since the morning before. They had not bathed in the "bird bath" since Helma had gone away. They never seemed to have time, or else they were ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... case it goes through without any public demonstration, and in the other it leaves a smudge on each one of the four which you would be glad ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... 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 ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... idea was borne out by an odd blotchiness, for sometimes there would be half a mile or more of seeming moorland, then a sharply defined change (or it seemed sharply defined from that bird's-eye point of view). A vivid greenness marked these changes, which merged into a dun-colored smudge and again into the brilliant green; then the moor would ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... 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 it ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... 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 features, stood ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... A smudge the size of a quarter and the color of Hattie's guaranteed-not-to-fade cheek, lay incredibly on ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... 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 ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... I had better go to Sue's to thaw out some of my loneliness over this play," I answered him as I looked up with desperation and a smudge on my face. Then I went to my room and left Tolly alone with Peter's poor little heroine. "Say, tell the poet to get the man with the dinner-pail who is eating hunk sandwiches at lunch-time on the pavement ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... guides did on the portage, submit to fate and walk along in heroic silence, like Marco Bozzaris "bleeding at every pore,"—or do as Damon and I did, break into ejaculations and a run, until you reach a place where you can light a smudge and ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... the patchwork of plough and green corn, covert and hamlet commenced at the edge of the railway and stretched undulating over hill and dale to where a grey smudge proclaimed the sea. ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... 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
... the increase of light made her look up. Over the valley she saw a grave sullen down, and on its flanks a little brown smudge—her sheep, together with her shepherd, Fleance Thompson, returned to his duties at last. A trickle of water came through the arbour roof. ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... separate ways to 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, but when at ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... you to do things. I don't want to be a sort of tea-table Egeria to the young men—I don't mean that—and I don't wish to be an interesting and radiant object at dinner-tables; but I am sure there is trouble I can save you, and I don't intend you to have any worries except your own. I won't smudge my fingers over the accounts, like that wretched Dora in David Copperfield. Understand that, Howard; I won't be your girl-bride. I won't promise that I won't wear spectacles and be dowdy—anything ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... led directly toward the river, and I raced through the black night down the slope as though all the fiends of hell were after me. I heard shouts, oaths, but there was no firing, and was far enough ahead to be invisible by the time I attained the bank. An open barge lay there, a mere black smudge, and I stumbled blindly across this, dropping silently over its side into the water. It was not thought, but breathless inability to attempt more, which kept me there, clinging to a slat on the side of the barge, ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... pack are thrown up in the sky and distorted into the most fantastic shapes. They climb, trembling, upwards, spreading out into long lines at different levels, then contract and fall down, leaving nothing but an uncertain, wavering smudge which comes and goes. Presently the smudge swells and grows, taking shape until it presents the perfect inverted reflection of a berg on the horizon, the shadow hovering over the substance. More smudges appear at different points on ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... railroads, a division headquarters of the great A. and P., near the soft-coal beds, with a tin-plate factory, a carpet factory, a carriage factory, and a dozen other mills and factories, Torso is a black smudge in a flat green landscape from which many lines of electric railway radiate forth along the country roads. And along the same roads across the reaches of prairie, over the swelling hills, stalk towering poles, bearing ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... 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. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... against the 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 ...
— Affairs of State • Burton E. Stevenson
... the rocky wall; the stranger in 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 ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... his ease with Arctura; he was afraid of her. When a man is conscious of wrong, knows in his history what would draw a hideous smudge over the portrait he would present to the eyes of her he would please, he may well be afraid of her. He makes liberal allowance for himself, but is not sure she will! And before Forgue lay a social gulf which ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... page. But there, instead of Blackame, were five or six Blackames perhaps, intertwining together like the fairies and the butterflies, but bearing to mortal eyes nothing but the appearance of a thick smudge of ink. ...
— Little Folks (December 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... that he did not tell Jane after all, for, going down from Bewes in the red of the sunset, Jack fell in with Milly Boon, whose gait was set for the farm. He passed her a good evening, then marked a world of woe in her face and the smudge of tears upon it, clear to see in the last of the light, so he bade her stand a moment and tell him why for she was going up ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... looked first at me and then at 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 an ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... never so radiant, so sweet, so adorable; her charm for him would vanish in an instant. Across her forehead, her little pale forehead, under the shadow of her royal hair, he would surely see the smudge of a foul ordure, the footprint of the monster. It would be a sacrilege, an abomination. He recoiled from it, banding all ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... grime is on the window pane, Pale the London sunbeams fall, And show the smudge of mildew stain, Which ...
— Songs Of The Road • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that will be lovely! you do it so neatly and daintily; and I always tear the corners and smudge the cards and every old thing. I wish we could go and buy ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... 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
... 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
... but there was such a smudge in it, and—and I could cry when I think of it—there in the grate were the remains of her beautiful silk blouse, all smoking and ruined. She had tried to burn it, and she had succeeded too. I could not get a piece out as ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... the following account from my sister of her visual peculiarities: 'When I think of Wednesday I see a kind of oval flat wash of yellow emerald green; for Tuesday, a gray sky colour; for Thursday, a brown-red irregular polygon; and a dull yellow smudge for Friday.'" ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... neighbor." It knows very often that there are continents of dirt underneath—"things," and "systems," and men—which it chooses to patronize; but then, it is covered up, and so it says, "Let it alone; we cannot have a smudge. Let it alone. Peace! Peace! Never mind righteousness—the church must be supported, if the money does come out of the dried-up vitals of drunkards and harlots; never mind, we must have it. Never mind if our songs are mixed with the shrieks of widows and orphans, ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... eat delicious food. He doesn't really care about you, with your rumpled blouses, and your shabby gloves and shoes, and your somewhat doubtful linen collars. The last time you saw him you were just coming home from the office after a dickens of a day, and there was a smudge on the end of your nose, and he told you of it, laughing. But you didn't laugh. You rubbed it off, furiously, and you wanted to cry. Cry! You, Dawn O'Hara! Begorra! 'Tis losin' your sense av humor you're after ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... workman who had once clanked 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. ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... These tricks are not wise, my friend. The audience likes to see a dead man in all his beauty and splendor. If you smudge his face and spoil his armor they will show their displeasure by not letting you kill him. And when your turn comes, they will remember it against you and ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... on another foggy afternoon, when she entered her sitting room she found herself confronting a rather pathetic picture. In her own special and pet easy-chair before the bright fire, Becky—with a coal smudge on her nose and several on her apron, with her poor little cap hanging half off her head, and an empty coal box on the floor near her—sat fast asleep, tired out beyond even the endurance of her hard-working young body. She had been sent ...
— A Little Princess • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 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
... to appear—one by one, stabbing the dusk with their beams, steady, conspicuous. One only, far in the distance, seemed ill-defined—a faint smudge against the twilight. Then it ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... "white clothes" off the line, when the special came puffing slowly into town. To emphasize her disapproval of the whole system of politics, she turned her back square toward it, and laid violent hold of a sheet. There was a smudge of cinders upon its white surface, and it crushed crisply under her thumb with the ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... knee. "I don't think you are in any position to dictate. I left a merry party down there just now. Mrs. Whipp cracking the air with chuckles, Mehitable rocking the store with her activities, Miss Melody enveloped in a gigantic apron and with a large smudge across her cheek, having the time of her life unpacking boxes. I was sorry to bereave them of Pete, but it won't take them long now to ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... 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
... when Jim came slowly up the hill road from the direction of Hudsondale, he saw a tiny smudge of smoke rising from a rock well hidden in the rank undergrowth at the edge of the stream, and approaching it found Lou industriously brushing her coat with a broom which she had improvised of small twigs tied together. Beside her, carefully ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... messmate's cheeks. "You're scorched horribly, and the whisker shoots are all gone—No, there's about half of one left; and you'll have to shave that off, Dick, so as to balance the other bare place. No, no; it's all right; that's not hair, only a smudge of sooty cinder off your burnt cap. I say, you do ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... appearance. "Good-looking boy of fourteen, with fair hair and a slight moustache. Dressed in a grey tweed suit, masher collar, and two tin sleeve-links. Not very intelligent, and usually wears a smudge of ink under his right eye. Isn't ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... up for all the soil and smudge, Ju darling," said Elinor softly. "Paint and charcoal and clay are dirty things, but when they're wielded with the force of an Ideal, ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... 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
... have grown smaller more suddenly than I grew younger the moment I passed through that magic door. Bad habits cling to us, however, with such persistency that I did mechanically pull out my handkerchief and begin to rub off the welcoming smudge, a thing I never would have dreamed of doing in the glorious old days; but an artful scent of violets clinging to the handkerchief brought me to my senses, and with a sudden impulse of scorn, the fine scorn for scent of every honest Backfisch, I rolled it up into a ball and ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... cried. "Here, set your snapsack back of this forge. Put on this leather apron. Smudge your ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... in the smudge-pungent tent where her two companions slept heavily, Chloe sat late into the night staring through the mosquito-barred entrance toward the narrow strip of beach where the dying fires of the scowmen glowed sullenly in the darkness, pierced now and ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... lambent, greenish flame flickering over it. The cat gave a last, awful caterwaul, and I saw it smoke and blaze. My breath came with a gasp, and I leant against the wall. Over that part of the window there spread a smudge, green and fantastic. It hid the thing from me, though the glare of fire shone through, dully. A stench of burning, stole ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... seemingly as fierce, and certainly as avaricious as he was himself. These auxiliaries, through various little circumstances, were known among us that same afternoon, by the several appellations of Smudge, Tin-pot, and Slit-nose. These were not heroic names, of a certainty, but their owners had as little of the heroic in their appearance, as usually falls to the lot of man in the savage state. I cannot ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... his 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, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... 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 strata, thus getting ...
— Popular Science Monthly Volume 86
... charcoal, bituminous coal, tar shale; turf, peat, firewood, bobbing, faggot, log; cinder &c (products of combustion) 384; ingle, tinder, touchwood; sulphur, brimstone; incense; port-fire; fire-barrel, fireball, brand; amadou^, bavin^; blind coal, glance coal; German tinder, pyrotechnic sponge, punk, smudge [U.S.]; solid fueled rocket. [fuels for candles and lamps] wax, paraffin wax, paraffin oil; lamp oil, whale oil. [liquid fuels] oil, petroleum, gasoline, high octane gasoline, nitromethane, petrol, gas, juice [Coll.], gasohol, alcohol, ethanol, methanol, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... smoke!" answered Tommy. "I guess if you had made and answered as many Boy Scout smoke signals as I have, you'd know how to make a smudge." ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... light inspired me with interest and respect; the spars were big, the chains and ropes stout and the whole thing looked powerful and trustworthy. Barely touched by the light her bows rose faintly alongside the narrow strip of the quay; the rest of her was a black smudge in the darkness. Here I was face to face with my start in life. We walked in a body a few steps on a greasy pavement between her side and the towering wall of a warehouse and I hit my shins cruelly against the ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... fetich-worshipper. The stick or stone is the medium of communication between the man and the spirits who can bless or harm him, and which to his mind are as countlessly numerous as the swarms of mosquitoes which he drives out of and away from his summer cottage by smudge fires in August. ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... of holding a platter of burning stramonium under his nose to subdue the paroxysms of wheezing that threatened to cut short his existence. Along with the smoke of the stramonium she was wont to administer a soothing smudge of good advice, beseeching him not to worry about things, though she knew perfectly that he would never cease to worry about things so long as his attenuated breath was not wholly turned off. She urged him to make Masters do his share of the work, and to take a vacation himself, ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... 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 smoke ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Sissy say. Her expression of disgust,—disgust that a grown-up should be so silly as to see something funny in absolutely nothing; disgust that her aunt should so weaken the effect of her own discipline,—reinforced by the green smudge on her nose, rubbed off the wall-paper, finished Miss Madigan. The lady no longer attempted to conceal the disgraceful fact that she was laughing. She gave an audible gurgle, and began to wipe the tears ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... of the possibilities, it was with the most intense and absorbing interest that I watched the plate under the action of the developer. Presently I saw a faint smudge of black appear in the upper part, and after that others, indistinct and wavering of outline. I held the negative up to the light. The marks were rather small, and were almost entirely confined to one end of the plate, but as I have said, ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... different style and kind. She generally wrote on large note-paper; she twisted up her letter into the shape and sometimes into the size of cocked hats; she addressed them in a sprawling manly hand, and not unusually added a blot or a smudge, as though such were her own peculiar sign-manual. The address of this note was written in a beautiful female hand, and the gummed wafer bore on it an impress of a gilt coronet. Though Eleanor had never ...
— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope
... walked back, climbed in, got his bag down from the rack, pulled on his jacket. He jumped down to the cinders, followed them to where they ended. He hesitated a moment, then pushed between the knee-high stalks. Eastward across the field he could see what looked like a smudge on ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... supplement that the Novoe Vremya publishes once a week. There was a photograph of a long-fronted building with a flag flying over it, labelled 'The new standard floating over Buckingham Palace.' The picture was not much more than a smudge, but the flag, possibly touched up, was unmistakable. It was the eagle of the Nemetskie Tsar. I have a vivid recollection of that plainly-furnished little room, with the inevitable gilt ikon in one corner, and the samovar hissing and gurgling on the table, and the thrumming ...
— When William Came • Saki
... 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 ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... the four entered Joe's dressing tent at the circus grounds. And some time after that four men, whose faces were black from the smudge of machine oil and grease and whose clothes carried ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... motion disappeared. The boat shrugged uneasily with the movement of the oars, the 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 ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... thoughtful. She was maybe thirty-five or so, clean but not company-dressed. There was a smudge of flour on her cheek and a smile on her face and ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... Grace, looking for something on which to cleanse her hands of the brown smudge of chocolate. ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... 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 pettinesses of the city. For the first time since trouble ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... the reeds, and to this spot I accordingly made my way. As it happened, we arrived in the very nick of time, for we had scarcely taken up a position among the reeds, in a situation that enabled me to command a view of a good wide stretch of water, when I saw a faint smudge against the clear sky southward, which rapidly resolved itself into a big flight of wild duck heading directly for the end of the pond near where I was ambushed; and I had only time to pass my rifle to Piet and receive from him the shot gun in exchange when, with much ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... surveyed herself in the glass that hung against the rough wall, over a draped dressing-table which had apparently once been boxes. Yes, she did look tired and draggled. Her wild-rose color was nearly gone, and there were big circles under her eyes. And there was a smudge on her face that nobody had told her a thing about. And her hair was mussed too much to be becoming, even to her, who looked best with it tossed a little. And there was not a sign of water to wash in anywhere, and the room ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... 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 was a ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... 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 side of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... teasing the Sarah-cat with a wishbone. Joseph and Rusty were both curled up in her lap. A warm plummy odor filled the whole house, for Priscilla was cooking in the kitchen. Presently she came in, enshrouded in a huge work-apron, with a smudge of flour on her nose, to show Aunt Jamesina the chocolate cake she ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... "Excuse a smudge, but Emmeline and I are bound to do a good deal of hugging and kissing just now—a honeymoon after an elopement is something remarkably sweet, as you may suppose—and her sleeve brushed the wet ink. This particular embrace was on the occasion ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... 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 to ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... I know," she broke in lightly. "You see I remembered Mr. Templeton getting this smudge of ink on it. He called my attention to it, the dear, precise old banker that he is, and wanted to give me a clean one. Did Mr. Thornton get frightened and bring your ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... that put her aside from the other peasant girls as a queen may masquerade as a slave and yet betray herself as a queen. Other girls there were as pretty, with their hair like flax and their eyes like blue water; with hair like a dim blue cloud and eyes like a smudge of charcoal. But none had her teeth, her small ankles, her long, sensitive hands. Some strain of the Stuart cavaliers had crept into that hardy peasant stock on the way to the defeat of the Boyne Water.... She might have seemed nothing but a pretty lady's maid in London ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... a fitting close to a glorious day. The air was soft and balmy, and a faint haze hung over the water, smoothing and blurring the sharp outlines of the buildings of the town and turning the opposite bank into a gray smudge. Not a breath was stirring, and the water lay like plate glass, unbroken by the faintest ripple. The spirit of adventure was high in the two men as they pulled down the great avenue of burnished gold stretching westwards towards the ...
— The Pit Prop Syndicate • Freeman Wills Crofts
... though to verify a surmise that somebody had spoken. Such proving to be the case, he turned round to confront Milly—Milly true to type, wearing a grimy matutinal apron, an expression half sleepy, half sullen, and a horrid soot smudge on ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... against the wall of the ravine, and was small and dirty as to interior. A fire burned in a big stone fireplace at one end, filling the room with a suffocating smudge. ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... for?" Shann kept private his personal doubts of their success. The outmost tip of that chain was only a distant smudge lying low ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... by the shriek of an engine announcing its departure from the station, glad to be on the quiet water, to put it between me and that crowd of busy workers. Before me I saw a vast lake, not unlovely, where once the Nile flowed swiftly, far off a grey smudge—the very damnable dam. All around me was a grim and cruel world of rocks, and of hills that look almost like heaps of rubbish, some of them grey, some of them in color so dark that they resemble the lava torrents petrified near Catania, or the "Black Country" in England through which ...
— The Spell of Egypt • Robert Hichens
... heaping it up," said Alberich. "Some day, with this same treasure, heaped and hid, I hope to work some wonders. You shall see! I shall be master of the whole wide world! Ha! the smoke of Alberich's kingdom shall smudge even your flowery mountain-sides and your sparkling rivers. Everybody shall be my slave! Beware of this black Nibelung, I say, for he shall rule ...
— Opera Stories from Wagner • Florence Akin
... twofold grace of carriage and feature and her low-toned harmony of colouring:—ivory-white skin, ash-blond hair and hazel eyes, clear as a Highland river; the pupils abnormally large, the short thick lashes very black, like a smudge round her lids. She was tall, in fine, and carried her beauty like a brimming chalice; very completely mistress of herself; and very completely detached from her florid, effusive, worldly-wise mother. Unquestionably, a young woman to be ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... complimented, pricked up one ear, lifted a foot, and jogged off. The depot wagon became merely a shadowy smudge against the darkness of the night. For a few minutes the "chock, chock" of the hoofs upon the frozen road and the rattle of wheels gave audible evidence of its progress. Then these died away and upon the windswept platform ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... Pat did the parson: I'll take it straight now, and then be drinkin' the toddy while your honor is mixin' the punch. Give me hold of it, you smudge! and tell your masther it's review,—full dress,—and it's time for him to be up. Has he had ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... of the trails, was aroused to wakefulness by the pounding of a horse's hoofs on the plank bridge spanning the creek. She drew aside the curtain and looked out, shading her eyes to see clearer through the poor glass. All she perceived was a somewhat deeper smudge when the rider swept rapidly past, horse and man a shapeless shadow. Three hours later she awoke again, this time to the full glare of day, and to the remembrance that she was now facing a new life. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... may hear that we have found them; and one must climb the Krebsstein and plant the flag there so that they in the valley may see it and fire off the mortars, so that the people searching in the Millsdorf forest may hear it and that they may kindle the smudge-fires in Gschaid, and all those on the mountain may come down to the Sideralp chalet. This ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... traplike stair-opening came the head of Mrs. Kantor, disheveled and a smudge of soot across her face, but beneath her arm, triumphant, a violin of one ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... But when he saw anything he saw everything. His eye was caught by the green smudge on ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... by the roots. What is vain beauty but an idle breath? Why are we proud of that which so soon changes? But rather wish the beauty of the mind, Which neither time can alter, sickness change, Violence deface, nor the black hand of envy Smudge and disgrace, or spoil, or make deform'd. O, had my riotous husband borne this mind, He had been happy, I had been more blest, And peace had brought our quiet souls ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... 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. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... this booke. For his stature, he is such another pretie Jacke-a-Lent as boyes throw at in the streete, and lookes in his blacke sute of veluet, like one of these jet-droppes which divers weare at their eares instead of a iewell. A smudge peice of a handsome fellow it hath been in his dayes, but now he is olde and past his best, and fit for nothing but to be a nobleman's porter, or a ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... No smoke or smudge which we ourselves could endure was sufficient in the earlier part of that evening to prevent serious annoyance from the same cause; but later a ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... rang a 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 ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... 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
... the people, swarthy, with impudent black eyes, tangled hair, and a big, pouting mouth, above which a premature mustache showed like a smudge. He looked into her face and began to laugh. She saw his white teeth, and her tears rushed back to their sources. At once her eyes were dry. And, almost at once, she thought, her heart became hard as stone, and she felt self-control ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... thing, really the best, is a smudge made by building a small fire to the windward of your tent, and nearly smothering it with chips, moss, bark, or rotten wood. If you make the smudge in an old pan or pot, you can move it about as often as ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... may, my first thought was to efface the marks on the floor. I found this easier than I had ventured to hope. I rubbed the circle and the pentacle away from the boards with the sole of my foot, leaving but an undistinguishable smudge behind. I know not why, but I felt the more nervously anxious to remove all such evidences of my nocturnal visit to that room, because Margrave had so openly gone thither to seek for the staff, and had so rudely named me to the servant as having meddled with it. Might he not awake some suspicion ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... chid with spiteful names. For who defends our leafy tabernacle From bold intrusion of the travelling crowd,— Who but the midge, mosquito and the fly, Which past endurance sting the tender cit, But which we learn to scatter with a smudge, Or baffle by a veil, or ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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 ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... broad "a", grows but more rich and emphatic from the necessity of impressing itself upon foreign intruders. The smoke also of the train as it skirts the Downs is part and parcel of what has become (thanks to the trains) our encloistered country life; the smoke of the trains is a little smudge of human activity which permits us to match our incomparable seclusion with the hurly-burly from which we have fled. Upon my soul, when I climb up the Beacon to read my book on the warm turf, the sight of an engine coming through the cutting is an emphasis of my selfish ...
— On Nothing & Kindred Subjects • Hilaire Belloc
... that. Within two hours MacRae was the owner of two motor launches under British registry. Payment in full left him roughly with five thousand dollars working capital, enough by only a narrow margin. At sunset Vancouver was a smoky smudge on a far horizon. At dusk he passed in the narrow mouth of Squitty Cove. The Bluebird was swinging about to go when her sister ship ranged alongside. Vincent Ferrara dropped his hook again. There were forty trollers in the Cove. MacRae called to them. They ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... thousand-foot peak of Fernando Noronha was a dark blur on the western horizon. No sail or smudge of smoke broke the remainder of the far-flung circle. The fugitives could breathe freely once more. ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... country surpasses anything we ever knew in Scotland. All very tired and glad to rest in the shade, with a smudge to keep off the mosquitoes. Strange to say, the children do not seem to care much ...
— The Narrative of Gordon Sellar Who Emigrated to Canada in 1825 • Gordon Sellar
... 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 for ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... from its daze to a faint realization of the conditions. The small dory to which I clung, caught in some mysterious current, floated at the very extremity of its slender towline, and in consequence the sloop appeared little more than a mere smudge, when my eyes endeavored to discover its outlines. Evidently the bloody work had been completed, for now all was silent on board. I could not even detect the sound of a footstep on the deck. Then, clear enough to be distinctly heard across ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... ink 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 out of ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... between two policemen, 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
... the skipper. The river had become as dark as a pocket. From ten fathoms out both shores were merged in one black smudge. ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the day that I rode toward a smudge in the sky, and found men and boys at work burning and cutting. The superb aisle was down. I turned the horse and rode back. I learned that in the fields on either side of the lane a strip of land, fifty ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... pity you forgot to wipe that smudge of paint off your nose, Laura," she said sarcastically. "You don't seem to get on very fast with your lace. How long is it since you began it? Over three ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... attendant ammunition-case; a circle and slot stand for an observation-post; the trench is a bent line, studded with vertical plumes of explosion; the great guns of position, coming and going on their motors, repeat themselves as scarabs; and man himself is a small blue smudge, no larger than a foresight, crawling and creeping or watching and running among all these ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... and went back to their smudge to give the bees a chance to rest, and to find out if mud really drew the poison out of the little lumps that covered them, the tree had been cut nearly half through. Any Nature-lover would have known ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... Doctor Haverford, at her left, unprepared and with his coffee cup in his hand. He put it down hastily and rose, and the small cup overturned in its saucer, sending a smudge of ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hundred miles of river to patrol; while, once we attained the Illinois, and made arrangements with Shrunk, the immediate danger would be over. Then I need go no farther—the end of the adventure might be left to others. I looked up—the steamer was a mere smudge on the distant bosom ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... arm. Here we refreshed ourselves with drinking-coconuts, while a cowboy rode a dozen miles to the nearest telephone and summoned a machine from town. The town itself we could see, the Lakanaii metropolis of Olokona, a smudge of smoke on the shore-line, as we looked down across the miles of cane-fields, the billow-wreathed reef-lines, and the blue haze of ocean to where the island of Oahu shimmered like a dim opal on ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... a few minutes, and returned made up as a fat old Irish woman, with a smudge of dirt on my face. There was ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... conscious of a feeling of physical sickness, and Frederick groaned aloud. As the dreadful moment of contact approached we shut our eyes tight and each gripped the other's hand. How long we remained like this I cannot tell, for we were both afraid to look and see the my smudge on the pavement indicating a hero's end; but eventually, by mutual arrangement, we opened our eyes, and then we saw—not a smudge, but Coleopteron still advancing quite ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, May 21, 1919. • Various
... first; we stole from our blind, chilled and stiffened, and wandered back to camp to breakfast and sleep. The former was a fairly successful event, but the latter was made almost impossible by the swarms of mosquitoes that beset us. A smudge fire and canvas head- coverings gave us only a partial immunity. By sundown we were on our way again to the blind, but another cold dreary ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... 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
... eyesight, but he could make out nothing but a smudge where Wrington pointed—a smudge emphasised by a tiny point of twinkling light. The two motor-boats slowed down and approached, as it were, on tiptoe one on either side of the vessel. As they came nearer a barge took shape at the head of a ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... Umbezi's ample proportions with care, but could discover nothing except a large smudge of black mud, as though he had sat down in a half-dried puddle. Then I guessed the truth. The buffalo's horns had missed him. He had been struck only with its muddy nose, which, being almost as broad as that portion of Umbezi with which it came in contact, had inflicted ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... We smelt a dretful smudge, and Josiah run right up-stairs: it had only jest ketched a fire, and Elburtus was sound asleep; and Josiah, the minute he see what wus the matter, he jest ketched up the water-pitcher, and throwed the water ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... descending from the main to the lower deck. A finnam, I must also explain, is a blow inflicted on the hand, with a cane generally, by the master-at-arms or the ship's corporal. To the said finnams poor Bobby Smudge's black ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... the opening of the term, which is called the fox- hunt, and in which the novices, riding astride of chairs, are made to run the gauntlet through the 'fellows' who are armed with blackened corks, and who, without moving from their places, attempt to smudge the faces of the youngsters as they hop past. These 'foxes' are young students who have just joined, and who are not admitted to the rank of fellows until they have fought a certain number of times. They are raised to the higher dignity after a ballot, at which they are ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... an 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 learned from her that she had met a lady at the typewriting school ...
— Cad Metti, The Female Detective Strategist - Dudie Dunne Again in the Field • Harlan Page Halsey
... 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 tile ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
