"Taint" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a bell. The unfitness is in the soul and it's a taint and a disgrace. There, don't cry, Rilla. I'm not going if that's what you're afraid of. The Piper's music rings in my ears day and night—but I ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... that if every body, in its own little space and among its own little movements, will only do and take nothing without pure taste of the salt of justice, no reeking atrocity of national crimes could ever taint the heaven. ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... fulfill it," cried he. "Let thy paternal heart rest in peace; and by Jesus' help, Lady Helen shall again be in her own country, as free from Southron taint as she is from all mortal sin! De Valence dare not approach her heavenly innocence with violence; and her Scottish heart will never consent to give him a lawful claim to her precious self. Edward's legions are far beyond the borders! but wherever this ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... She felt that Rowcliffe was looking at her (he wasn't) and she strove by look and manner to detach herself. As the young lady flung herself into it and became more and more intolerably arch, Alice became more and more severe. She purified the accompaniment from all taint of the young lady's intentions. It grew graver and graver. It was a hymn, a solemn chant, a dirge. The dirge of the last hope of the young lady ...
— The Three Sisters • May Sinclair
... deserting one's home to study music and mix in a set of second-rate people, in an out-of-the-way district of Paris. As for Hadria's conduct about little Martha, Mrs. Fullerton could scarcely bring herself to speak about it. It terrified her. She thought it indicated some taint of madness in her daughter's mind. Two charming children of her own and—but Mrs. Fullerton, with a painful flush, would turn her mind from the subject. She had to believe her daughter either mad or bad, and that was terrible to her maternal pride. She could indeed scarcely believe that it had ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... "Why, massa, taint worf while for to git mad about de matter—Massa Will say noffin at all aint de matter wid him—but den what make him go about looking dis here way, wid he head down and he soldiers up, and as white as a gose? And den he keep a syphon ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 1 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... and places the refuse in the most immediately safe position, but a buried mass of refuse will take a long time to decay; it should not be disturbed, and will taint the adjacent soil for a long time. This is of less consequence in a merely temporary encampment, while it might entail serious evils in localities continuously inhabited. The following plan of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various
... coarse, sunlit, fresh, nutritious, Those that go their own gait, erect, stepping with freedom and command, leading not following, Those with a never-quell'd audacity, those with sweet and lusty flesh clear of taint, Those that look carelessly in the faces of Presidents and governors, as to say Who are you? Those of earth-born passion, simple, never constrain'd, never obedient, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... up to find out what was the matter. The old lady was in a terrible state. A member of her immediate family married the Duke of ——, a German who has always lived here a great deal. At the beginning of the war, things got so hot for any one with any German taint that they cleared out. For the last few days, German officers have been coming to the house in uniform asking to see the Princess. The servants have stood them off with the statement that she was out, but she cannot keep that up indefinitely. ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... plaguy pert tongue,' growled Saxon. 'From what I have told you, you will see that our whole life is a conflict between our natural Saxon virtue and the ungodly impulses of the Spotterbridge taint. That of which you have had cause to complain yesternight is but an example of the evil to which ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... coronal, The highest Life with noblest Form made one, To do thy Father's bidding hadst begun; The living germ in this strange planet-ball, Even as thy form in mind of striving saint. So, as the one Ideal, beyond taint, Thy radiance unto all some shade doth yield, In every splendour shadowy revealed: But when, by word or hand, Thee one would paint, Power falls ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... their full value, to say the least. He was very well liked by women, and in turn considered himself irresistible. He was very impressionable to feminine charms, was at heart a libertine, and, as he grew older, became a debauchee whose memory will taint France ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... cask, crept in under the deck, where I found the four women lying, each by herself, as far apart from the others as possible, all of them apparently dead. Yet although the place smelt close and stuffy enough, I could detect no trace of the taint which, in a hot climate, so quickly betrays the presence of death, and with renewed hope I proceeded to ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... they were guilty of many barbarous usages. "These wretches," says Dr. Hodges, "out of greediness to plunder the dead, would strangle their patients, and charge it to the distemper in their throats. Others would secretly convey the pestilential taint from sores of the infected to those who were well; and nothing indeed deterred these abandoned miscreants from prosecuting their avaricious purposes by all methods their wickedness could invent; who, although they were without witnesses to accuse ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... the petty constraints and miseries, the unloveliness of all surroundings, and the total want of appreciation which he must have endured there. And yet all this had not soured him; in spite of it he had produced a great book, strong, yet refined and tender, and free from any taint of narrowness or cynicism. As she thought of this and glanced at Mark's handsome face, so bright and animated in general, but clouded now with the melancholy which his fine eyes could express at times, she longed to say something to ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... on this. How many a young woman of fine attractions has had her reputation injured, and her prospects for life destroyed, by associating with those whose character and habits proved to be bad. When once young women get a taint on their reputation in this way, or in any other manner, it is exceedingly difficult to ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... devoted. "It has the true demoniacal curve," he said; "we never saw a better view of the devil's bridge." And so, throughout, Punch dogged Kean's progress. But as time went on, his criticism lost the taint of personal feeling; and Kean was recognised at last as our leading tragedian, though to the end he was never accepted as a ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... harsh and staccato, like a dog's bark, and, it may be, half-hysterical. And, piercing these snaps of laughter, one heard the curious, contradictory yapping of such sentences as: "I sye; 'ow about them 'ot sossiges?" "'Taint true, Bill, is it?" "Disgraceful business; perfectly disgraceful!" "Wot price the Kaiser? Not arf!" "Anything to sell the papers, you know!" "What? No. Jolly lot of rot!" "Johnny get yer gun, get yer gun!" ...
— The Message • Alec John Dawson
... leering looks, bull-faced, and freckled fair, With two left legs, and Judas-colored hair, And frowsy pores that taint ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... could he sleep by night, nor would he lift up his eyes from the ground, nor stir out of his house, nor commune with his friends, but turned from them in silence as if the breath of his shame would taint them. Rodrigo was yet but a youth, and the Count was a mighty man in arms, one who gave his voice first in the Cortes, and was held to be the best in the war, and so powerful that he had a thousand friends ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... age possessed. It was in his character as a man that Blount excelled—he was the leader of the chivalry of the period, as in the next age Woolston was his successor. At the Court he was the gayest of the gay, without the taint of immorality, in a period of the grossest licentiousness; he defended the honor of his friends, frequently at the expense of calumny and danger. In witty repartees he was equal to Rochester; while for abstruse ...
— Ancient and Modern Celebrated Freethinkers - Reprinted From an English Work, Entitled "Half-Hours With - The Freethinkers." • Charles Bradlaugh, A. Collins, and J. Watts
... ingestion of the faulty drugs, poisons, or feed, and supplying sound hay and grain free from all taint of heating or mustiness. A liberal supply of boiled flaxseed in the drinking water at once serves to eliminate the poison and to sheathe and protect the irritated kidneys. Tonics like sulphate or phosphate of iron (2 drams morning and evening) and powdered gentian or Peruvian bark (4 drams) ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... that possibly some hint of the family taint in Brenda had influenced, at the last moment, the plan of her proposed elopement; but I said nothing of ...
— The Jervaise Comedy • J. D. Beresford
... and sons might learn How a man should uphold the sports of his land, And strike his best with a strong right hand, And take his strokes in return. "'Twas a barbarous practice," the Quaker cries, "'Tis a thing of the past, thank heaven"— Keep your thanks till the combative instinct dies With the taint of the olden leaven; Yes, the times are changed, for better or worse, The prayer that no harm befall Has given its place to a drunken curse, And the manly game to ...
— Poems • Adam Lindsay Gordon
... wagon. Us two'll walk, me and him," announced the patrolman. "'Taint so far where we're goin', and the walk'll do this fresh guy a little good—maybe'll sober him up. And never mind about any of the rest of you taggin' along behind us neither. This is a pinch—not a free street parade. ...
— The Life of the Party • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... late-espoused Saint Brought to me like Alkestis from the grave, Whom Jove's great son to her glad husband gave, Rescued from death by force, though pale and faint. Mine, as whom washed from spot of child-bed taint Purification in the Old Law did save; And such, as yet once more, I trust to have Full sight of her in Heaven without restraint, Came vested all in white, pure as her mind: Her face was veiled, yet to my ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... humanity to the ascidian and the crocodile, you have ceased utterly to distinguish between the two species of man, evermore separate by infinite separation: of whom the one, capable of loyalty and of love, can at least conceive spiritual natures which have no taint from their own, and leave behind them, diffused among thousands on earth, the happiness they never hoped, for themselves, in the skies; and the other, capable only of avarice, hatred, and shame, who in their lives are the companions of ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... floor of a house in Quartier Latin. The occupant of the room below, Arnold Dampierre, was with him. He was a man three or four years Cuthbert's junior, handsome, grave-eyed, and slightly built; he was a native of Louisiana, and his dark complexion showed a taint of ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... changed. The ministers and members of religious communities no longer cherish the same set of doctrines with only immaterial varieties; they no longer accept their articles in the sense of the original framers. The body at large has contracted the immoral taint; the whole head is sick; any remaining soundness is not with the acquiescent mass, but with the out-spoken individuals. In such a state of things, ordinary rules are inapplicable. There is a sort of paralysis of authority, ...
— Practical Essays • Alexander Bain
... bitter, and they at once put forward as the strongest card they could play against Mr. Forster the name of Lord Hartington. Lord Hartington was, like Forster himself, a man of high character, to whom no taint of intrigue attached. He had not offended any section of the party in the way in which Forster had offended the Nonconformists, and, above all, he was the son and heir of the Duke of Devonshire. Social influence counts for ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... (to use a metaphysical word) objective; and the sentient organ project itself as its own object. For two months I suffered greatly in my head, a part of my bodily structure which had hitherto been so clear from all touch or taint of weakness (physically I mean) that I used to say of it, as the last Lord Orford said of his stomach, that it seemed likely to survive the rest of my person. Till now I had never felt a headache even, or any the ...
— Confessions of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas De Quincey
... which is promised to the God-fearing! Therein are rivers of water which taint not; and rivers of milk whose taste changeth not; and rivers of wine, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... mountain drawl; "ye don't say so! But it's jest like her—thet is. She's so cur'us, Dusk is. Thar aint no gettin' at her. Ye know the gals ses as she's allers doin' fust one quare thing 'n' then another to get the boys mad at each other. But Lor', p'r'aps 'taint so! Dusk's powerful good-lookin', and gals is jealous, ...
— Lodusky • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... over-indulgence in alcohol by a member of the Musgrave family was satisfactorily accounted for by the matter-of-course statement that the Musgraves usually "drank,"—just as the Allardyces notoriously perpetuated the taint of insanity, and the Townsends were proverbially unable "to let women alone," and the Vartreys were deplorably prone to dabble in literature. These things had been for a long while just as they were to-day; and therefore (Lichfield estimated) ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... justice, when law failed to give it. Bacon's ideas of the duties of a judge were clear and strong, as he showed in various admirable speeches and charges: his duties as regards his own conduct and reputation; his duties in keeping his subordinates free from the taint of corruption. He was not ignorant of the subtle and unacknowledged ways in which unlawful gains may be covered by custom, and an abuse goes on because men will not choose to look at it. He entered on his office with ...
— Bacon - English Men Of Letters, Edited By John Morley • Richard William Church
... are harmless. Indeed, I do not recall any play of theirs which could hurt any one capable of understanding it. Most of their plays are not to be recommended to ignorant innocence or to fragile virtue. They are not meant for young men and maidens. They are not wholly free from the taint which is to be detected in nearly all French fiction. The mark of the beast is set on not a little of the work done by the strongest men in France. M. Meilhac is too clean and too clever ever to delve in indecency from mere wantonness: ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... understand that—but from choice. Situated as I am, I receive only the most respectable persons into my house. There must be no mystery about the positions of my lodgers. Mystery in the position of a lodger carries with it—what shall I say? I don't wish to offend you—I will say, a certain Taint. Very well. Now I put it to your own common-sense. Can a person in my position be expected to expose herself to—Taint? I make these remarks in a sisterly and Christian spirit. As a lady yourself—I will even go the length ...
— The Law and the Lady • Wilkie Collins
... to do anything—wash!' Is it your washing, or the water, that will clean you? Wash and be clean! Ah, my brother! Naaman's cleansing was only a test of his obedience, and a token that it was God who cleansed him. There was no power in Jordan's waters to take away the taint of leprosy. Our cleansing is in that blood of Jesus Christ that has the power to take away all sin, and to make the foulest amongst ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... a man possesses the Christian spirit, and is governed by Christian principle, the more anxious will he be to do justice to every other system of religion, and to hold his own without taint ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... their sky, a sun-field in the day, a gallery of stars at night, and their winds, flying from sea to sea, but gathering no taint, the deserts are treeless, and unknowing the sweetness of gardens and the glory of grass, it was not by accident or forgetfulness; for with him, the Compassionate, the Merciful, there are no accidents or lapses of any kind. He is all attention and ever present. Thus the Throne ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... roasted chicken coming through the parted portieres from the kitchen. Harry was very fond of roasted chicken. He inhaled that and the delicate perfume of Ida's garments and hair. He regarded her glowing beauty with affection which had no taint of sensuality. Harry had more of a poetic liking for sweet odors and ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... that wheat was just merely wheat. It rather opened my eyes to be told that in one season the Shippers' Clearance Association definitely specified and duly handled exactly four hundred and twenty-eight grades of this particular grain. Even straight Northern wheat, without the taint of weed-seed, may be classified in any of the different numbers up to six, and also assorted into "tough," "wet," "damp," "musty," "binburnt" and half a dozen other grades and conditions, according to the season. But since I'm to be a wheat-grower, it's my duty to ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... the Cornet, they would deserve to be handed down to posterity as poltroons and cowards. He would, he said, go still further; they would not only deserve to be thus branded with infamy, but they would actually be so; and their pusillanimity would be a taint in the blood of their children's children. He begged, he prayed, he intreated, he implored that they would not disgrace the name of man by conduct at once so cowardly and so foolish. But he begged, prayed, intreated and implored in vain—his ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 1 • Henry Hunt
... Kenrick, 'have him only once Where I could take him by the throat, and measure My strength with his!'—'Tut, tut! the kind physician Who warns you of some lurking taint, to which The cautery should be applied at once, Is not, in act, if not intent, your friend More certainly than he you rave against. And you've been jealous, I suppose, at times, Of the poor runaway?'—'Ay, ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... will tear and taint The Poet, Patriot, Sage or Saint, Not sparing wit nor learning. Now, if you'd know the reason why, The best of reasons I'll supply; 'Tis ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... knowledge. It would widen his horizon. Then, and not a minute sooner, to the University, where he would go not as a child but a man capable of enjoying its real advantages, attend lectures with profit, acquire manners instead of mannerisms and a University tone instead of a University taint. What ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... candidates to office, they did succeed in placing their demands to advantage before the public. Humanitarians, like Horace Mann, took up independently the fight for free public education and carried it to success. In Pennsylvania, public schools, free from the taint of charity, date since 1836. In New York City the public school system was established in 1832. The same is true of the demand for a mechanics' lien law, of the abolition of imprisonment for debt, ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman
... an awful cold. Its so cold that the tooth past rolls right offen your brush in the morning. The Captin has a cold in his nose. He says he wont take the men out in such bad wether as today. Taint nothin gainst him Mable but I hope he has a cold ...
— Dere Mable - Love Letters Of A Rookie • Edward Streeter
... solemn thing it is to me To look upon a babe that sleeps, Wearing in its spirit deeps The undeveloped mystery Of our Adam's taint and woe; Which, when they developed be, Will not ...
— Lover or Friend • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the Marchese Rivardi. Lady Kingswood merited the description thus given of her, for she was distinctly a dear old English lady, and her title was the least thing about her, especially in her own opinion. There was no taint of snobbery in her simple, kindly disposition, and when her late husband, a distinguished military officer, had been knighted for special and splendid service in the war, she had only deplored that the ruin of his health and disablement by wounds, ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... the talk don't 'mount to snuff 'Bout this kinder life a-being rough, And I'm sure it's plenty good enough, And 'tween you and me, 'taint as tough— As livin' ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... are counterbalanced by human hates; but there is a Love that admits of no opposite or reaction; divine and free from all taint of self, that sheds ...
— The Way of Peace • James Allen
... thus a man who was never in a brothel in his life, and whose greatest defect was in being as timid and shy as a virgin, treated as a frequenter of places of that description; and in finding myself charged with being......, I, who not only never had the least taint of such disorder, but, according to the faculty, was so constructed as to make it almost impossible for me to contract it. Everything well considered, I thought I could not better refute this libel than by having it printed in the city in which I longest resided, and with this intention I ...
— The Confessions of J. J. Rousseau, Complete • Jean Jacques Rousseau
... all life, and nothing but life, and so with death, free will, necessity, design, and everything else. This, at least, is how philosophers must think concerning them in theory; in practice, however, not even John Stuart Mill himself could eliminate all taint of its opposite from any one of these things, any more than Lady Macbeth could clear her hand of blood; indeed, the more nearly we think we have succeeded the more certain are we to find ourselves ere long mocked and baffled; and this, I take it, is what our biologists began in the autumn ...
— Luck or Cunning? • Samuel Butler
... conjugal wrangling, no slip of the tongue; the oil is on the surface of the wave,—the monsters in the hell of the abyss war invisibly below. At length, a dull torpor creeps over the woman; she feels the taint in her veins,—the slow victory is begun. What mattered all her vigilance and caution? Vainly glide from the fangs of the serpent,—his very breath suffices to destroy! Pure seems the draught and wholesome the viand,—that master of the science of murder needs ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... becomes, through that very protective coloration, a disadvantage when its wearer drops wounded and unconscious on the open field. In a poor light the litter bearers might search within a few rods of him and never see him; but where the faulty eyesight fails the nose of the dog sniffs the human taint in the air, and the dog makes the work of rescue thorough and complete. At ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... "but I think I'll let you in on it. The name of our noble organization is 'Grue's Overseas Grouches,' and our humble object is to rebuke the only taint of Prussianism which we have personally encountered in an otherwise perfectly good man's army. When we've done that we ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... martyr—whether in a good cause or a foolish one, let those judge who call themselves wise; there was no taint of selfishness in him, no thought of ambition for his own name, and there was no spot upon his life in an age of which the evils cannot be written down, and are better not guessed. He died for something ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... feel the heart-beat of Nature and her beauty in perfect harmony with all that is best within us, we must be silent, undisturbed, preferably alone. This is not flowery sentiment—it is what every true lover of old and lovely Nature would feel in Western China, yet still unspoiled by the taint of man's absorbing stream of civilization. And in the stress of modern life, and the progress of man's monopolization of the earth on which he lives, it is beautiful to some of us, of whom it may be said the highest state of inward happiness comes from solitary meditation in unperturbed ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... there until the heat had dried the nut meats to the proper brownish tone, there rose and spread upon the air a stench so thick and so heavy as to be almost visible; a rancid, hot, rottenish stench. Then, when the wind blew off the seas it frequently brought with it the taint of rotted fish. Sniffing this smell Ethan Pratt would pray for a land breeze; but since he hated perfumed smells almost as intensely as he hated putrescent ones, a land breeze was no treat to his nose either, for it came freighted with the sickish odour of the frangipane ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... that's a done that, and more too, for to get their men safe off and out o' way—iss, and wasn't thought none the wus of, neither. You'm growed mighty fancikul all to wance 'bout what us is to do and what us dussn't think o'. I'm sick o' such talk. 'Taint nawthin' else fra' mornin' to night but Adam this and Adam that. I'm darned if 'tis to be wondered at if the maid plays 'ee false: by gosh! I'd do the trick, if I was she, 'fore I'd put up with such fantads from you or either man like 'ee. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... make head against the advances of an overwhelming mediocrity. Of society there was but little; for what it suited the caprice of certain people to call such was little more than the noisy, screeching, hoydenish romping of both sexes. The taint of provincialism was diffused over all feelings and beliefs. Of arts and letters the country possessed none or next to none. Moreover, there was no genuine sympathy with either. To all this dismal prospect there was slight hope of improvement, because there was a disposition to ...
— James Fenimore Cooper - American Men of Letters • Thomas R. Lounsbury
... his head. "That cuts no ice. Hard luck, sonny, but we've got to take our medicine in this world. 'Taint no medicine for kids, though," ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... this it might have been easier to part with it now, though, as she had proved, Jennie's affections were not based in any way upon material considerations. Her love of life and of personality were free from the taint of selfishness. She went about among these various rooms selecting this rug, that set of furniture, this and that ornament, wishing all the time with all her heart and soul that it need not be. Just to think, in a little while Lester would not come any more of an evening! ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... gambling operations of his friends had always resulted profitably to himself. He was a regular attendant at church, conducted himself in the face of all men as one incapable of wrong, and against whom no taint of suspicion could possibly attach. A veritable "wolf in sheep's clothing" was this dishonest man, and as such I felt that he richly deserved the fate that was so soon to overtake him. The day of his hypocrisy and dishonesty was soon to set, to be followed ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... frail Marie appears somewhat cautious in direct allusions to her skull, and to her 'earth-life,' it is certainly to her credit that she seems to have retained no taint of mercenary greed. She made no demand or reference to a fee, and a second letter had to be sent to her Medium to learn the amount of my debt. This is her reply:—'Your kind favour came duly to me, and as ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... were admitted, and for some time seemed dazed at the kind treatment they were receiving, and appeared half under the impression they were in Heaven. "What's this chummy?" queried one. "Imperial Yeomanry Hospital" was the reply. "Thank Gawd 'taint the R.A.M.C." grunted the Tommy, turning over on his side with a sigh of relief. At about ten that night we had to make room in our tent for a dozen wounded men from Thursday's fight. Ninety were being brought into Rietfontein and the I.Y. ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... "'Taint," said Jack Penny slowly. "I don't believe in bunyips. If it was a bunyip beating his gin, she'd holloa out like hooray, and squeak the leaves ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... nuts from time to time when finally other members became interested in nut culture. Mr. John Engle of the Marietta Nurseries advised me to plant seed from this particular tree and raise seedling trees for sale. I finally did on a small scale only. But I soon found in the young seedlings a taint of black walnut blood, which discouraged me for a further continuance. Later I had correspondence with J. F. Jones, then of Monticello, Fla., who had specialized in the propagation of all nut trees. In 1903 scions were sent to him, and returned as budded trees in 1905, and are now a living monument ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifth Annual Meeting - Evansville, Indiana, August 20 and 21, 1914 • Various
... there was that bad Tressilian blood—notoriously bad, and never more flagrantly displayed than in the case of the late Ralph Tressilian. It was impossible that Oliver should have escaped the taint of it; nor could Sir John perceive any signs that he had done so. He displayed the traditional Tressilian turbulence. He was passionate and brutal, and the pirate's trade to which he had now set his hand was of all trades the one for which he was by nature best equipped. He was harsh ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... the death of the king, or violate the chastity of the queen. And this upon the same reason, as was before given; because the prince of Wales is next in succession to the crown, and to violate his wife might taint the blood royal with bastardy: and the eldest daughter of the king is also alone inheritable to the crown, in failure of issue male, and therefore more respected by the laws than any of her younger sisters; ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... there He has won his share, All cleansed from taint of sin; For on earth prepared, No toil he spared That holy place to win. That he hath won Near God's dear Son Fast by the holy river— Oh, such as thine May the end be mine; Be glory ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... that the Finn folks must, after all, be pretty much the same sort of people as his own folks at home; but, on the other hand, another thought was now uppermost in his mind, the thought, namely, that the Finns must be of an inferior stock, with a taint of disgrace about them. Nevertheless, he could not very well do without Zilla's society, and they were very much together as before, especially at the time ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... eating, pellagra is most common. Experiments have shown that in these districts, by excluding corn from the diet and furnishing a substantial fare, the disease has been banished. Unfortunately, the taint of the disease passes from parent to child and even to the third and fourth generation, and the physical deformities commonly seen in pellagrous districts are due to this hereditary taint. Dr. Babcock, ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... in the man passed comprehension. But so did most of Victor's whims and ways. What riddle more obscure than that portentous business which permeated the atmosphere of the establishment with the taint of stealth and terror?—the famous "research work" that kept Victor closeted with Sturm in his study daily for hours at a time, often in confabulation with others of like ilk, men of furtive and unprepossessing cast who came and went by appointment at all hours, but ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... preserved in this subterranean chapel is a work of the late Renaissance. Though savouring of that mawkish elaboration which then began to taint local art and literature and is bound up with the name of the poet Marino, it is still a passably virile figure. But those countless others, in churches or over house-doors—do they indeed portray the dragon-killer, ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... else though he had throttled his doubts by covering her throat with diamonds. Her strangeness, her pallor, her acquiescence, the delicate hint of depravity in her, the subtle response to all that was worst in him had attracted him, only to learn, little by little, that the taint of corruption was only a taint infecting others, not her; that the promise of evil was only a promise; that he had to deal with a young body but an old intelligence, and a mind so old that at moments her faded gaze almost appalled ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... equally of morality and medical knowledge among their unmarried women, it did not take many years after the appearance of the Whites to taint the race throughout with certain diseases. A cold-blooded passage in Crozet's journal tells of the beginning of this curse. Though not altogether unskilful surgeons, the Maoris knew virtually nothing of medicine. Nor do they show much nervous power when attacked by ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... from view. Would that you could read the feelings of my heart when you appear before me, radiant in your beauty, the centre of admiring eyes, reclining calmly in your carriage in the Champs-Elysees, or seated in your box at the Opera! Then would you know how absolutely free from selfish taint is the pride with which I hear the praises of your loveliness and grace, praises which warm my heart even to the strangers who utter them! When by chance you have raised me to elysium by a friendly greeting, my pride is mingled with ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... interpretation of instrumental rather than true vocal suggestion. His tunes are pathetic, melodious, and of truly national and popular character, the best of them almost unaccountably free from the indefinable secular taint that such qualities are apt to introduce, and which the bad following of his example did very quickly introduce in the hands of less sensitive artists. They are ...
— A Practical Discourse on Some Principles of Hymn-Singing • Robert Bridges
... tell us, that in the genealogical ages during which man has struggled upward, from the lower stages of vertebrate and mammal to the genus of catarrhine apes, he has gradually thrown off bestial instincts, and that the tiger taint will ultimately be totally eliminated; that "original sin is neither more nor less than the brute inheritance which every man carries with him, and that Evolution is an advance toward true salvation." ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... gleaned of all heresy, the inquisition could still swell its list of murders to thirty-two thousand! The numbers burned in effigy, or condemned to penance, punishments generally equivalent to exile, confiscation, and taint of blood, to all ruin but the mere loss of worthless life amounted to three hundred and nine thousand. But the crowds who perished in dungeons, of the torture, of confinement, and of broken hearts, the millions of dependent lives made utterly helpless, or hurried ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... be taken to some desert place By man untrod, and in a rock-hewn cave, With food no more than to avoid the taint That homicide might bring on all the State, Buried alive. There let her call in aid The King of Death, the one god she reveres, Or learn too late a lesson learnt at last: 'Tis labor lost, ...
— The Oedipus Trilogy • Sophocles
... chill on Hal's memory. He stared at the sinister oblong of type, vaguely sensing in its covert promises the taint, yet failing to apprehend the full ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... o' his plan o' leadin' out all the critters, 'fore he touched off the barn. 'Taint everybody 't would hev taken pains to do that. But all the same, I tell Sarai't I feel kind o' skittish, nights, to hev to turn in, feelin' 't there's ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various
... in which Maggie's betrayal cried to Heaven, like the destruction of an innocent. Majendie's finer instinct had surrendered to the charm of her appealing and astounding purity, by which he meant her cleanness from the mercenary taint. He had seen himself contending, grossly, with a fierce little vulgar schemer, who (he had been convinced) would hang on to poor Gorst's honour by fingers of a murderous tenacity. His own experience helped him to the vision. And ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... when you seek to place new and important limitations upon a Constitution with which we are now satisfied. I will answer for one State, and tell you that she will not listen to a proposition that comes to her with a taint of suspicion about it. If you will not allow her representatives to participate in the examination and discussion of these propositions here, her people will reject them without discussion, if they are ever called to act on them. ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden
... his head deprecatingly. "Don't seem lak I evah able to rickermembah dat boy's name, nohow. His grampa' 'uz a Hynds, likewise his ma, but she 'sisted on marryin' er furriner, an' de boy takes atter de furriners 'stead er we-all. 'Taint de po' boy's fault, but ol' Mis' Scarlett hated 'im wuss 'n pizen. De only notice she take er de boy is ter warrant 'im fo' trispassin'. Dat 's how come folkses ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... refreshment, and we are on the down grade."[1213] Another Socialist wrote: "We are all of us great-great-grandchildren of the beasts. We carry the bestial attributes in our blood, some more, some less. Who amongst us is so pure and exalted that he has never been conscious of the bestial taint?"[1214] "Descendants of barbarians and beasts, we have not yet conquered the greed and folly of our bestial and barbarous inheritance. Our nature is an unweeded garden. Our hereditary soil ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... itself, but on the tendency it has to perpetuate any constitutional weakness or other hereditary taints; and he attempts to prove this by the argument that "if crosses act by virtue of being a cross, and not by virtue of removing an hereditary taint, then the greater the difference between the two animals crossed the more beneficial will that act be." He then shows that, the wider the difference the less is the benefit, and concludes that a cross, as such, has no ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... gin can whisper,—intimates that he can put the "Captain" (he'd promote you to be "Admiral" on the spot if he thought that thereby he might flatter you into buying) on to the "lay" of some cigars—"smuggled," he breathes from behind a black and horny paw, whose condition alone would taint the finest Havanna that ever graced the lips of king or duke—the like of which may be found in no tobacconist's establishment in the United Kingdom. There have been young men, greatly daring, who have been known to ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... turn for the causes, for the origins of that transformation in the life of the nation which has resulted in the conscious ideal of the Britain of to-day. The "separation" from Rome fifty years after Bosworth had no conscious imperial purpose, but it rescued the rising empire of England from the taint of medievalism which sapped the empires of Spain, of the Bourbons, and of the Hapsburgs. The Reformation in England owes much of its character amongst the people at large, apart from the government, above all in the heroic age of the Reformation ...
— The Origins and Destiny of Imperial Britain - Nineteenth Century Europe • J. A. Cramb
... For the dust will get in your nose, clog your ears, make clay in your mouth and mortar in your eyes, and so stop up all the natural passages to the soul; whereby the wickedness which that subtle organ doth constantly excrete is balked of its issue, tainting the entire system with a grievous taint. ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... honor woman highly. Frona, you have always made a stand for frankness, and I can now advantage by it. It hurts me because of the honor in which I hold you, because I cannot bear to see taint approach you. Why, when I saw you and that woman together on the trail, I—you ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... Let us have no more of that horrible cant. Mr Praed: if there are really only those two gospels in the world, we had better all kill ourselves; for the same taint is in both, ...
— Mrs. Warren's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... one to loving them in all, and so is the one beautiful soul only the door through which he enters to the society of all true and pure souls. In the particular society of his mate he attains a clearer sight of any spot, any taint which her beauty has contracted from this world, and is able to point it out, and this with mutual joy that they are now able, without offence, to indicate blemishes and hindrances in each other, and give to each all help and comfort in curing the same. And beholding in many souls the ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... live stock of the estate, to be willed away at death with the horse or the ass, whose pedigree was kept as carefully as his own. His children were bondmen, like himself; even the freeman's children by a slave-mother inherited the mother's taint. 'Mine is the calf that is born of my cow,' ran the English proverb." In the same passage he points out that the number of the serfs was being continually augmented from various concurrent causes—war, crime, debt, and poverty all assisting to drive men into a condition of perpetual bondage.[16] ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... came again to her nest, and searched for her missing offspring. But the taint of blood on the floor of the chamber told her only too well that henceforth her mothering care would be needed solely by the young mouse that she had rescued in her flight. The day passed uneventfully; the weasels did not repeat ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... REAL BLESSING.—Where one parent is consumptive and the other vigorous, the chances are just half as great. If there is a scrofulous or consumptive taint in the blood, beware! Sickly children are no comfort to their parents, no real blessing. If such people marry, they had better, in most ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property, or for any other improper or wicked project, will be less apt to pervade the whole body of the Union than a particular member of it; in the same proportion as such a malady is more likely to taint a particular county or district, ...
— The Federalist Papers • Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison
... the maintenance of the Constitution and the Union is the duty of preserving the Government free from the taint or even the suspicion of corruption. Public virtue is the vital spirit of republics, and history proves that when this has decayed and the love of money has usurped its place, although the forms of free government may remain for a season, ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson
... difficulties and almost every step would be attended by danger. But for the present at least he was free. Free! The word had never appealed to him so strongly before. He drew in great draughts of the mountain air. They seemed in a way to cleanse his lungs from the prison taint. ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... que la beaute', according to the good La Fontaine. She had the soft abandonment, the supple and elegant movements, and the graceful carelessness of the creoles.—(The reader must remember that the term "Creole" does not imply any taint of black blood, but only that the person, of European family, has been born in the West Indies.)—Her temper was always the same. She ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... "Central" jist about a year ago On the run from Winnemucca up to Reno in Washoe. There's no end o' skeery places. 'Taint a road fur one who dreams, With its curves an' awful tres'les over ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... public men then living, the one most deeply imbued with the spirit of our free constitution. Its checks and balances jumped with his humour. His nature was without any taint of fanaticism, nor was he anything of the doctrinaire. He was neither a Richard Baxter nor a John Locke. He had none of the pure Erastianism of Selden, who tells us in his inimitable, cold-blooded way that "a King is a King men have made for their ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell
... bell be rung before us, to warn all in the streets to stand away; and we will carry a vessel of strong incense before the bier. Those who go out with me, I pledge you my word, shall not return for some days till they are free of all taint themselves." ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... the death penalty to all who are "in Christ" and "justified by faith"; that is, we shall all rise from the dead as He rose. Apparently Paul's belief was that no one would ever have died but for the sin of Adam, a taint which has affected all Adam's descendants. Death in his view was synonymous ...
— The New Theology • R. J. Campbell
... ground): "I've got my garden into pretty good heart at last, and if so be as there warn't quite so many sparrs and greybirds and roberts and one thing and t'other, I dunno but what I might get a tidy lot of sass. But there! 'taint no use what ye do as long as there's so much ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... functionaries, know quite enough of judges:—such things are in their line of business. Romescos must needs turn the conversation. "Well, taking it how I can entertain ye to most anything, I'll give ye a story on the secrets of how I used to run off Ingin remnants of the old tribes. 'Taint but a few years ago, ye know, when ther was a lot of Ingin and white, mixed stuff-some called it beautiful-down in Beaufort district. It was temptin' though, I reckon, and made a feller feel just as if he was runnin' it off to sell, every time ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... Josh," said he, leaning towards the table and clutching hold of the bottle: "try a taste o' this hyur rot-gut—'taint the daintiest o' drink to offer a man so genteelly dressed as you air this morning; but thur's wuss licker in these hyur back'oods, I reckun. Will ye mix? Thur's water ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... edict or epistle of Majorian to the senate, (Novell. tit. iv. p. 34.) Yet the expression, regnum nostrum, bears some taint of the age, and does not mix kindly with the word respublica, which ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... Birth of the Virgin is that of the Sposalizio. There is no figure here which suggests Tabachetti, but still there are some very good ones. The best have no taint of barocco; the man who did them, whoever he may have been, had evidently a good deal of life and go, was taking reasonable pains, and did not know too much. Where this is the case no work can fail to please. Some of the figures have ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler
... how absorbing. Money for ever clinks in your ear. You can think of nothing else. From the bottom of my heart I hate it, and yet how can I draw back without bringing grief to my dear old father? There was but one way in which I could defy the taint, and that was by having a home influence so pure and so high that it may brace me up against all that draws me down. I have felt that influence already. I know that when I am talking to you I am a better ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the moral purity of the Christian Scriptures as contrasted with the so-called sacred books of all other religions. That which is simply human will naturally be expected to show the moral taint of lapsed humanity. The waters cannot rise higher than the fountain-head, nor can one gather figs from thistles. In our social intercourse with men we sooner or later find out their true moral level. And ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood
... I soon discovered one thing that he was far from strong. Even a life-long residence among the purifying and strengthening airs of the keen fresh North had not protected him from the insidious ravages of that dread complaint— consumption. I fancied the hereditary taint must be on his father's side, for he always alluded to his mother as being exceptionally healthy. On Sundays I accompanied him to Church in the morning at the Basilica; in the afternoons we used to walk all over the town in various directions. Of course, on ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... work, compel us to seek an independent origin, and to look for some other translator less immediately under Wyclif's influence. The freedom with which the Bible admittedly circulated for many years, and the well-known allusion by Sir Thomas More to an English translation untouched by any taint of heresy, point also in the same direction. That the second version is really only a revision of the first can hardly be adduced as a strong argument on the other side. The ethics of literary acknowledgment ...
— Fifteenth Century Prose and Verse • Various
... eo usque in Adam censetur donec in Christo recenseatur," and other passages); but he has speculations about Adam (for the most part developments of hints given in Irenaeus; see the index in Oehler's edition), and he has a new realistic idea as to a physical taint of sin propagated through procreation. Here we have the first beginning of the doctrine of original sin (de testim. 3: "per diabolum homo a primordio circumventus, ut praeceptum dei excederet, et propterea ...
— History of Dogma, Volume 2 (of 7) • Adolph Harnack
... come? I'd ruther have him, than them—an' now there's another one of 'em—to raise out of the ashes of a fire! I'd ort to camp, but if I keep a pluggin' along mebbe I kin git to the Injun village. 'Taint fur, now—acrost this flat an' then dip down onto the river—What's that!" The man halted abruptly and stared. "It's one of 'em now!" he faltered, with tongue and lips that felt stiff. "An' it's covered with fine white ashes!" He knew that he was trembling ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... the priesthood he was appointed cure of Les Artaud, a small village in Provence, to whose degenerate inhabitants he ministered with small success. From his parents he had inherited the family taint of the Rougon-Macquarts, which in him took the form of morbid religious enthusiasm bordering on hysteria. Brain fever resulted, and bodily recovery left the priest without a mental past. Dr. Pascal Rougon, his uncle, in the hope of saving his reason, removed him to Paradou, ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... are not much injured apparently by their rationalistic taint, many others are, and all are more or less. Eternity alone will reveal how much faith in God's Word, and therefore in God himself, has been weakened or destroyed by this dread mental disease. Look ...
— To Infidelity and Back • Henry F. Lutz
... sentiment that moved her, only an indefinable and all powerful feeling that she had been white and was now black, pure and was now impure, noble and was now ignoble. Desiring to be the ermine, moral taint seemed to her unendurable. And when the Baron's passion had threatened her, she had really thought of throwing herself out of the window. In short, she loved Lucien wholly, and as women very rarely love a man. Women who say they ...
— Scenes from a Courtesan's Life • Honore de Balzac
... to," and dinner is nowhere near ready yet. 'Tis a joyous hour for the boy when it is ready, and for the hired man too. The hired man's pleasure is somewhat damped by hearing the hired girl remark that his mouth is like a barn-door with a load of hay in it. "I declare for it if 'taint," says she. He informs her that she is always "bellerin'" about something, and she requests him not to be so "putchy;" nor does that end the matter. Guests like the Melvines of Melvine Farm, the Bligh boys of Bligh's Corners, the Plunkett girls and Deacon Buckingham's ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... debauched by this travel, whilst children are poisoned at these schools, our trade will put the finishing hand to our ruin. No factory will be settled in France, that will not become a club of complete French Jacobins. The minds of young men of that description will receive a taint in their religion, their morals, and their politics, which they will in a short time ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... a ring of business in her voice that struck him as amusingly delightful—and such a sweet, clear voice, too, untinged with the slightest taint of native accent. ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... children of Adam, the soul of Mary was never subject to sin, even in the first moment of its infusion into the body. She alone was exempt from the original taint. This immunity of Mary from original sin is exclusively due to the merits of Christ, as the Church expressly declares. She needed a Redeemer as well as the rest of the human race and therefore was "redeemed, but in a more sublime manner."(235) Mary is as much indebted to ...
— The Faith of Our Fathers • James Cardinal Gibbons
... wind outside, but the Dulcibella had begun to move in her sleep, as it were, rolling drowsily to some taint send of the sea, with an occasional short jump, like the start of an ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... a taint of insanity in your family history? Alone and practically penniless like yourself! You weren't even stirred by gratitude. You just married her. ...
— The Ragged Edge • Harold MacGrath
... enough to state and to arrange his cabinet of specimens from the marvellous in human nature. But certainly in modern times, any historian, however little affecting the praise of a philosophic investigator, would feel himself called upon to remove a little the taint of the miraculous and preternatural which adheres to such anecdotes, by entering into the psychological grounds of their possibility; whether lying in any peculiarly vicious education, early familiarity with bad models, corrupting associations, or other plausible ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey
... Juliet, but one whom Juliet possessed in every part. She seemed to bear about her an atmosphere of poetry and love, the subtile spirit of that marvellous play. There was no air of study, not the faintest taint of the midnight oil;—like a gatherer of roses from some garden of Cashmere, or a peasant-girl from the vintage, she brought only odors from her toil,—the sweets of the fancy, a flavor of the passion she had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... screech, that the chaplain thought old Davy had come aboard; and he told the skipper he guessed he'd take his trick at prayin'. 'Why,' says the skipper, 'we've got on well enough without, ever since we left the Hague, hadn't we better omit it now?' ''Taint possible,' says the parson. Now you all know you can't larn seamanship to a parson or passenger—and the bloody fool knelt down with his face to wind'ard. 'Hillo!' says the skipper, 'you'd better fill away, and ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... stomach seldom loathes common victuals. O that I could see a swingeing mullet extended on a swingeing dish! cries that gullet, which is fit for the voracious harpies themselves. But O [say I] ye southern blasts, be present to taint the delicacies of the [gluttons]: though the boar and turbot newly taken are rank, when surfeiting abundance provokes the sick stomach; and when the sated guttler prefers turnips and sharp elecampane. However, all [appearance of] poverty is not quite banished from the banquets of our nobles; for ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... way remarkable. Neither was it remarkable that each such sporadic and spontaneous outburst should have its own taint or vice ...
— Europe and the Faith - "Sine auctoritate nulla vita" • Hilaire Belloc
... leprous taint of bigotry to sully his soul, blur his vision, or cramp his sphere of action, the broad stream of Christian charity flowed from his noble, generous heart, sweeping away obstacles that would have impeded the usefulness of a minister less catholic ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the world with the taint of inherited corruption in us, as also with the germs of pure affection and high instinct and purpose, we have to take care for ourselves and for each other that the taint does not eat out the good, by growing into sins of boyhood or of youth, or by ...
— Sermons at Rugby • John Percival
... my hat with one hand, and laid the other upon my head. I understood very well what his movements meant. He was looking for outward evidences of negro blood. So far as my complexion went a suspicion of African taint might very well have been entertained. I had been assisting my father in harvesting his wheat crop, and my face and hands had a heavy coating of tan, but my hair was straight and stiff. I could see that the old gentleman was puzzled. Not a ...
— The Abolitionists - Together With Personal Memories Of The Struggle For Human Rights • John F. Hume
... surpassingly Angular Mr. Grewgious became when he found himself in that unexpected position), Mr. Crisparkle bore his testimony to Mr. Jasper's strict sense of justice, and, expressing his absolute confidence in the complete clearance of his pupil from the least taint of suspicion, sooner or later, avowed that his confidence in that young gentleman had been formed, in spite of his confidential knowledge that his temper was of the hottest and fiercest, and that it was directly incensed against ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... even the prisoner seemed not to realize for some moments that his tongue had revealed secrets which were likely to cost him imprisonment for life. He appeared to imagine that the handcuffing was an excellent joke, and a taint smile overspread his face; but after finding that no one returned it, a deadly paleness chased the color from his lips, and he trembled as though he was already arraigned before ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... has a distinctive smell, as of an arid dried-out swamp, with a faint taint of fish. But in the Flats the odor changes. Here is the smell of factories, warehouses, and trading marts; the smell of stale cooking drifting from the homes of the laborers and lower class ...
— Monkey On His Back • Charles V. De Vet
... first time in their life. To them, it was neither beautiful nor familiar; it was sinister and strange. A chill, that was not of the dawn but of death itself, lay over everything. The morning wind was the breath of the tomb, the smells that came to them from the island bore the taint of mortality, the very sunshine seemed icy. They suffered—the five survivors of the night's tragedy—with a scarifying sense of disillusion with Nature. It was as though a beautiful, tender, and fondly loved mother had ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... said the visitor with due solemnity, "I assure you that whatever else I may be, I am as free from the taint of this unmentionable attribute as a babe unborn. Isabel, you will bear me ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... behind from any further communication with itself. I am not certain that I felt no pang at the thought my sister could be entirely happy without any participation on my part in her bliss. We are all so selfish that it is hard to say how far even our most innocent longings are free from the taint of ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... answer the suggestion I made you a minute since," I hazarded. "Will you pardon me if I put it now as a question? Your niece, Mrs. Jeffrey, seemed to have everything in the world to make her happy, yet she took her life. Was there a taint of insanity in her blood, or was her nature so impulsive that her astonishing death in so revolting a place should awaken ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... end, make him a friend Who can reciprocate, A kindly act, not to it tacked The proof of reprobate. God only knows whom we may choose And safely trust as brother, The seeming saint may have a taint That proves ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... the long pipe which runs by the bone should be taken out, being apt to taint, as likewise the ...
— A Poetical Cook-Book • Maria J. Moss
... clear of a very unpleasant companion, though an ancient and fish-like odor remained with me for some time after. As for the fish, I doubt if he ever came to life; he must have been dead for several days when I bought him, judging by a taint upon my hands, which the best soap ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... "and everywhere have I mixed freely with the inhabitants. I have gathered something in each corner; I have gleaned an ear from every harvest." A deep insight into the secret springs of human actions; an extensive knowledge of mankind; fervent piety, without a taint of bigotry; a poet's keen appreciation of the beauties of nature; together with a ready wit and a lively sense of humour, are among the characteristics of Saadi's masterly compositions. No writer, ancient or modern, European or Asiatic, has excelled, and few have ...
— Flowers from a Persian Garden and Other Papers • W. A. Clouston
... there were many Loyalist families in Forfarshire, it was not a time for easy social intercourse, and Jean was conscious that the Carnegies and the rest of them of the old Cavalier stock looked askance at her, and suspected the black Covenanting taint in her blood. Claverhouse, like a faithful gentleman, had done his best to conceal from her the injury which his marriage had done him, but she knew that his cunning and bitter enemy, the Duke of Queensberry, had constantly insinuated into the mind of the Duke of York and various high personages ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... past. The zeal which had blazed forth with such energy at the beginning of the war was fast sinking to a fitful, smouldering flame. Individual interests were again taking the precedence of general interests. The moral sense of the people had contracted a deadly taint from daily contact with corruption. The spirit of gambling, confined in the beginning and lost to the eye, like Le Sage's Devil, had swollen to its full proportions, and, in the garb of speculation, was undermining the foundations of society. Rogues were growing rich; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... this decision were many. In the first place, it was most indecorous and ungrateful to treat with such neglect the rules which had been approved by our Royal Patron. In the next place, the medals themselves became almost worthless from this original taint: and they ceased to excite "competition amongst men of science," because no man could feel the least security that he should get them, even though his discoveries should fulfil all the conditions on which ...
— Decline of Science in England • Charles Babbage
... He looked at Bruce a moment questioningly before adding, "Reckin's haow you aint usen to the quiet yit. Taint so lonely, the woods an' the hills whend you know um." He twisted his head like a bird and looked out across the extensive sweep of the land and the long slow curve of the river, a deep inspiration swelling his chest. "Simlike they up an' talk to you, the woods an' the hills ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... principle which dictated them does not require the aid of argument or elucidation; it is native to the conscience, and will be apparent to all who consult the monitor in their own breast. The wrong is aggravated when the taint of personal interest mingles with it, as when committed by a party to the cause, but appears in the worst form when it is the act of attorneys or counsel, who are the sworn officers of the court, whose duty it is to act ...
— An Essay on Professional Ethics - Second Edition • George Sharswood
... and get skeered, Miss," he said, kindly; "'taint nothin' in the world but a rabbit. Mamie can't never get used to rabbits, someways." He indicated one of the horses—a high, raw-boned animal, sketched on a generous plan, whose ribs and joints protruded, and whose rough white coat ...
— Lavender and Old Lace • Myrtle Reed
... taint of prayers is non-repetition; the taint of houses, non-repair; the taint of the body is sloth; the taint ...
— The Dhammapada • Unknown
... a guess, anyhow," rejoined the Texan, taking hold of the knife, in a hand passed behind him. Then bringing it forward and under his eyes, he added, "'Taint sech a bad sort o' blade eyther, tho' I weesh 'twas my ole bowie they took from me at Mier. Wal, Cap; ye kin count on me makin' use o't, ef 'casion calls, an' more'n one yaller-belly gittin' it inter his ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... only spoke with scientific candor of the vices which were common to all statesmen in his age—though the Italians were so corrupt that it seemed hopeless to deal fairly with them—yet there was a radical taint in the soul of the man who could have the heart to cull these poisonous herbs of policy and distill their juices to a quintessence for the use of the prince to whom he was confiding the destinies of Italy.[1] Almost involuntarily we remember the oath which Arthur administered to his knights, ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... to plod around. In less than six months they passed from a bare goodnight to the exchange of soul thoughts on butter-making, the raising of calves, fattening of swine, and methods of feeding swedes that they might not taint cow's milk, and so had progressed by such tender paths through gentle dusks to the point where Timmins was ready to declare himself in the light of this ...
— Quaint Courtships • Howells & Alden, Editors |
