"Scum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 'You scum o' the airth!' cried Toole, hitting him, with his clenched fist, right upon the nose, so vigorous a thump, that his erudite head with a sonorous crash hopped off the wainscot behind it; 'you lying ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... a thick scum forms over the surface of the lake, dead, like the scum on the surface of a lonely forest pool. Then it shivers. Flashes of fire dart from side to side. The centre bursts open and a huge fountain of lava twenty feet thick and fifty high, streams into the air and plays for ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... the fire is sweeping along a mile broad, and the heat is so great that there is no standing within a hundred yards of it? All the soldiers are there, and the magistrates and the guards, and all the rest of them, but all that can be done is to prevent the scum of the city from sacking and plundering. Scores of men have been scourged and some beheaded, but it is no easy matter to keep down the mob. There are parties of guards in every street. The whole of the Praetorians are under arms, but the terror and confusion is so great ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... bestowed at random; Lord Palmerston confirmed it when he said from his place in the House of Commons: 'In Rome there is a French garrison; under its shelter there exists a committee of 200, whose practice is to organise a band of murderers, the scum and dross of every nation, and send them into the Neapolitan territory to commit every atrocity!' As a criticism the words are not less strong; but the public defiance of Napoleon, and the threat with ...
— The Liberation of Italy • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... roared. "Yield to you, you cut-throat scum? You shall have my sword if you will come for it, but you shall have it in ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... was a stagnant pool, covered with thick green scum, and filled with frogs. The son of one of the tavern-keepers was skilled in catching them, and I fancy supplied them to his father's table; the important fact was his taking them, which he did by baiting a cluster of three hooks with red flannel, ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... rot, and turn to a Filthy slimy Substance: Then put it into a Morter, beat it well; take it out and wash it at some running stream, till the Foulness is gone: Then put it in a close Earthen pot; let it stand Four or Five days, look to its Purging, and scum it: When clean, put it into another Earthen Pot, and ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... hunting-ground. We quenched our thirst with water from the pool, which I was rather surprised to find quite pure. These pools are, of course, sometimes fouled for a time by the movements of alligators and other tenants in the fine mud which settles at the bottom, but I never observed a scum of confervae or traces of oil revealing animal decomposition on the surface of these waters, nor was there ever any foul smell perceptible. The whole of this level land, instead of being covered with unwholesome swamps emitting malaria, forms in the dry season (and in the wet also) a most ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... quinces; when they are soft, take them up, and crush them through a strainer, but not too hard, only the clear juice. Take the weight of the juice in fine sugar; boil the sugar candy-height, and put in your juice, and let it scald awhile, but not boil; and if any froth arise, scum it off, and when you take it up, have ready a white preserved quince cut in small slices, and lay them in the bottom of your glasses, and pour your jelly to them, it will candy on the top and keep moist on the ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... beauty, but that he does not defer enough, that he does not sufficiently trust his own eyes, but by way of further assurance drags in architecture, ships, mythological or Scripture stories, not caring for them himself, but supposing the spectator cares, so that they remain unassimilated, a scum floating on the surface and obscuring the work. Here is the "want of faith" with which, if any, he is justly chargeable,—that beauty is not enough for him, but he must make it pleasing. Pleasingness implies a languid ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 77, March, 1864 • Various
... the original, the word is kai, or the green scum that floats on stagnant water. "Bihzad Khan, dispersed the enemy as kai is dispersed when a stone is thrown into the water," is nearly the ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... sooner than expected. A batch of colored folks had drifted into the place under the impression that a certain planter was going to give them work at big wages. They were a worthless lot, the scum of other plantations, and nobody ...
— The Rover Boys on the Plains - The Mystery of Red Rock Ranch • Arthur Winfield
... the Florida East Coast, and he was free to go there, and wander about the lobbies and piazzas of the palatial hotels, and watch the idle rich at their diversions. A strange society they were—it seemed as if the scum of the civilization of forty-five states had been blown into this bit of back-water. Here were society women, jaded with dissipation; stock-brokers and financiers, fleeing from the strain of the "Street"; here were parasites of every species, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... many islands, a long frontier line in every continent, and a very tempting bit of plunder at the centre, by mere volunteer recruits, who mostly come from the worst class of the people—whom the Great Duke called the "scum of the earth"—who come in uncertain numbers year by year—who by some political accident may not come in adequate numbers, or at all, in the year we need them most. Our War Office attempts what foreign War Offices (perhaps rightly) would not try at; their officers have ...
— The English Constitution • Walter Bagehot
... room: "'Sdeath! what am I come to, to be affronted so by my tradesmen? I know the rascals: my barber, clothier, and linen-draper dispose of my estate! Bring hither my blunderbuss; I'll warrant ye you shall see daylight through them. Scoundrels! dogs! the scum of the earth! Frog, that was my father's kitchen-boy, he pretend to meddle with my estate—with my will! Ah, poor Strutt! what are thou come to at last? Thou hast lived too long in the world, to see thy age and infirmity so despised! How will the ghosts ...
— The History of John Bull • John Arbuthnot
... its triumph,—Danton, Robespierre, Marat. And of the three it was Marat who worked deepest on her imagination, Marat always baying for {189} blood, always scenting fresh victims, always corrupting opinion with his scum of printer's ink and poison. To Charlotte Corday it appeared that in this one individual all that was noble and beautiful in the Revolution was converted into all that was hideous and ignoble; and she slowly began to perceive ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... iron yoke of lawlessness—is illustrated in the story of almost all violent revolutions. They run the same course. First a nation rises up against intolerable oppression, then revolution devours its own children, and the scum rises to the top of the boiling pot. Then comes, in the language of the picturesque historian of the French Revolution, the type of them all—then comes at the end 'the whiff of grapeshot' and the despot. First the government ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... was, of course, more terrible. Brought forth amongst the scum of criminal Paris, on a charge, the horror of which, he could but dimly hope that she was too innocent to fully understand, he dared not even think of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... of Louisiana, in its attempt to disfranchise the Negro and enfranchise, so to speak, every other class of men, the ignorant scum of Europe, as well as the intelligent and illiterate native born whites, outdoes both Mississippi and South Carolina. It adopts practically the same educational and property qualifications as are contained in the Mississippi and South Carolina instruments. ...
— The Disfranchisement of the Negro - The American Negro Academy. Occasional Papers No. 6 • John L. Love
... of love which Nature makes. Whence in the second circle have their nest Dissimulation, witchcraft, flatteries, Theft, falsehood, simony, all who seduce To lust, or set their honesty at pawn, With such vile scum as these. The other way Forgets both Nature's general love, and that Which thereto added afterwards gives birth To special faith. Whence in the lesser circle, Point of the universe, dread seat of Dis, The traitor is eternally consum'd." I thus: "Instructor, clearly thy discourse ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... but all over England, ay, and beyond sea, too, and send abroad their circulators, and in this manner get into their hands all that is valuable. The rest of the trade are content to take their refuse, with which, and the fresh scum of the press, they furnish one side of the shop, which serves for the sign of a bookseller, rather than a real one; but instead of selling, deal as factors, and procure what the country divines and gentry send for; of ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... imagine the incredulous laughter which will greet my proposal. "What," it will be said, "do you think that you can create agricultural pioneers out of the scum of Cockneydom?" Let us look for a moment at the ingredients which make up what you call "the scum of Cockneydom." After careful examination and close cross-questioning of the Out-of-Works, whom we have already registered at our Labour Bureau, we find that at least sixty per ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... hinds, the filth and scum of Kent, Mark'd for the gallows, lay your weapons down; Home to your cottages, forsake this groom. The king ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... craving your pardon," said the knight, "there are some births purer than others." "For the great doom all your carcases are the same," said the imp, "everyone of you is defiled by the sin that took its origin in Adam." But, sir," continued he, "if your blood is aught better than another, the less scum will there be when shortly it will be bubbling through your body, and if there be more, we must examine you, part by part, through fire and through water." Thereupon, a devil in the shape of a fiery chariot receives him, and the other mockingly lifts him thereinto, and away ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... add 1 oz. indigo pounded up with a little of the lime water; let it stand and get warmer. Pound up 1/2 oz. tin, Stannous Chloride, in a little lime water and add, together with 1/2 oz. zinc. Add more lime water or tin according to the state of the vat. There should be a streaky scum on the surface, and the water underneath clear with a green tinge. Pearl ash can be used ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... scrape I get into at the Works through forgetting to order certain things at the proper time. For instance, when I had a dredger to get ready for action, it was found, when it came to the scratch, that there was no scum cock for the boiler, no posts for the handrails, etc.. etc. I was more sinned against than sinning that time however, as the job was suddenly thrown on my hands, when Pot left the Works in a state of semi-completion, and I did not know, and in the hap-hazard ...
— Canada for Gentlemen • James Seton Cockburn
... right. But the thousands and tens of thousands of Irish boys that went to the war and fought till they died—they'll be forgotten, and the Sinn Fein scum'll be remembered. If the Gov'mint had the pluck of a mouse they'd be all right. I tell you, boys, 'twill be the Gov'mint's own fault if we see the haythin Turks parading the fair fields of Ireland, with their long tails held up by the Sinn ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... and I," he cried, "knew how to thrash these Lorrainers, and we will make them remember it. By St. George, I will not fly before a boy, before Rene of Vaudemont, who is coming at the head of this scum! He has not so many men with him as people think; the Germans have no idea of leaving their stoves in winter. This evening we will deliver the assault against the town, and to-morrow ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 6 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality. French. • Charles Morris
... the approaching downfall of lawless pleasure and vicious license in San Francisco. Slowly the tide of respectable settlement rises. It bears away the scum of vice, swept into the Golden Gates in the first rush. The vile community of escaped convicts and mad adventurers cannot support itself. "The old order changeth, yielding slowly to ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage
... vinegar 1 quart; of best brazil wood 1/2 lb. Infuse together for four days; then boil for half an hour, strain through a linen cloth, and place the liquid again over the fire. Having dissolved 1/4 lb. of alum in a pint of white wine vinegar, mix both liquids together and stir them well. Take the scum that arises on the surface, gradually dry and powder it, and it is ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... Ki was certain that Kapchack was really dead, he returned, and he has gathered to himself a crew of the most terrible ruffians you ever beheld. He has got about him all the scum of the earth; all the blackguards, villains, vermin, cut-throat scoundrels have rallied to his standard; as the old proverb says: 'Birds of a feather flock together'. He has taken possession of the ...
— Wood Magic - A Fable • Richard Jefferies
... but there are only two points so far to the south, and I reckoned that we were a degree to the westward of them both, and therefore did not see the land, which trends more to the northward. We found the sea here to be in many parts covered with a brown scum, such as sailors generally call spawn. When I first saw it, I was alarmed, fearing that we were among shoals; but upon sounding, we found the same depth of water as in other places. This scum was examined both by ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 13 • Robert Kerr
... was necessary to clarify the sugar, as the albumen contained in the blood would rise to the surface, bringing the impurities with it. The fire was continued until the thermometer showed that the syrup was within a few degrees of boiling, and the surface was covered with a thick, dark-coloured scum. The fire was then removed, and the liquor allowed to cool, the family now going about other work, as so large a quantity of liquor would not be really cold ...
— Out on the Pampas - The Young Settlers • G. A. Henty
... dozen ruffians at his back—the scum of prisons, gambling-dens, and low resorts—he summed up a menace not to be estimated lightly. Many citizens feared to incur his wrath; many were weak, and therefore as likely to gather to his side as not, under the pressure ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... to Leonard with the look of an enraged tiger. "How you dare, scum of de earth that you are," cried he,[T] "how you dare make cry the signorina?" And his English not supplying familiar vituperatives sufficiently, he poured out upon Lenny such a profusion of Italian abuse, ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... "Why, you booze-bitten, lousy hunky, what in hell do you want? You never saw twenty dollars in a lump you c'u'd call yore own for more'n ten minnits. You boardin'-house loafer an' the rest of you scum o' the seven seas, git yore shovels an' git to diggin', or I'll put you ashore in San Francisco flat broke, an' glad to leave the ship, at ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... The indigo scum is preserved, and placed in filter cloths, where it is thoroughly washed with water two or three times. The residue which has sunk to the bottom is removed, dried, and forms a valuable manure, owing to the amount of the nitrogen which it contains. Its value may be ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 447, July 26, 1884 • Various
... headland, and then rushed up the face of the cliffs to toss their gory spray high in the air. The restless, heaving lake boiled and bubbled, never remaining the same for two minutes together. Its normal colour seemed to be a dull dark red, covered with a thin grey scum, which every moment and in every part swelled and cracked, and emitted fountains, cascades, and whirlpools of yellow and red fire, while sometimes one big golden river, sometimes four or five, flowed across it. There was an island on one side of ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... it our affair. What right has this damnable Government to march their troops through a free and sovereign State without its permission! Whom do they think this town belongs to, I want to know, that this Northern scum should foul it. Not a man shall set foot here if I can ...
— The Fortunes of Oliver Horn • F. Hopkinson Smith
... An empty passage smelling of bilge-water and pent-up gases opened suddenly on to the larger dock. Damp flooring with wide cracks stretched off to the left; on the right the solid planking terminated suddenly in huge piles, against which the water, capped with scum and weeds, splashed fitfully. The river bank, lined with docks, seemed lulled into temporary quietness. Ferry-boats steamed at their labors farther up and down the river, but the currents of travel left here and there a ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... thou upon that stream, rough with the whirl Of crime, and woe, and wretchedness, that float Like poisoned scum upon the driving flood, Filling the breath of life with noxious blasts That smite humanity with pestilence. And tremble thou, though man discern it not, Ten thousand times more foul it shows to God; Then praise him for the twilight of thy sense. Yet there is much of good and fair in life, That like ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... aft. The screw was uncovered, and shallow, muddy water, dotted by floating scum, surrounded the stern, which projected into the lagoon. In one place, however, a mud-bank touched the bilge, and three or four men, standing on planks, cautiously tried its firmness. They were wet ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... would have made way for him," said my aunt, indignantly, "he called me a bad name, and looked as if I were the very scum ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... into cold water. Dissolve the butter in a large enamelled saucepan, slice the artichokes and fry for five minutes in the butter, then add the water, shalots and celery chopped, and the seasonings. Boil for three-quarters of an hour, removing the scum as it rises. Add milk and sago, and stir frequently for twenty minutes. Rub through a hair sieve into ...
— New Vegetarian Dishes • Mrs. Bowdich
... but one God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God!" he roared. "Am I to prostrate myself before an infidel dog—the chief dog of a pack of dogs? This for the scum!" And he ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... word common to Teutonic languages), the scum formed on the top of malt liquor when fermenting; yeast used to leaven bread, or to set ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... have them. Bow down before me, all of you, wallowing on the carpets like swine in the mire! You all belong to me—a precious property truly! I am rich; I could buy you all, even the deputy snoring over there. Scum of society, give me your benediction! I am ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... long? How long, sir? Agrippina Is drawing to her net the dregs of Rome, Makes mutinous the rabble and the scum. ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... Young man, there must be some red blood in your veins. By God, if I was two years younger, I'd go along just for the joy of smashing them." He was trembling, leaning forward in his chair. "Go now, go and trap the filthy scum." ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... come to the surface again, and, with some difficulty, owing to the encumbrance of his under-shirt, clambered out upon the bank. But not as when he went under. Instead, with what appeared a green cloak over his shoulders, the scum of the stagnant water long collecting undisturbed. The hackney-driver—there was but one now, the other taken off by Duperon, who had hired him, their doctor too—joined with Rock in his laughter, while Kearney, Crittenden, and their own surgeon could not help uniting ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... growing and growing, and therewith the jeering grew; And now that the time was come for an ugly brawl I knew, When I saw how midst of the workmen some well-dressed men there came, Of the scum of the well-to-do, brutes void of pity or shame; The thief is a saint beside them. These raised a jeering noise, And our speaker quailed before it, and the hubbub drowned his voice. Then Richard put him aside and rose at once in his ...
— The Pilgrims of Hope • William Morris
... rolled down by the Monument and by the Tower, and by the Docks; down by Ratcliffe, and by Rotherhithe; down by where accumulated scum of humanity seemed to be washed from higher grounds, like so much moral sewage, and to be pausing until its own weight forced it over the bank and sunk it in the river. In and out among vessels that seemed to have got ashore, and houses that seemed to have got afloat—among bow-splits ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... as a politician: liberal, that is to say, (for his frown is on me at a phrase so doubtful,) generous, tolerant, kind, and manly; but none of your low-bred slanderers of that noble name, so generally tyrants at home and cowardly abroad—mean agitating fellows, the scum of disgorging society, raised by turbulence and recklessness from the bottom to the surface: oh no, none of these; but, for all his just liberality, an honest, honourable, loyal, church-going, uncompromising Tory: with ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... and lifted the lid. To our great joy, a scum was floating on the top, very much like crystals of ice forming upon half melted snow. Some of it was skimmed off and applied to our lips. Joy! it was salt—the pure chloride of sodium—equal to the best ever shipped ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... It is the Chinatown of London—Limehouse. Down in the dregs of the town—with West India Dock Road for its spinal column—it lies, redolent of ways that are dark and tricks that are vain. Not only the heathen Chinee so peculiar shuffles through its dim-lit alleys, but the scum of the earth, of many colors and of many climes. The Arab and the Hindu, the Malayan and the Jap, black men from the Congo and fair men from Scandinavia—these you may meet there—the outpourings of all the ships that sail ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... purification. Not over one to two per cent. of scums should be used. If in too great quantity, the raw juices will yield inferior results. During operations that follow, experiments are not yet sufficiently advanced to determine with certainty within what limits the refuse scum utilization process is to be recommended. We have great doubts as to the wisdom of introducing foreign elements, eliminated from other juices in a previous operation, into a juice fresh ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... Jervase. 'James and I are good to meet the whole of the obligations, and, apart from that, these fellows who are being brought up against us are the very scum of the earth. I don't suppose that any Court of Law would listen ...
— VC — A Chronicle of Castle Barfield and of the Crimea • David Christie Murray
... over the mantel-shelf, and a dusty clock above the dock—the only thing present, that seemed to go on as it ought; for depravity, or poverty, or an habitual acquaintance with both, had left a taint on all the animate matter, hardly less unpleasant than the thick greasy scum on every inanimate object that frowned ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... Pirates, scum of all nations, headed by such men as the hideous little Portuguese monkey, and the one-eyed English convict with the gash across his face, that ought to have gashed his wicked head off? The worst men in the world ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... the church are often, like Diotrephes, eager for the pre-eminence, while the best are modest and retiring. It is not always the cream that comes to the top, either in civil or religious society; it is sometimes the scum. And my readers must take these things into account while reading my story. The early Methodist churches were blessed organizations, bitterly as Wesley and Fletcher lamented their shortcomings and backslidings. With all their faults they were the lights ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... regions, and none went south who could avoid it. The army which the Khedives maintained in the Delta was, judged by European standards, only a rabble. It was badly trained, rarely paid, and very cowardly; and the scum of the army of the Delta was the cream of the army of the Soudan. The officers remained for long periods, many all their lives, in the obscurity of the remote provinces. Some had been sent there in disgrace, others in disfavour. Some ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... deal of froth and scum, however. The worst of it was that, in the very week when those makebates had departed, there came down on us a second plague, in the shape of Mrs. Hitchin, the apostle of—I don't quite know what, but she calls it Purity. Of course, ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing
... on top; take out the jelly, avoid the settlings; and mix into it the beaten whites of the eggs with the shells. Boil quickly for half a minute; then, removing the kettle, skim off carefully all the scum and whites of the eggs from the top, not stirring the soup itself. Pass through a jelly bag, when it should be very dear. Reheat just before serving, and add then a tablespoonful of caramel to give a rich ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman
... gentlemen something of a sight more interesting that this," the newcomer continued. "They don't want to sit down and drink with the scum of the earth." ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... called Scum Goodman, a knave more abandoned, if possible, than Porter, was in the plot. Goodman had been on the stage, had been kept, like some much greater men, by the Duchess of Cleveland, had been taken into her house, had been loaded by her with gifts, ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... people were chatting in wonder and admiration, not without awe and fear, concerning the extraordinary knowledge and power of the conjurer, a character peculiar to all times and all ages made his appearance, and soon joined them. This was one of those circulating, unsettled vagabonds, whom, like scum, society, whether agitated or not, is always sure to throw on the surface. The comical miscreant no sooner made his appearance than, like Liston, when coming on the stage, he was greeted with a general roar ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... said the captain, "so at the slightest sign of danger draw back. I don't want a man to be even wounded at the expense of capturing a score of the black scum, even if one of them proves to be ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... and grew warm. The wind died. I took off my sweater. Between flights I basked deliciously. The affair was outside of all precedent and reason. A duck shooter ought to be out in a storm, a good cold storm. He ought to break the scum ice when he puts out his decoys. He ought to sit half frozen in a wintry blast, his fingers numb, his nose blue, his body shivering. That sort of discomfort goes with duck shooting. Yet here I was sitting out in a warm, summerlike day in my shirt sleeves, ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... explanation of the demoralisation of the army. He says that the Imperial Government only troubled itself about the corps d'elite; that the object in the line regiments was to get substitutes as cheaply as possible; consequently, they are filled with men physically and morally the scum of the nation. Semaphore telegraphs have been put up on all the high public buildings. There are also semaphores on the forts. I see that one opposite me is exchanging signals. The crowd watch them as though by looking they would discover ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... the humanity of the satellites, that we owe our recent reverses. However, those reverses were merely temporary—humanity, no matter what its breed, shall very shortly disappear from the satellites. Now, you scum of the Solar System, you shall be permitted to witness an entrancing spectacle on the way to our headquarters, where all your knowledge is to be taken from you before you die, lingeringly and horribly. There is a strange space-vessel nearing ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith
... footers"—floundered and staggered in the mud. The heavy palanquin came to the ground. Great was the rage of the princess at this unseemly precedent for such an occasion. "Rude ruffians! By this very hand this scum shall die!" Te-uchi was to be the lot of the miserable fellows prostrate in obeisance and seeking pardon in the blinding storm from the lady's dagger, menacing them from the open door of the palanquin. The Lady of O[u]saka was quite capable of carrying out her threat. ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... telegraph were at their command, and by morning the news of the Provisional Government was spread all over the provinces. "The mob," says Lamartine, "was in part composed of galley slaves who had no political ideas in their heads, nor social principles in their hearts, and partly of that scum which rises to the surface in popular commotions, and floats between the fumes of intoxication and the ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... populace, the multitude, the million, the masses, the mobility, the peasantry; king Mob; proletariat; fruges consumere nati[Lat], demos, hoi polloi [Grk][Grk][Grk], great unwashed; man in the street. mob; rabble, rabble rout; chaff, rout, horde, canaille; scum of the people, residuum of the people, dregs of the people, dregs of society; swinish multitude, foex populi[obs3]; trash; profanum vulgus[Lat], ignobile vulgus[Lat]; vermin, riffraff, ragtag and bobtail; small fry. commoner, one of the people, democrat, plebeian, republican, proletary[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... the head—and also of another country—allowances are made, and I'm looked on as an oddity, and yet well respected, for I'm clever with cures and language. Well, I used to poke about among a lot of scum that has no respect for any cloth whatever—no, nor for life itself; and all the time I felt in me bones I'd surely find what I wanted among a crew that's just the sweepings ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... crew of the Golden Hind, American-owned privateersman with French letters of marque? Possibly one of the desperate gang they had landed called the Black Smugglers, scum of the Low Dutch ports, come to draw an ill report upon the good and wholesome fame of Galloway ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... the scarce more honorable love of a bastard glory. Mingled with these qualities, indeed, we have seen sparkles of the chivalrous and romantic temper which belongs to the heroic age of Spain. But, with some honorable exceptions, it was the scum of her chivalry that resorted to Peru, and took service under the banner of the Pizarros. At the close of this long array of iron warriors, we behold the poor and humble missionary coming into the land on an errand of mercy, and everywhere proclaiming the glad tidings of peace. No warlike trumpet ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... that you" she pointed a scornful finger at him "killed this poor man who was bringing the mummy to the Professor. If you were in my own country, I should have you lashed like the dog you are. Pig of a Yankee, vile scum of the—" ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... have refrained from dwelling on the lawless characteristics of the frontier, because they are sufficiently well known. The gambler and desperado, the regulators of the Carolinas and the vigilantes of California, are types of that line of scum that the waves of advancing civilization bore before them, and of the growth of spontaneous organs of authority where legal authority was absent. Compare Barrows, "United States of Yesterday and To-morrow"; ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... saw very clearly the part that the criminal elements would play in any uprising, and as early as 1847 they wrote in the Communist Manifesto: "The 'dangerous class,' the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter
... beyond the reach of bullets. They toiled up the bed of the brook until it was no longer passable. Huge bowlders lay jammed and crowded in clefts of the mountain before them. Penn remembered the spot. He had been there in spring, when down over the rocks, now covered with lichens and dry scum, ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... made from the stream sent up by the swamped burning mountains stopped all accurate view, though the blaze from the fires lit it like gold. But I had a last sight of a horde of soldiery rushing up the slopes of the Mountain, with a scum of surge billowing at their heels, and licking many of them back in its clutch. And then my eye fell on old Zaemon waving to me with the Symbol to shut down the door in the ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... rate, Harrington jumped at once to this conclusion, for he murmured: "She's telling him I'm the scum of the earth, and that it's up to him to get rid of me." He added, sententiously: "She'll find, I guess, that this is about the most difficult billet a fair lady ever intrusted to a gallant knight." Whereupon, inspired by his metaphor, he proceeded to hum under his ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... glorious thought In thunder music! Yea, we hear their voice, And we may guess their minds from ours, their work. Some taste they have like ours, some tendency To wiggle about, and munch a trace of scum." He floated up on a pin-point bubble of gas That burst, pricked by the air, and ...
— Practice Book • Leland Powers
... townsfolk do not fraternise with the Gipsies, who are regarded with the greatest suspicion by the former. Ask a townsman of Yetholm what he thinks of the Gipsies, and he will tell you they are simply vagabonds and impostors, who lounge about, and smoke, and drink, and fight. In fact, they are the very scum of the human race; and, what is more singular, they seem quite satisfied to remain as they are, repudiating every ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... invading army entered by every frontier like a surging sea. Great waves of men arrived one after the other, scattering all around them a scum of freebooters. General Carrel's brigade, separated from its division, retreated continually, fighting each day, but remaining almost intact, thanks to the vigilance and agility of Lieutenant Lare, who seemed to be everywhere at the same moment, baffling ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... see things getting worse on the field after a bit. We didn't set up to be any great shakes ourselves, Jim and I; but we didn't want the field to be overrun by a set of scoundrels that were the very scum of the earth, let alone the other colonies. We were afraid they'd go in for some big foolish row, and we should get dragged in for it. That was exactly what ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... they came to a sluggish little stream in the bog with a peculiar red-and-yellow scum along its banks. It was deep and soft-bottomed. Yan tried it with the pole—did not dare to wade, so they walked along its course till they found a small tree lying from bank to bank, then crossed on this. Half a mile farther on the bog ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the pot, then lie in the dish, and put butter at the top, three pounds of butter to four pounds of chare; when they are baked (before they are cold) pour off the gravy and butter, put two or three spoonfuls of butter into the pot you keep them in, then lie in the dish, scum the butter clean from the gravy, and put the butter over the dish, so keep it ...
— English Housewifery Exemplified - In above Four Hundred and Fifty Receipts Giving Directions - for most Parts of Cookery • Elizabeth Moxon
... toward the river. The lull was over; the south-west wind had begun sighing through the trees again, and gorgeous clouds were piled up from the horizon into the pale blue. She stood by the river watching its grey stream, edged by a scum of torn-off twigs and floating leaves, watched the wind shivering through the spoiled plume-branches of the willows. And, standing there, she had a sudden longing for her father; he alone could ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... me, pinioned hand and foot In catalepsy—say I should have known That trance had not yet darkened into death, And held my scalpel. Well, suppose I knew? Sum up the facts—her life against her death. Her life? The scum upon the pools of pleasure Breeds such by thousands. And her death? Perchance The obolus to appease the ferrying Shade, And waft her into immortality. Think what she purchased with that one heart-flutter That ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton
... with this sort of philosophy is that it starts off with an appeal to justice and logic (I'm quoting myself), but it quickly gets dangerous. Start knocking off the bilge-scum. Then when the lowest strata of society is gone, start on the next. Carry this line of reasoning out to straight Aristotelian Logic and you come up with parties like you and me, who may have been quite acceptable when compared to the whole cross-section ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... has been beaten, the coolies remove the froth and scum from the surface of the water, and then leave the contents to settle. The fecula or dye, or mall, as it is technically called, now settles at the bottom of the vat in a soft pulpy sediment, and the waste liquor left on the top is let off through graduated holes in the front. Pin after pin ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... attained. If we can imagine a philosophical auricula falling into a train of theoretical meditation on its original and natural nutriment, till it should work itself up into a profound abomination of bullock's blood, sugar-baker's scum, and other unnatural ingredients of that rich composition of soil which had brought it to perfection[2.1], and insist on being planted in common earth, it would have all the advantage of natural theory on its side that the most strenuous advocate of the vegetable system could desire; but it would ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... Hen. These soft-hearted folk ain't goin' to let ye chaw the gentleman up to-day, but, if ever I set eyes on either of the scum agin, I'll give the varmints what's comin' to 'em, and I'll do it sudden-like, and I'll do it so it stays done, and there won't be nobody to stop me next time. If ye don't believe it, jest give me the chance. And to think I had to waste a perfectly good pot of coffee on that timber-robber's ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... to beware. It is Poison Spring, the Poison Spring in a land where all water is bad; and in many a long day Wunpost was the only human being who had gazed into its crystal depths. For the water was clear, too clear to be good, without even a green scum along its edge; and the rank, deceiving grass which grew up below could not tempt him to more than taste it. But, being trailed at the time by some men from Nevada who had seen the Sockdolager ore, he had conceived a possible use for the spring; and, coming back later, ...
— Wunpost • Dane Coolidge
... was silent, and then brought out a string of expletives. "I mistrusted the filthy pack from the first," he said. "See what they give us to work with, sir—the scum of Glasgow and London; and none of us to have a say in the matter. I'd sooner go to sea with Satan than scum like that," he said fiercely. "As soon as I set eyes on them I knew we were in for it—but not this," he added, "not this by a ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... countenance and universal consent to look down on something, I soon grasped the situation and adopted an attitude which is, in the main, that of most middle-class Christian Englishmen towards prostitutes. But as puberty develops this attitude has to be accommodated with the wish to make use of this scum, these moral lepers. The ordinary young man, who likes a spice of immorality and has it when in town, and thinks it is not likely to come to his mother's or sisters' ears, does not get over his arrogance and disgust or abate them in the least. He takes them with him, more or less disguised, ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... Corson limousine rolled into the square and sought to part its way through that scum somebody in the crowd made a proposition that was promptly favored as far as the votes by voices went: "Tip the lapdog kennel ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... Leptothrix abounds everywhere, varying a little in the regularity of the threads in different specimens, but scarcely presenting two species. Between 84 degrees and 112 degrees there is an imperfect Zygnema with very long articulations, and where the green scum passes into brown, there is sometimes an Oscillatoria, of a very minute stellate Scytonema, probably in an imperfect state. Epithemia ocellata also contributes often to produce the tint. An ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... explanation of the half-hearted reception came to light. An element of negro troops had started the story on its rounds among the guileless French peasants that the white troops, who had just arrived, comprised the "Scum of America," and that they (the negroes) were the real Americans; the whites being the so-called "American Indians." As the flames of gossip spread from tongue to tongue, admonition was added that the white arrivals were dangerous and corrupt ...
— The Delta of the Triple Elevens - The History of Battery D, 311th Field Artillery US Army, - American Expeditionary Forces • William Elmer Bachman
... you mean the money-makingest: now listen me! our lairned Profession is a rascally one. It is like a barrel of beer. What rises to the top?" Here he paused for a moment, then answered himself furiously, "THE SCUM." ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... affidavits, motions, pleas, demurrers, flaws, and appeals, to protract the question from term to term, and from court to court. It would, as Mr. Tyrrel argued, be the disgrace of a civilized country, if a gentleman, when insolently attacked in law by the scum of the earth, could not convert the cause into a question of the longest purse, and stick in the skirts of his adversary till he had ...
— Caleb Williams - Things As They Are • William Godwin
... better look at this honey. Face it, he was an oily snake, cleaned up as much as possible, but not enough. No amount of dude ranch duds, gold spurs or Indian jewelry could hide his stiletto mentality. He was just a Tenderloin hoodlum with some of the scum scraped off. Well, I should ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... blood shows an iridescent scum on its surface, which is due to the fat of the animal dissolved by the ammonia produced by the decomposed tissues. The serum oozes out of every tissue and contains broken-down blood, which, when examined microscopically, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... after and discussed; one of us watched her closely and made notes of her life, one painted every radical development of color and pattern, another photographed her, and another brought her delectable scum. She was waited upon as sedulously as a termite queen. And she rewarded us by living, which was ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... is finished it is etched; that is, treated with a weak solution of nitric acid and gum-water, in order to remove all accidental traces of scum from its surface, and to prepare it for printing. Then proofs are made, which serve as a guide to the lithographer during the progress of his work, and finally as a guide to the transferrer and to the printer. The proving is done on ...
— The Building of a Book • Various |
