"Muck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... merely stand there, and do nothing; yet the mere sight of them is all-sufficient for Jean. She requires nothing more. The other evening, after contemplating them a long time, as they stood in the muddy muck chewing the cud, she said, with deep and reverent appreciation, "Ain't this ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... being also mother of slaves; You might have borne deeper slaves— Doughfaces, crawlers, lice of humanity— Terrific screamers of freedom, Who roar and bawl, and get hot i' the face, But were they not incapable of august crime, Would quench the hopes of ages for a drink— Muck-worms, creeping flat to the ground, A dollar dearer to them than Christ's blessing; All loves, all hopes, less than the thought of gain, In life walking in that as in a shroud; Men whom the throes of heroes, Great deeds at which the gods might stand appal'd, The shriek ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... for any girl, once she has attained the age of fifteen, to continue unacquainted with the main facts of life, and some are initiated at an even tenderer age. How is it possible for any maiden to remain unenlightened in this regard these days when sensational, muck-raking prints throw the searchlight of publicity into every boudoir and spicy details of society's philandering fill column after column in the breakfast table newspaper? No matter how little curiosity a healthy-minded ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... graveled all the way, and if this isn't blue clay I'll eat my hat. It might just be a private road to some farm, and the other road might have swung around after a bit. This muck- hole doesn't ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart
... a hurry did they twain fare, The gent, and the son of the stout porter, Who fled like an arrow, nor turned a hair, Through all the mire and muck: "A ticket, a ticket, sir clerk, I pray: For by two of the clock must I needs away." "That may hardly be," the clerk did say, "For indeed—the ...
— Verses and Translations • C. S. C.
... ordure, excrement, faeces, dejections, lesses, muck; puer, fumet, fiants, treddle, spraints, coprolite (petrified), mute, guano, ornithocopros. Associated Words: coprophagy, coprophagous, Augean, dungmeer, excrementitious, sterconst, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... the eighties, before the dominance of business in American society had been questioned, efficiency, as the term was then understood, had a place among the elect; it was the intimate associate of business success. Then came the muck-raker, and with him came also anti-trust cases and insurance investigations. We turned our attention to labor outbreaks, to graft prosecutions, and to land steals. We talked about "malefactors of great wealth." We even became interested in ...
— Higher Education and Business Standards • Willard Eugene Hotchkiss
... half the length of the rapids we encountered the usual troubles that overtake the tracker—those of clearing our lines of trees and bushes, slipping into the muck of small inlets, stumbling over stones, cutting the lines upon sharp rocks, or having them caught by gnarled roots of driftwood. As we approached the last lap of white water the canoes passed through a rocky basin that held a thirty- or forty-yard section of the river in a slack and unruffled ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... we've heard about that place is true, little danger of that," declared Seth. "Chances are he dropped with a splash into a bed of muck. I only hope he don't get drowned ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... invited one day by the laird and lady of Muck, one of the western islands, two miles long, and three quarters of a mile high. He has half his island in his own culture, and upon the other half live one hundred and fifty dependants, who not only live upon the product, but export corn sufficient ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... them an hundred AEtnas hissed And spluttered sulphur, gathering for the shock? Be ye our Hercules—and Lynceus-eyed: Still ye the storm or ere the storm begin— Ere "Liberty" take Justice by the throat, And run moon-mad a Malay murder-muck, Throttle the "Trusts", and crush the coils combined That crack our bones and fatten on our fields. Strike down the hissing heads of Anarchy: Strike swift and hard, nor parley with the fiend Mothered of hell and father of all ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... Company is to pay good wages to its employees, and to see that they are comfortable and contented. As a result of this policy the Standard Oil Company is seldom bothered with strikes, and most of its workers have no connection with labor unions, do not listen to muck-rakers and other vile breeders of social discontent, and are quite satisfied with their little round of duties and their ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... clasping the basket of provisions to her side; the air grows thick with the smell and smoke of kitchens. It again becomes clear to our Lane that the real and normal consist solely of herself, her houses, and their muck-heaps. ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... body, became, to his mind's eye, the venerable chieftain of a mountain clan. Judd, with his aquiline face, which was undoubtedly handsome in a dark, brooding way, beneath its uncombed shock of black hair which swept low over his forehead, sinewy with the strength, quickness and muck of the natural grace of a panther, was the typical outlaw ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... mut of a Catholic-moiderin' bastard! Come down and I'll moider yuh! Pullin' dat whistle on me, huh? I'll show yuh! I'll crash yer skull in! I'll drive yer teet' down yer troat! I'll slam yer nose trou de back of yer head! I'll cut yer guts out for a nickel, yuh lousey boob, yuh dirty, crummy, muck-eatin' son ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... of grass, sir," was the growling objection; and still worse was the suggestion, which gradually rose into a command, that the "muck-heap" should be removed to the said home-field, and never allowed to accumulate in such ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... unlooked-for development, Seaton brought the Skylark to a stop and stabbed into the ground with the attractor. The first attempt brought up nothing but a pillar of muck, the second brought to light a couple of wings and one writhing arm, the third brought the whole animal, still struggling as strongly as it had in the first contest. Seaton again lifted the animal ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... on seeing our name unexpectedly in print. We may soar to the heights or we may sink to the depths. Jimmy did the latter. A mere cursory first inspection of the article revealed the fact that it was no eulogy. With an unsparing hand the writer had muck-raked his eventful past, the text on which he hung his remarks being that ill-fated encounter with Lord Percy Whipple at the Six Hundred Club. This the scribe had recounted at a length and with a boisterous vim which outdid even Bill Blake's effort in the London Daily ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... with a kind of "How-do-you-know?" and "Did-it-happen-to-you?" air every time a man says something he knows by—well—by seeing it—perfectly plain seeing it. One doesn't need to stand up to one's neck in experience, in a perfect muck of experience, in order to know things, in order to know they are there. People who are experienced within an inch of their lives, submerged in experience, until all you can see of them is a tired look, are always calling out to the man who sees a thing as he is going by—sees it, ...
— The Lost Art of Reading • Gerald Stanley Lee
... he said. "You remember Appleby setting me a hundred-and-fifty the day before yesterday? Well, I showed them up to-day, and he looked through them and chucked them into the waste-paper basket under his desk. I thought at the time I hadn't seen him muck them up at all with his pencil, which is his usual game, so after he had gone at the end of school I nipped to the basket and fished them out. They were as good as new, so I saved them up in case ...
— The Politeness of Princes - and Other School Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... an instant, for they had wanted only a leader. Above the roar of the flames Bert could hear the thud as the horses landed in the soft muck of the cow-yard, ten feet below. Then came a shout as the men rushed forward to ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... again until they had cantered up through the awakening bazaar, where unclean-looking merchants and their underlings rinsed out their teeth noisily above the gutters, and the pariah dogs had started nosing in among the muck for things unthinkable to eat. The sun had shortened up the shadows and begun to beat down through the gaps; the advance-guard of the shrivelling hot wind had raised foul dust eddies, and the city was ahum when she halted at last beside the big brick arch of the ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... that Miss Marsdeo's taste differs very widely from yours," said De Forrest; "that is, if you give us to understand that you would seek your themes in a barn-yard, and set your easel upon a muck-heap. Though your pictures might not rank high they would ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... an English-bred servant would not be one quarter so suitable to colonial requirements. Of course she is independent, often even cheeky, but a mistress learns to put up with occasional tantrums, provided the general behaviour and character are good. When we were first out here we used to run a-muck with our servants about once a week; but now we find it better to bear the ills we have than fly to others which we know not of. Our present Lizzie is impertinent to a degree when reproved; but then she can cook decently, ...
— Town Life in Australia - 1883 • R. E. N. (Richard) Twopeny
... the contour couch, the young girl strained against the padded steel grips and screamed. Again she writhed and screamed as she felt the hideous touch of the monster snatching at her. She struggled frenziedly through the muck of the swamp but the thing with the blood eyes scrabbled faster on its rotten limbs. The thing seized her in its obscene embrace. Raw terror tore another scream from her throat. Behind her on the projector a needle slammed ...
— The Premiere • Richard Sabia
... people were, they were still fearful savages. Messengers arrived from the neighbouring town to announce the death of their chief, Matiamvo. That individual had been addicted to running a-muck through his capital and beheading any one he met, till he had a large heap of human heads in front of his hut. Men were also slaughtered occasionally, whenever the chief wanted part of a ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... as it is with individuals; a boy very soon fancies himself a man; he takes a switch in his hand, rides a muck against thistles and stinging nettles, cuts off their heads, might and main, and then fancies himself a Wellington or a Nelson. Young nations have the same notions, and age tames both the one and ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... Mr. Mole. "Why, whatever is the world coming to next? We shall have them spirit-rapping and table-turning and such-like muck, I suppose." ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... we must present, with apologies, the agent of the Autocrat, the agent, the High-muck-a-muck of the Pacific Slope, with a salary of a hundred thousand a year and perks! In his youth Nat Levi smelt of fried fish, unless the smell was overpowered by onions, and he changed his lodgings more often ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... said California John. "In the first place, it's only the 'nesters,' [A] the saloon crowd, who are after you for Austin's case; and the usual muck of old-timers and loafers who either think they own the country and ought to have a free hand in everything just as they're used to, or who are agin the Government on general principles. I don't believe the people at Durham ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... great thumpin' jumps sometimes, an' run along the tops of the trees, carrying its partner with it, an' then droppin' him jest as a fish hawk'll drop a pickerel to kill it before eatin'. An' its food, of all the muck in the whole Bush is—moss!" And he laughed a short, unnatural laugh. "It's a moss-eater, is the Wendigo," he added, looking up excitedly into the faces of his companions. "Moss-eater," he repeated, with a string of the most outlandish oaths ...
— The Wendigo • Algernon Blackwood
... and be friends." The projected amnesty which Espartero so unfortunately agreed to, was the cause of this idea getting ground. It took them upon their weak side, carried them entirely off their legs; and, acting under the influence of this frothy enthusiasm, they ran a-muck, as the saying is, and only awakened from their day-dream to curse the changes that their own folly had so largely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... might not devoutly hope for an antidote to the poisonous doctrines of monarchy and aristocracy, though in very truth the existence of any such poison was only one of the maggots which, bred in the muck of party strife, had found a lodgment in his brain; not that it was not a commendable public spirit to wish for a good newspaper to circulate where it was most needed; not that it was not a most excellent thing in him to hold out a helping hand to the friend who had been ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... in gleaming light Through my dull head. And hurt me. I clearly feel that I shall soon slip away— Thorny roses of my skin, don't prick like that. The night grows moldy. The poison light of the lampposts Has smeared it with green muck. My heart is like a bag. My blood freezes. The world is dying. My ...
— The Verse of Alfred Lichtenstein • Alfred Lichtenstein
... hit upon some researches of Daubree's at the Paris Laboratorie des Poudres et Salpetres. He exploded dynamite in a tightly screwed steel cylinder, too strong to burst, and I found he could crush rocks into a muck not unlike the South African bed in which diamonds are found. It was a tremendous strain on my resources, but I got a steel cylinder made for my purpose after his pattern. I put in all my stuff and my explosives, built up a fire ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... whom the practice that is called a mock, or running a muck, has prevailed for time immemorial. It is well known, that to run a muck, in the original sense of the word, is to get intoxicated with opium, and then rush into the street with a drawn weapon, and kill whoever comes in the way, till the party is himself either killed or taken prisoner; ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... do I care about being confessed before the angels, or about the Holy Spirit to teach me? What I want is my share of the paternal acres. A rabbi who will help me to these is the rabbi for me.' John Bunyan's 'man with the muck-rake' had his eyes so glued to the ground and the muck that he did not see the crown hanging above him. How many of us find the sermon time a good opportunity for thinking about investments ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... oil, and never boil it: boiling it melts that vegetable dross into its heart which it is our business to clear away; for impure oil is death to colour. No; take your oil and pour it into a bottle with water. In a day or two the water will turn muddy: that is muck from the oil. Pour the dirty water carefully away and add fresh. When that is poured away, you will fancy the oil is clear. You're mistaken. Reicht, fetch me that!" Reicht brought a glass trough with a glass ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... your health, friend, Or drink to the 'Thirteen's' luck. I must dine on—Eucalyptus, And Sulphur, or some such muck. I have no Salt to be spilling; My only knife is a spoon; And I have not the smallest notion If there ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... us, indeed! That's a notion! Look at my hands. D'ye see how dirty they are? And they smell of muck, and of pitch—but yours, see, are white. And what ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... "Well, it's a muck of a world," he declared cheerfully, taking off his coarse harvest hat and running his hand through his clustering fair hair. In the mellow light the almost brutal strength of his jaw was softened, and ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... not the unscrupulous ogre that the muck-rakers picture. He does not order the judge to decide the hundred-thousand-dollar-contract case in favor of his hench man. He might like to have him do so but he does not ask. Neither does the judge lean over backwards in the other direction and imprison ...
— The Man in Court • Frederic DeWitt Wells
... later I had another adventure with a weasel that had its den in a bank on the margin of a muck swamp in the same neighborhood. We had cleared and drained and redeemed the swamp and made it into a garden, and I had built me a lodge there. The weasel's hunting-grounds, where doubtless he had been wont to gather his supply of mice, had been destroyed, and he had "got even" with ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... the Isle of Muck, did ye ever listen to such a strain? Now let us take a look at the works of the ancients. The first in point of order is the "Laidley Worm of Spindleston Heugh," touching which Mr Sheldon gives us the following information. "This ballad was made by the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... owing to the slight depression of the ground at the site, and for this reason the border was all made above the surface two feet and a half in height, composed largely of decayed sods, with an addition of muck, coal and wood ashes and a small quantity of stable manure. It has been found to work admirably, and preserve an even moisture throughout. Elevated borders are highly recommended by some exotic grape growers, and our experience with them is much in their favor. At present ...
— Woodward's Graperies and Horticultural Buildings • George E. Woodward
... and venom evaporates.[FN430] It appears to me that when I show to such men, so "respectable" and so impure, a landscape of magnificent prospects whose vistas are adorned with every charm of nature and art, they point their unclean noses at a little heap of muck here and there ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... to set Christ's value upon ourselves. This is the tragedy of life, that we hold ourselves so cheap. We are sprung of heaven's first blood, have titles manifold, and yet, when the crown is offered us, we choose rather, like the man with the muck-rake, in Bunyan's great allegory, to grub among the dust and sticks and straws of the floor. In the times of the French Revolution, French soldiers, it is said, stabled their horses in some of the magnificent cathedrals of France; but some of us are guilty of a far worse ...
— The Teaching of Jesus • George Jackson
... run for the shelter of a big manure-heap. But even here the Black Marias found us out, and two of them fell within a few yards, their explosion covering us with dirt. We were also in view of German snipers halfway up the hill, and bullets came thick whenever we showed a cap or a leg beyond the muck-heap, which, besides being distinctly unsweet, was covered with disgusting-looking flies in ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... out a thread with little din, And beeking my cauld limbs afore the sun. What brings my bairn this gate sae air at morn? Is there nae muck to lead? to thresh ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... five yards away. A soft glutinous muck, worse than the outer swamp, tugged at his ankles. Corrupt fungi-growth and giant spiked ferns reached far above ...
— One Purple Hope! • Henry Hasse
... is in particularly neat and good order. I did not think it at all worth while to make troublesome enquiries of the people who reside there, but took Mr Case's account. There seems no doubt that the fire was caused by the maid-servant throwing cinders into a sort of muck-place into which they had been commonly thrown. I suppose there was after all this dry weather straw or muck drier than usual, and the cinders were hotter than usual. The whole was on fire in an exceedingly ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... Mackintosh; Lawns afloat, Paths dirt; Top-coat, Flannel shirt; Lilacs drenched, Laburnums pallid; Spirits quenched, Souls squalid; Tennis "off," Icy breeze; Croak, cough, Wheeze, sneeze; Cramped cricket, Arctic squall; Drenched wicket, Soaked ball; Park a puddle. Row a slough; Muck, muddle, Slush, snow; Hay-fever (No hay!) Spoilt beaver, Shoes asplay; Lilies flopping, Washed-out roses; Eaves dropping, Red noses; Pools, splashes, Spouts, spirts; Swollen sashes. Gutters, squirts; Limp curls, Splashed hose; Pretty girls, Damp shows; Piled grates, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... will save manure enough to top dress his meadows. Nevertheless, in combination with proper ingredients, we do say it is a good and profitable manure for grass. For each acre mix from 200 to 400 lbs. with as many bushels of plaster, or ten to one of charcoal, or twenty to one of dry swamp muck or peat, woods mould or fine clay, and sow upon the meadow or pasture early in spring. If the season is moist, the benefit will be very great; if dry, it will probably be said, as it has been before; "Oh, this guano is good for ...
— Guano - A Treatise of Practical Information for Farmers • Solon Robinson
... On the air by day and night! While our thoraxes they tickle. Like the fumes from brass in pickle, Or from naphtha all alight; Making stench, stench, stench, In a worse than witch-broth drench, Of the muck-malodoration that so nauseously wells From the Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells, Smells— From the fuming and the spuming ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 1, 1890 • Various
... She-she-took-a-muck was a ferocious whale supposed to have lived at Hell's Gate, and to have swallowed Indians and their canoes. The whale was killed by the ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... the words have now the clauber of the roads upon them, and even the muck, and now the reek of the shebeen or of the tinker's fire in a roadside ditch; they have, too, the bog smell, and the smell of the whin, the smell of ploughed land and of the sea, and they fall into cadences that are cadences of the wind and of the tides, of full rivers and ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... man becomes a devil all at once, and no man becomes an angel all at once. Trust yourself to Christ, and He will lift you to Himself; turn your back upon Him, as some of you are doing, and you will settle down, down, down in the muck and the mire of your own sensuality and selfishness, until at last the foul ooze spreads over your head, and you are lost ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... his, I'll lend him a safety-pin from my shirtwaist," drawled Rupert, lounging up, hooking his own mask. "I ain't muck-raking, but he broke his rear axle at Indianapolis, last ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... never taught me anything but to be a Hand. It's the way they do with draper's apprentices. If every swindler was locked up—well, you'd have nowhere to buy tape and cotton. It's all very well to bring up Burns and those chaps, but I'm not that make. Yet I'm not such muck that I might not have been better—with teaching. I wonder what the chaps who sneer and laugh at such as me would be if they'd been fooled about as I've been. At ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... hast kissed have no pleasure in sadness, Bitterness, cant nor disdain. Hearts to thy piping beat bravely in gladness Through poverty, exile or pain. Gold is denied us—thine image we fashion Out of the slag or the muck. We are thy people in court or by campfire,— We are thy slaves, ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... Table-cloths and napkins are unknown. A man eats in the midst of the debris left by his predecessor, and dribbles his own scraps about him and on the floor. In rush times, in such places, I have positively waded through the muck and mess that covered the floor, and I have managed to eat because I was abominably hungry and capable ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could hear; With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold, A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold; While high overhead, green, yellow, and red, the North Lights swept in bars— Then you've a haunch what the music meant ... hunger ...
— Songs of a Sourdough • Robert W. Service
... last time," said Jonah, "I appeal to you all to let that dog-eared mountebank rake over his muck-heap, and ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... don't it?" the other went on, in his sneering way. "You're the Great Muck-a-muck, and will carry off the prize for the long distance run, I suppose you mean? Well, with the great luck you have, perhaps you will—if you're there when the pistol cracks for the start. Now, go on and tell me what you mean, and how could I get you out of this hole—if ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... an unyielding rampart before Octavian's scared pleadings. Before he could think of any fresh line of appeal his energies were called out in another direction. Olivia had slid off the roof and fallen with a soft, unctuous splash into a morass of muck and decaying straw. Octavian scrambled hastily over the pigsty wall to her rescue, and at once found himself in a quagmire that engulfed his feet. Olivia, after the first shock of surprise at her sudden drop through the ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... dusk, and a glint of light shot out from the jewel of his necktie, as the light from the house caught it at the right angle. As they gazed in silence at each other, Howard divined something of the hard, bitter feeling which came into Grant's heart as he stood there, ragged, ankle-deep in muck, his sleeves rolled up, a shapeless old straw hat on ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... Society's youngest child. The heath is full of peat-bogs that only need the sand, so plentiful on the uplands, to make their soil as good as the best, the muck of the bog being all plant food, and they have a surplus of water to give in exchange. With hope the keynote of it all, the State has taken up the herculean task of keeping down the moving sands of the North Sea coast. All along it is a range of dunes that in ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... sar," cautioned my guide; "dere am a gutter in de middle ob de road, and if you steps into dat you go in ober your shoes in muck." ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... Sir SLINGSBY discovered the first one, now close on three cent'ries ago, Wot a lush of mixed mineral muck these 'ere 'Arrygate Springs 'ave let flow! Well, ere's bully for Brimstone, my bloater, and 'ooray for 'Arrygate air! Wich 'as done me most good I don't know, and I'm scorched if I ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... going to stop here all the blank morning for a blank tyke?" And for all his respectable appearance, his features become debased, and he emits a jet of disgusting profanity and brings most of the Trinity into the thunderous assertion that he has paid his fare. Then a man passes wheeling a muck-cart. And he stops and talks a long time with the other uniforms, because he, too, wears vestiges of a uniform. And the crowd never moves nor ceases to stare. Then the new arrival stoops and picks up the unclaimed, masterless ...
— The Author's Craft • Arnold Bennett
... cutting capers— Priests of beetles, cats, and tapirs, Brutes, who would thy beauty truck, For an inch of yellow muck. ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... makes our task difficult to have to deal so muck with eccentricities and extremes. "How CAN religion on the whole be the most important of all human functions," you may ask, "if every several manifestation of it in turn have to be corrected and sobered down and ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... for?" he boomed. "They'll only spend it on all kinds of muck they don't want; what the missionaries leave them, that is ...
— The Trembling of a Leaf - Little Stories of the South Sea Islands • William Somerset Maugham
... hunt up her shiftless husband at the inn was one of Mrs Durbeyfield's still extant enjoyments in the muck and muddle of rearing children. To discover him at Rolliver's, to sit there for an hour or two by his side and dismiss all thought and care of the children during the interval, made her happy. A sort of halo, an occidental ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... treated with the utmost rigour of the law? WINSER, the cabman, who gave his false evidence so gaily in the Thirkettle Case, has been had up, and sentenced. Having dealt with WINSER, it is only a short step from WINSER to SLOUGH—but perhaps such a slough of muck, that it wants the pluck of a Hercules in the Augaean stable to commence operations, and a deus ex-machina—that is, the Public Prosecutor from the Treasury—to see that the proceedings are not abortive. Oh, where, and Oh, where is The ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, January 25th, 1890 • Various
... in a muck with their rubber sea-boots worn out by constant chafing, sweaters torn, the blades of their shovels reduced by the work demanded of them, the drills, shortened by steady sharpening, gone like the spare flesh of the laborers, who, at last, began to show signs of quicker and quicker ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... Oh I have been to Ludlow fair And left my necktie God knows where, And carried half-way home, or near, Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer: Then the world seemed none so bad, And I myself a sterling lad; And down in lovely muck I've lain, Happy till I woke again. Then I saw the morning sky: Heigho, the tale was all a lie; The world, it was the old world yet, I was I, my things were wet, And nothing now remained to do But begin the ...
— A Shropshire Lad • A. E. Housman
... gentleman of the name of M'Lean, nephew to the Laird of the isle of Muck, came this morning; and, just as we sat down to dinner, came the Laird of the isle, of Muck himself, his lady, sister to Talisker, two other ladies their relations, and a daughter of the late M'Leod ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell
... want to set them free. How can I lie? How can I crawl through the muck and filth of a divorce? I can't. (Moves to end of table and stands there facing front.) But I must set them free somehow. They're such good people, my wife and Victor. I ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... become an avowed cynic on the question. He probably knows as well as anybody that to clean up Montreal is in the same category as making Europe safe for the League of Nations; a much harder city to regenerate than even Philadelphia. Muck-raking has no effect, when two-thirds of the population read French papers which never use the rake, and when the boss of three-fourths of the rest is himself often a target for the yellows. Mr. Ames should long ago in this connection have propounded a thesis, Hugh Graham, ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... same," Cass went on. "It don't do to play around with badgers. There was a chap over to Lanbaddern who was chased right across the Rose one evening by seven badgers. He was in a muck of sweat when he got home. But ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... guede clean shot as ere were made out thot muck!" exclaimed Kirkaldy, his face mantled with a ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... out," he replied, "they are starved and worked to death. They are even eating the candles, and one man died lately who had twenty or thirty wicks in his stomach when the post mortem took place. In the docks I have seen fellows pick up the dirtiest muck you ever saw, and swallow it! There are lots of fellows there who eat all the snails and frogs they can get hold of. I have seen one man several times swallow a live frog as easily as you could bolt an oyster. Frogs and snails ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... cried Mrs. Pollard, wiping her eyes, "thy clothes be dirty; I shall have a rare job to get th' muck out of 'em." ...
— Tommy • Joseph Hocking
... confidence and command in the word like the "Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more." It detached the street-muck from the woman. It was not she; it was defilement she had picked up, when perhaps she could not help it. She could scrape her shoes at the door, and come ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the water in the trenches was disappearing, while fragments of glass and the bones of apes were to be seen amid the miry puddles. A scrap of cloth hung here and there from the bushes, and the rotten flowers formed a yellow muck-heap beneath the citron trees. In fact, the servants had neglected everything, thinking that ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... heard of such a peace of nonsense; That one who learning's joys hath felt, And at the Muse's altar knelt, Should leave a life of sacred leisure To taste the accumulating pleasure; And, metamorphosed to an alley duck, Grovel in loads of kindred muck. Oh! 't is beyond my comprehension! A courtier throwing up his pension,— A lawyer working without a fee,— A parson giving charity,— A truly pious methodist preacher,— Are not, egad, so out of nature. Had nature made thee half a fool, But given thee wit to keep ...
— The Poetical Works of Henry Kirke White - With a Memoir by Sir Harris Nicolas • Henry Kirke White
... of all kinds from every available source. Remember that anything which will rot will add to the value of your manure pile. Muck, lime, old plastering, sods, weeds (earth and all), street, stable and yard sweepings—all these and numerous others will increase your ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... the youth, "for I am not very clean in the head." "Dost thou think then that I will have thee in the kitchen, if such be the case?" said she; "go to the master of the horse: thou art fittest to carry muck from the stables." When the master of the horse told him to take off his wig, he got the same answer, so he refused to have him. "Thou canst go to the gardener," said he, "thou art only fit to go and dig the ground." The gardener allowed him to remain, but none of the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... I'll never lin, But I will thorough thick and thin, Until at length I bring her in; My dearest lord, ne'er doubt it." Thorough brake, thorough briar, Thorough muck, thorough mire, Thorough water, thorough fire; And thus goes ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... months. Everybody knew the place as Throttle-Ha'penny. "What!" said a collier to his wife: "have we got no coal? You'd better get a bit from Throttle-Ha'penny." "Nay," replied the wife, "I'm sure I shan't. I'm sure I shan't burn that muck, and smother myself ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... what poor fowk mun put u'p wi'! What insults an' snubs they've to tak! What bowin an' scrapin's expected, If a chap's a black coit on his back. As if clooas made a chap ony better, Or riches improved a man's heart, As if muck in a carriage smell'd sweeter Nor th' same muck wod smell in ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... black peat or muck soils first class? Do they need anything besides drainage?" Some of them, a very few, produce really good crops when they are drained, plowed and brought under ordinary cultivation without fertilization, ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... chased by gendarmes; well, he escaped them by staying twenty minutes under water in the pond of a farm-yard. He breathed air through a straw which he kept above the surface of the pool, which was half muck. But, goodness! what was that little disagreeableness to a man who spends his nights in the tree-tops, where the sparrows can hardly hold themselves, watching the soldiers going to and fro in search of him below? Farrabesche ...
— The Village Rector • Honore de Balzac
... bright buff to a nondescript shade which blended with what had once been light corduroy trousers; his heavy shoes, treated only the evening before to a coat of preservative grease, were now covered with muck; and, pulled over his eyes, a shapeless canvas hat completed the list of the ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... what it is, but it's dirt—and muck at that," John Sibley remarked as he rose from his chair and followed the two ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... speculating about it? Anyhow my doom is fixed, and poor Flinders with his friends will lose their money. My only regret is that that unmitigated villain Gashford will get it. It would not be a bad thing, now that my hands are free, to run a-muck amongst 'em. I feel strength enough in me to rid the camp of a lot of devils before I should be killed! But, after all, what good would that do me when I couldn't know it—couldn't know it! Perhaps I could ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... Elliott. "You think I'm talking fearful flowery stuff. I'd have said Dear me at myself three years ago if I had ever caught myself thinking in terms of stars and roses. But it's all the beastly blood and muck of the war that does it,—sends one back with a rush to things like that. Makes one shameless. Why, I'd talk to you about God now without turning a hair. Nothing would have induced me so much as to mention seriously that ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... we'll try to cut it short," answered Buster Beggs, who, this term, was the leader of the society, or Right Honorable Muck-a-Muck, as he ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... Rupert. "You see, I lived in a little town in southern Illinois. Father ran a general store. I had to help in it—sold shingle nails, molasses, mower teeth, overalls. How I hated that! But there was the creek and the muck pond. I had an old boat. I played smuggler and pirate. I used to love to read pirate books. I ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... who does not have bred into him from childhood the instinct to say the "everlasting no" to his passions will never learn to say it from the fear of syphilis. Sexual self-control is a habit, not a reasoned-out affair, and its foundation must rest on the rock bottom of character and not in the muck of venereal disease. ...
— The Third Great Plague - A Discussion of Syphilis for Everyday People • John H. Stokes
... the men from giving the old chief as much liquor as they were ready to bestow on him, lest he might get drunk, and take it into his head to run a-muck or jump overboard. He had taken enough, however, to send him fast asleep in the bottom of the boat, where he lay, as Jerry observed, "like a porpus in a gale ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... carrying huge yards of steel, rising higher and higher, until steel masts and yards gave way to slender spars of wood, while ropes and stays turned into a delicate tracery of spider-thread against the sky. That such a wretched muck of men should be able to work this magnificent ship through all storm and darkness and peril of the sea was beyond all seeming. I remembered the two mates, the super-efficiency, mental and physical, of Mr. Mellaire and Mr. Pike—could ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... questionable financial enterprise. One of the yellow journals of the day—for we had them even then, although they were not put forth from printing presses, but displayed on board fences in scare-head letters six or eight feet high—one of the yellow journals of the day, I say, issued a muck-raking Extra, exposing what it termed The International Marine and Zoo Flotation Company, and most unfortunately there was just enough truth in the story in so far as its details went, to lend color to its sensational accusations. ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... by yesterday;" and Jimmie pointed to enormous footprints in the muck of a marshy place. "Verrie big moose—we make call at next camp—think ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... the bloomin' funniest Quaker Oats I've tasted. Quaker Oats will keep you alive, but that bloomin' muck 'd poison a rat!" saying which he disdainfully emptied the noisome contents of his basin upon ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... fence up again in the hurry that Dad was in was the very devil! He felled the saplings—and such saplings!—TREES many of them were—while we, "all of a muck of sweat," dragged them into line. Dad worked like a horse himself, and expected us to do the same. "Never mind staring about you," he'd say, if he caught us looking at the sun to see if it were coming dinner-time—"there's no time to lose if we want to get the ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... 'dobe-holes that people rely upon through this journey. These 'dobe-holes are occasional wallows in clayey spots, and men and cattle know each one. The cattle, of course, roll in them, and they become worn into circular hollows, their edges tramped into muck, and surrounded by a thicket belt of mesquite. The water is not good, but will save life. The first one lay two stages from the well, and Genesmere accordingly made an expected dry camp the first night, carrying water from the well in the Santa Cruz, and dribbling all of it but ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... of the town, though he's got lots grander than that since, but they never pinched any marry-me-quick, not in Master Noll's time. But he's gone now, and I'm not as nimble as I used to be. Jesus help me, how he had used to fight! He used to put my heart in my mouth, coming in here all blood and muck to wash himself afore he went home. But take your things off and ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... are found in this order: (1) a top layer of soil from 1 foot to 2 feet thick; (2) a layer of burnt clay from 3 to 12 inches thick (though usually varying from 4 to 8 inches) and broken into lumps, never in a uniform, unbroken layer; immediately below this (3) a thin layer of hardened muck or dark clay, though this does not always seem to be distinct. At this depth in the mounds of the eastern part of Arkansas are usually found ...
— The Problem of Ohio Mounds • Cyrus Thomas
... fact, as Eleanor looked over the dragon with its wide strong jaw and plausible eyes and big gripping hand she very much doubted whether the conception had ever dawned on the big dome head that the other fellow had any rights. The man was not the baby-eating monster of the muck-rakers. Neither was he a gentleman—he had had a narrow escape from that—the next generation of him would probably be one. He gave the impression of a passion for only one thing—getting. If people ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... difference. "Water's water," you say, with your broad, stupid generalization, and go oozing along contentedly through peat-bogs and meadow-ditches, mounting, perhaps, in moments of inspiration, to the moderate sublimity of a cranberry-meadow, but subsiding with entire satisfaction into a muck-puddle; and all the while the little brook that you patronize when you are full-fed, and snub when you are hungry, and look down upon always,—the little brook is singing its own melody through grove and orchard and sweet wild-wood,—singing ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... Why, then she will certainly take them in hand personally, or I don't know her as well as I ought to, after all these years of intimacy. That will be a sight to see—that fair spirit in her white armor, delivering her will to that muck-heap, that rag-pile, ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... weary feet in the churned-up muck of the field edge. The ground, covered with a scum of ice at night, was a trap for animals as well as vehicles. Breaking through that glassy surface to the glutinous stuff beneath, they suffered cuts deep enough to draw blood ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... times which will repay consideration has been aptly termed "muck-raking." Mr. Roosevelt took the word from Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" to describe the irresponsible and slanderous attacks upon public officials, which were made merely for the purpose of selling the wares of penny-a-liners. To eliminate corporations ...
— Ethics in Service • William Howard Taft
... openness of eye, a simple readiness to take in these gentle impressions is, I believe with all my heart, of the essence of true wisdom. We have all of us our work to do in the world; but we have our lesson to learn as well. The man with the muck-rake in the old parable, who raked together the straws and the dust of the street, was faithful enough if he was set to do that lowly work; but had he only cared to look up, had he only had a moment's leisure, he would have seen that the celestial crown hung ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... frightful muck," he said. "Everything smashed except the table; and ink all over the place. Whoever did it must have been fairly sick with him, or he'd never have taken the trouble to do it so thoroughly. Made a fair old hash of ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... to exist in some parts of the east, in which a man is said to run a muck; and these furious maniacs are believed to have induced their calamity by unlucky gaming, and afterwards by taking large quantities of opium; whence the pain of despair is joined with the energy of drunkenness; they are then said to sally forth into the most populous streets, ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... mildly minded, and it lay not in him to create for us that throb of the miser's pulse, his fretful energy of gusto, his vast arms of ambition clutching in he knows not what: insatiable, insane, a god with a muck-rake. Thus, at least, looking in the bosom of the miser, consideration detects the poet in the full tide of life, with more, indeed, of the poetic fire than usually goes to epics; and tracing that mean man about his cold hearth, and to and fro ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Behold, I will bring a King of kings from the north, with horses and with chariots, and with horsemen and companies and muck people. He shall slay with the sword thy daughters ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... lakes which still remain are those already thus filled with carbonaceous matter derived from the carbon dioxide of the atmosphere. Such fossil lakes are marked by swamps or level meadows underlain with muck. ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... with the deliberate courage of an experienced warrior. His short-sword, too, found its victims; and across Falto's body soon were piled more. And now Drusus was not alone. For in from the barns and fields came running first the servants from the stables, armed with mattocks and muck-forks, and then the farm-hands with their scythes and ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... a high muck-a-muck in Chihuahua once upon a time. But he favored the poor people—peons, they call 'em—and old Diaz who used to boss the whole o' Mexico run him out. I guess he's one good greaser that ain't dead," and the ...
— The Mission of Janice Day • Helen Beecher Long
... he begs the Society to be cautious and offer no encouragement to any disposed "'to run the muck' (sic) (it is Sir George's expression) against the religious and political INSTITUTIONS of Spain"; but "the delicacy of the situation does not appear to have been thoroughly understood at the time even by the Committee at home." {224b} They saw the astonishing success ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... growing State, the law is aided by quickly executed decrees of vigilance committees. Self-appointed popular leaders, crafty politicians, scheming preachers, aspiring editors, and ambitious demagogues crop up. They are the mushroom growth of the muck-heap ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... that my Job's comforter turned out a false prophet; snow soon gave place to sleet, and sleet to rain, and before midnight the muck was complete. Next morning, at three, we got into the 'bus, and soon after four the cars came in, and we found ourselves once more en route for Pittsburg. I think this was about the most disagreeable day's journey I ever had. The mixture of human and ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... In spite of occasional muck rakings, society's esteem for the capitalist has been unbounded. He is in general the only man with a national reputation. Society bestows upon him unstinted praise and the most generous rewards for his toil. His rewards are so extravagant that the game ...
— Increasing Efficiency In Business • Walter Dill Scott
... who had come up in the draft with me on the 4th, rolling around in the death agony, tossing his head loosely about in the wild pain of it, his pallid face a white mark in the muck underfoot. A burly German reached the spot and without hesitation plunged his saw-edged bayonet through ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... or a strip of cinders. Here and there a tent flapped in the wind, which drove the drizzle into his face; somewhere ahead a swinging sign moaned as if in agony. A few wanderers ploughed through the muck, dim uncertain shapes appearing and vanishing in the gloom. He had gone a block and over, the struggle against the elements leaving him forgetful of all else, when a man reeled out of some dimly lit shack to his right, and staggered drunkenly ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... until the morning. It was a tedious and anxious night. It blew hard the whole time, and there was an almost constant driving of either rain, hail, or snow. In addition to this, it was "as thick as muck," and the ice was all about us. The captain was on deck nearly the whole night, and kept the cook in the galley, with a roaring fire, to make coffee for him, which he took every few hours, and once or twice gave a little to his officers; but not ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... boys obeyed. Mr. Tower and William stripped their feet, and rolled their trousers. Into the creek they went setting stones, packing with sod and muck, using sticks and leaves until in a short time they had a dam before which the ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... possible, but the supply of this was limited and commercial fertilizers were unknown. As already indicated, he was beginning the use of clover and other grasses, but he was anxious to build up the soil more rapidly and the Potomac muck seemed to him a possible answer to the problem. There was, as he said, "an inexhaustible fund" of it, but the task of getting it on the land was a heavy one. Having heard of a horse-power dredge called the Hippopotamus that was in use on the Delaware River, he made inquiries concerning it but ...
— George Washington: Farmer • Paul Leland Haworth
... plan to go from New York to Pittsburgh, but the mill that father was working in had shut down. And so he had sent us tickets to Hubbard, Ohio, where his brother had a job as a muck roller—the man who takes the bloom from the squeezer and throws it into the rollers. That's all I can tell you now. In later chapters I shall take you into a rolling mill, and show you how we worked. I believe I am the first puddler that ever described his job, for I have ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... dipped in this and lifted the liquid is drawn out into a long thread. In one case which I investigated near Ithaca, N. Y., the contamination was manifestly from a spring which oozed out of a bank of black-muck soil and stood in pools mixed with the dejections of the animals. Inoculation of pure milk with the water as it flowed out of this bank developed in it the fungus and the stringy characters. By fencing the spring in and giving the affected cows each ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... obliged in all weathers to go out to the well and wind up the bucket. She abominated also the dust-bin, for it was a pleasure to be compelled—so at least she thought it now—to walk down to the muck- heap and throw on it what the pig could not eat. Nay, she even missed that corner of the garden against the elder-tree, where the pig-stye was, for 'you could smell the elder-flowers there in the ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... barren? But if you determine to manure the whole site, this is your way: digge a trench halfe a yard deepe, all along the lower (if there be a lower) side of your Orchard plot, casting vp all the earth on the inner side, and fill the same with good short, hot, & tender muck, and make such another Trench, and fill the same as the first, and so the third, and so through out your ground. And by this meanes your plot shall be fertile for your life. But be sure you set your trees, neither in ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... other side of the mound—a den which Loll no doubt was at that moment exploring. Her brother-in-law was preparing to spring across one of the little brown pools. . . . Then, to her despair, he stumbled, and one leg went down in the soft muck of the farther edge. As he fell, he tried to throw his rifle to the bank, but the heavy, metal-stayed butt jammed against ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby |
