"Muck" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... other occupation, Tom would slip away; and in a minute shrill cries would be heard from the dairy, "Charity, Charity, thee lazy huzzy, where bist?" and Tom would break cover, hands and mouth full of curds, and take refuge on the shaky surface of the great muck reservoir in the middle of the yard, disturbing the repose of the great pigs. Here he was in safety, as no grown person could follow without getting over their knees; and the luckless Charity, while her aunt scolded her from the dairy door, for ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... plays are done, To roar of shell and shock of gun; The scuttled shipping bobs and sways, In grime and muck of shallow bays. The tattered ensigns mould'ring lie, As diving otters bark and cry; While—in the lee of crumbling piers, The rotting hulk its decking rears. Gray, screaming kestrels wheel and sheer, Above the wasted steering gear. In moulding kelp and mackerel's ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... Maccaw, having feathers of all the colours of the rainbow. It is in shape like a large parrot, with a white bill, and black legs and feet. The carrion crow is as big as a small turkey, which it perfectly resembles in shape and colour; but its flesh smells and tastes so strong of muck that it is not eatable. The pelican is almost as big as a swan, being mostly white with brown tips to the wings, having a long bill with a large cross joining the lower part of the bill, and hanging ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... sort of cave, somewhat damp, but comparatively comfortable. Well, this hole was about four and a half feet high—you had to get in doubled up on your hands and knees—about five by six feet on the sides, and there was no floor, just muck. There was some sodden, dirty straw and a lot of old moldy sandbags. Seven men and their equipment were packed in here, and we ...
— A Yankee in the Trenches • R. Derby Holmes
... the eagul And the dipper-dapper-duck And the Jew-fish And the blue-fish And the turtle in the muck; And the squir'l And the girl And the flippy floppy bat Are differ-ent As gent from gent. So let ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... swamp as a sacred place,—a sanctum sanctorum. There is the strength, the marrow of Nature. The wild-wood covers the virgin mould,—and the same soil is good for men and for trees. A man's health requires as many acres of meadow to his prospect as his farm does loads of muck. There are the strong meats on which he feeds. A town is saved, not more by the righteous men in it than by the woods and swamps that surround it. A township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forest rots below,—such ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Clanranald, and Hector the Lamiter, bard of M'Lean, were pre-eminent in this department. The Massacre of Glencoe suggested numerous elegies. There is one remarkable for pathos by a clansman who had emigrated to the Isle of Muck, from which circumstance he is styled ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... was this Brooke girl doing in that galley? What conceivable motive induced her to dabble those slender hands in the muck and blood ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... him the following, which he agreed was 'admirable sense,'—I certainly think the words would never have come together except in this way: I quartz pyx who fling muck beds. I long thought that no human being could say this under any circumstances. At last I happened to be reading a religious writer,—as he thought himself,—who threw aspersions on his opponents thick and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... delight, this hunting, fishing, and indefinite wandering through strange places. For weeks at a time they would hold on steadily, day after day; and for weeks upon end they would camp, here and there, the dogs loafing and the men burning holes through frozen muck and gravel and washing countless pans of dirt by the heat of the fire. Sometimes they went hungry, sometimes they feasted riotously, all according to the abundance of game and the fortune of hunting. Summer arrived, and dogs and men packed on their backs, rafted across blue mountain lakes, ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... savage old hogs that were in the pen were hungry and fierce. Even a grown person would have been in danger from the beasts. The pen, too, was knee-deep in soft muck and was as dark as a dungeon. In his efforts to escape the hogs, the boy had wallowed round in the muck. The hole was out of his reach, and the sty was strongly planked up to the barn floor on ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... they would, perchance, be carried off by slaves, like precious stones, to adorn the heads of emperors; but being liquid, and ample, and secured to us and our successors forever, we disregard them, and run after the diamond of Kohinoor. They are too pure to have a market value; they contain no muck. How much more beautiful than our lives, how much more transparent than our characters, are they! We never learned meanness of them. How much fairer than the pool before the farmers door, in which his ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... but which quaked to every step and gave to the slightest weight. Many muskegs west of Edmonton have been formed by beavers damming the natural drainage of a small river for so many centuries that the silt and humus washed down from the mountains have formed a surface of deep black muck. ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... should yield about one hundred and fifty bushels of berries to the acre, under skilful cultivation - a most profitable industry, since the cranberry costs less to cultivate, gather, and market than the strawberry or any of the small perishable fruits. Planted in muck and sand in the garden, the vines yield surprisingly good results. The Cape Cod Bell is the best known market berry. One of the interesting sights to the city loiterer about the New England coast in early autumn is the berry picking that is conducted ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... at the steel masts rising and 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 ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... foregoing programme, to be reached in (say) three years—two if possible. He must learn to grow these things absolutely better than they are now grown anywhere on earth. He must get the best seed. He must get muck out of the swamp, manure from somewhere, etc. etc. He must have the supreme flavour in each thing. Let him take room enough for each—plenty of room. He doesn't want much room for any one thing, but good ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick
... she had it figgered out I was in a quest fur some high-mucky-muck fur a dad, I didn't tell her no different. I didn't take much stock in them earls and nights myself. So fur as I could see they was all furriners of one kind or another. But that thing of being into a quest kind ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... then! 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
... man in the 'Pilgrim's Progress' with his muck-rake, always scraping with downcast looks, never gazing upwards," remarked James. "Ah! it is sad work; and yet, when a person gets down in the world, and feels the want of the wealth he once possessed, it must be a severe trial to him to prevent his mind from continually dwelling on the means ...
— The Gilpins and their Fortunes - A Story of Early Days in Australia • William H. G. Kingston
... of the earth have gone, alack! Deep into war's mire and muck. If you want to put it again on its track, Don't shift your load on another man's back: Don't pass ...
— Hello, Boys! • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... leave. They "knew" the gold was there, and they persisted. Somehow, the romance of the land and the quest entered into their blood, the spell of it gripped hold of them and would not let them go. Man after man of them, after the most terrible privation and suffering, shook the muck of the country from his moccasins and departed for good. But the following spring always found him drifting down the Yukon on the tail ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London
... wet as muck. I've put Peter and Mary to bed, and you must just go too, or you'll be having the rheumatics and I don't know what. Do go, missus, now ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... my inspection. 'I am sure the old boy simply filled it up with this rubbish to give me the trouble of examining it. Higgins tells me that up to within a month before he died the room was reasonably clear of all this muck. Of course it had to be, or the place would have caught fire from the sparks of the forge. The old man made Higgins gather all the papers he could find anywhere about the place, ancient accounts, newspapers, and what not, even to the brown wrapping paper you see, in which parcels came, ...
— The Triumphs of Eugene Valmont • Robert Barr
... to say that. The reason I'll do the thing she's going to ask of me—if it's what I think it is—is because this girl's a plucky little creature with a soul big enough to lift her out of the muck you probably helped her into. It's because she's got brains, talent, and a heart. It's because—well, it's because I feel like it, and ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... an earwig grows; Thus worms suit all conditions; Misers are muck-worms, silk-worms ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... lickings aren't meant for that sort of thing. They're supposed to be for kids who steal buns at the shop or muck about generally. Not for a chap who curses a fellow who runs him out. I tell you what, there's just a chance Firby-Smith won't press the thing. He hadn't had time to get over it when he saw me. By now he'll have simmered down a bit. ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... and green pistil of the lily of the cathedral. Florence, the flowery town. Firenze—Fiorenze—the flowery town: the red lilies. The Fiorentini, the flower-souled. Flowers with good roots in the mud and muck, as should be: and fearless blossoms in air, like the cathedral and the tower ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... obstacles in a fair field, but who never imperils his rider's head beneath over-hanging boughs; who foresees and evades the "blind ditches" and other perils lurking behind hedges and walls and who lands as steady and safe on ice as he takes off out of muck? Why not toast this venerable but still ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... the footing would lead me back to the main band. The signs were few and barely sufficient to allow me to keep up the pursuit. It was not until I came to a spring, the overflow of which had made muck of the ground, that I was afforded an opportunity to inspect the two sets of tracks. One set was made by moccasins almost as small as those I ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... can't tell who was their grandfather. Now, Roger is like me, a Hamley of Hamley, and no one who sees him in the street will ever think that red-brown, big-boned, clumsy chap is of gentle blood. Yet all those Cumnor people, you make such ado of in Hollingford, are mere muck of yesterday. I was talking to madam the other day about Osborne's marrying a daughter of Lord Hollingford's—that's to say, if he had a daughter—he's only got boys, as it happens; but I'm not sure if I should consent to it. I really ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... exhausted with struggling under the pole. The other, saved only from drowning by the fact that its collar had held its head against the bank, had evidently kicked and splashed until the water was thick with the black muck ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... side of the hill behind the Bar, and on the latter also, glance spots of azure and crimson, in the forms of blue and red shirted miners bending steadily over pickax and shovel, reminding one involuntarily of the muck-gatherer in The Pilgrim's Progress. But no; that is an unjust association of ideas, for many of these men are toiling thus wearily for laughing-lipped children, calm-browed wives, or saintly mothers, gathering around the household hearth in some far-away country. Even among ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... a candle-box with all the proper papers—lawful child o' some couple in Lunnon somewheres—mother dead, father drinkin'. And there was that Lunnon society's five shillin's a week for her. Jim's mother she wouldn't despise week-end money, but I never heard Jim was much of a muck-grubber. Let be how 'twill, they two mothered up Mary no bounds, till it looked at last like they'd forgot she wasn't their own flesh an' blood. Yes, I reckon they forgot ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... said he when they had played out the last hole one day, "it's like this. I feel the need to express my best thoughts in writing, so I've decided to become a great writer—you know, take up literature. I don't mean poetry or muck of that sort—serious literature. Of course Harvey D. talks about my taking charge of the Whipple interests, but I'll work him round. Big writers are somebody—not bankers and things like that. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... of Parliament! Running a-muck of all abuses. His unqualified assent Somehow nobody now refuses. Whigs and Tories Dim their glories, Giving an ear to all his stories Carrying every Bill he may wish: Here's a pretty kettle of fish! Kettle of fish! Kettle of fish! Here's a ...
— The Complete Plays of Gilbert and Sullivan - The 14 Gilbert And Sullivan Plays • William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan
... 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 close ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... shall arrive, and still To suit the note the glades have struck, Moat sweetly shall Neaera swill Her poll with barber's muck. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 11, 1914 • Various
... there was a dry loft overhead with some straw, where we might get some sleep, in spite of the rain and the midges; a double layer of boards, standing at a very acute angle, would keep off the former, while the mingled refuse hay and muck beneath would nurse a smoke that would prove a thorough protection against the latter. And then, when Jim, the two-handed, mounting the trunk of a prostrate maple near by, had severed it thrice with easy and familiar stroke, and, rolling the logs in front of the ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... death: such living shows What wide illumination brightness sheds From one big heart,—to conquer man's old foes: The coward, and the tyrant, and the force Of all those weedy monsters raising heads When Song is muck from ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... you out. I'd rather you would come again. I don't think you will bring that street-muck with ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... nothing unusual about them, while they would have passed muster as fair specimens of lumbermen in any Michigan camp. But outside, in the darkness, where holes yawned in the ground, were many men engaged in windlassing muck and gravel and gold from the bottoms of the holes where other men received fifteen dollars per day for scraping it from off the bedrock. Each day thousands of dollars' worth of gold were scraped from bedrock and windlassed to the surface, and it all belonged to Pentfield ...
— The Faith of Men • Jack London
... and close at hand were the gross and dirty huts of the off-colors (half-castes). The house, which was in the middle of the plot, was a bulging hovel of green brick, no more stately or respectable than any of the huts round about. As our horses picked their way through the muck underfoot, and we rode down to it, the off-colors swarmed out of their burrows and grinned and ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... 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 of a— ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... that night, dissected his character before Anastasie. "One thing, my beautiful," he said, "he has learned one thing from his lifelong acquaintance with your husband: the word ratiocinate. It shines in his vocabulary like a jewel in a muck-heap. And, even so, he continually misapplies it. For you must have observed he uses it as a sort of taunt, in the sense of to ergotise, implying, as it were—the poor, dear fellow!—a vein of sophistry. As for his cruelty to Jean-Marie, it must be ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and with the left 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
... 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, ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... laboratory. Out of such blackening and blasting fumes comes our civilization. That weapons of war and of destructiveness should come out of such pits and abysses of hell-fire seemed fit and natural, but much more comes out of them—much that suggests the pond-lily rising out of the black slime and muck of ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... of Pete!" gasped Curtis. "Any small efforts at muck-racking this refrigerator trust ...
— The Sign at Six • Stewart Edward White
... elder one, who had been many years in the family, was born and bred in London, and detested the country and everything connected with it, gave her opinion in the most decided manner, that there was quite enough "muck" in the house already, without making more work with butter-making, which she said confidently, would only be fit for the pig when it was made. Here was a pretty state of things! What were we to do? must we give up all hope of eating our own butter, and regard the money as lost which ...
— Our Farm of Four Acres and the Money we Made by it • Miss Coulton
... the low thunder of the powerful batteries told of the milling of hundreds of tons; and the great concentrator, sprawling down on the broad hillside, washed out the copper and separated it from the muck. Long trains of steel ore-cars received the precious concentrates and bore them off to the distant smelters, and at last there came the day when the steady outpay ceased and the money began to pile ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... summer was the hay field. On the fair meadows we turned and gathered the hay. It was a large crop; although the hay was not all of the best, it was mostly of fair quality. And when the hoeing, weeding and haying were done, the farmers dug meadow-muck for compost. ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... 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
... for growing aquatics, is that obtained from the bed of a pond, or a slow, swampy stream, but when this is not readily obtainable, a mixture of equal parts of good, rich garden loam and stable manure will be almost as good. Some use a mixture of muck and bog peat, from which they claim very satisfactory results in growing aquatics; either we think can be used with ...
— Your Plants - Plain and Practical Directions for the Treatment of Tender - and Hardy Plants in the House and in the Garden • James Sheehan
... mealy-mouthed for?' said his wife indignantly. 'Why conno yo say reet out 'at it's a pleeace not fit for ony decent dog to put his head in, an' an ill-mannert daggle-tail of a woman to keep it, as I'd like to sweep out wi th' bits of a morning, an' leave her on th' muck-heap wheer ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... 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 ...
— Yorkshire Ditties, Second Series - To which is added The Cream of Wit and Humour - from his Popular Writings • John Hartley
... tyranny, can but seldom be exercised, and only by a few persons. They are privileged crimes. They are the dreadful prerogatives of greatness, and of the highest situations only. But when a Governor-General descends into the muck and filth of peculation and corruption, when he receives bribes and extorts money, he does acts that are imitable by everybody. There is not a single man, black or white, from the highest to the lowest, ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... have been laid over the tops of desks, on which the remains are placed. A corpse is dug from the bank. It is covered with mud. It is taken to the anteroom of the school, where it is placed under a hydrant and the muck and slime washed off. With the slash of a knife the clothes are ripped open and an attendant searches the pockets for valuables or papers that would lead to identification. Four men lift the corpse on ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... 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 ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... the honours of his house in this hospitable manner, Mr. Peggotty went out to wash himself in a kettleful of hot water, remarking that 'cold would never get his muck off'. He soon returned, greatly improved in appearance; but so rubicund, that I couldn't help thinking his face had this in common with the lobsters, crabs, and crawfish,—that it went into the hot water very black, ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... 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 for ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... every where, in attempts to strike the hog; one man giving a strong blow, strikes another one who was stooping down to arrange his garters, where he dislikes to be struck, and instantly the one struck runs a muck, hitting wildly left and right. Two or three men charge on one another and brooms fly in splinters all round. One champion got a head-blow and had his wind knocked out by another blow simultaneously; round they ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2 No 4, October, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... some other magazine. If a magazine attacks Mrs. Eddy, another gallantly rushes to her defense. If one gets to seeing things at night, the other becomes anti-spirituous. If the first acquires the muck-raking habit, the complementary organ publishes an 'Uplift Number' that oozes optimism from every paragraph. The modern editor does not sit in his easy-chair, writing essays and sorting over the manuscripts that ...
— Commercialism and Journalism • Hamilton Holt
... 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 ...
— A New Orchard And Garden • William Lawson
... while priests are 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
... prize may be drawn. And then, "Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook?" The Beachcomber may be perverted into—well, the next best on the list. Yet they say in pitiful tones, those who rake among the muck of the streets, "What a dull life! What a hopeless existence! He is out of it all!" Yes, with a gladsome mind, and all its sounds, if not forgotten, at least muffled by music, soft as dawn, ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... George. "Rake over the muck-heap. And what if I did? The music suggested slumber. I ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... 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 short time; and everything ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... They used to throw 'em to the lions, or bowstring 'em in the harems. And in the days of real chivalry they burned 'em at the stake or locked 'em up in convents or castles. But don't you worry, Jim, Charity has you for a champion and she's mighty lucky. Go on and fight the muckers and the muck-rakers, and don't let the reporters or the preachers scare you away from doing the one ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... a class of proverbs, which have a tendency to make us undervalue money. Of this cast are those notable observations, that money is not health; riches cannot purchase every thing: the metaphor which makes gold to be mere muck, with the morality which traces fine clothing to the sheep's back, and denounces pearl as the unhandsome excretion of an oyster. Hence, too, the phrase which imputes dirt to acres—a sophistry so barefaced, that even the literal sense of it is true only in a wet season. This, and abundance ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... from which the things were to crystallise, I 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 in my furnace, put the ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... are anxious to run a muck Can't do better than join with Puck. They'll find him bon diable—spite of his phiz— And, in fact, his great ambition is, While playing old Puck in first-rate style, To be thought Robin ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... Commonest muck o' men. Fit for nothing but putting under ground. Why, how I should like to take my old mother with us, and let her loose at that there captain. I wouldn't give much for his chance. ...
— The Black Tor - A Tale of the Reign of James the First • George Manville Fenn
... 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 ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, October 15, 1892 • Various
... all do you or anybody else? You're stirring up muck, and you're getting the only thing you ever get by that kind of activity, a bad smell." He paused for his effect; then delivered himself of a characteristically vigorous ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... good memories. If they remembered the poets, or their first love, or the spring, or the stars, it were well enough: but no! they remember but what the poets ate and wore, the last divorce case, the state of the crops, the last trivial detail about Mars. The man with the muck-rake would have made a great reputation as a talker had he lived to-day: for, as our modern speech has it, a Great Man simply means a Great Memory, and a Great Memory is simply ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... can be imagined. She lives in that atmosphere of infamy with a calm and triumphing ease which is either wonderfully profligate or entirely artless. Strange scion of an adventuress, cast upon the muck-heap of that set, like a magnificent plant nurtured upon corruption, or rather like the daughter of some noble race, of some great artist, or of some grand lord, of some prince or dethroned king, tossed ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant
... 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
... shows every sign of having been written to please the opera-goers of those days. Curiously, the critics of the time, in the words of the "Daily Telegraph," saw in "the Bayreuth master another form of Bunyan's man with the muck-rake," who "never sought to disguise the garbage he found in the Newgate Calendar of Mythland, or set his imagination to invent," and they were disgusted, also like the "Daily Telegraph," by "approaching incest" in "The ...
— Old Scores and New Readings • John F. Runciman
... Sanitrys, and Dooks, I do not mean To be rucking upon Charity, or rounding on wot's clean; But if yer wants to 'elp us as has lived so long in muck, The only thing wot's wanted ain't to give ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 102, Jan. 9, 1892 • Various
... was then set, and kept by each watch in turn, 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 a drop ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... 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} ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... believe me, sir, I've never seen a gentleman as was more a gentleman than the count. But, bless your heart, sir, you'd never have thought so if you'd a known him all the years as I did, off and on, a-living worse than a wild beast behind a muck-heap, and in a cellar underneath the stables. Now you know, sir," proceeded Hinge, growing warm and even angry with the theme, "that ain't civilized; it ain't Christian; it ain't treating a man ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... Virtue. Compare him with the most famous of the Dutch masters, and he rises into glory; coarseness and vulgarity in them had no point out of which could come instruction. If they picture the issues of their own minds, they must have been gross and sensual; they ransacked the muck of life, and the grovelling in character, for themes that one should see only by compulsion. But Hogarth's subjects were never without a lesson, and, inasmuch as he resorted for them to the open volume of humanity, like those of the ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... difficult to others were often solved to her mind by practical observation. It amused her to hear persons agitating the question as to where they should look to supply labor for the South. "Why," she remarked once, "there was a negro, one of those fearfully hot days in the spring, who was digging muck from a swamp just in front of our house, and carrying it in a wheelbarrow up a steep slope, where he dumped it down, and then went back for more. He kept this up when it was so hot that we thought either ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... shirt had faded from a 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 visible items of ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... slush, slosh, sposh [obs3][U. S.]. spawn, offal, gurry [obs3][U. S.]; lientery[obs3]; garbage, carrion; excreta &c. 299; slough, peccant humor, pus, matter, suppuration, lienteria[obs3]; faeces, feces, , excrement, ordure, dung, crap[vulgar], shit[vulgar]; sewage, sewerage; muck; coprolite; guano, manure, compost. dunghill, colluvies[obs3], mixen[obs3], midden, bog, laystall[obs3], sink, privy, jakes; toilet, john, head; cess[obs3], cesspool; sump, sough, cloaca, latrines, drain, sewer, common sewer; Cloacina; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... purelier in his rushings to and fro, After his books, to flush his blood with air, Then to his books again. My lady's cousin, Half-sickening of his pension'd afternoon, Drove in upon the student once or twice, Ran a Malayan muck against the times, Had golden hopes for France and all mankind, Answer'd all queries touching those at home With a heaved shoulder and a saucy smile, And fain had haled him out into the world, And air'd him there: his nearer ...
— Enoch Arden, &c. • Alfred Tennyson
... and blind to every other consideration, to this end they had degraded their intellects by concentrating them upon the minutest details of expense and profit, and for their reward they raked in their harvest of muck and lucre along with the hatred and curses of those they injured in the process. They knew that the money they accumulated was foul with the sweat of their brother men, and wet with the tears of little children, but ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... opportunity to make experiment of the new system. The team stuck fast in the black muck, and every effort to extricate them served only to imbed them more hopelessly in the sticky gumbo. Time passed on. A dark and lowering night was imminent. The Bishop grew anxious. Macmillan, with whip and ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... the refuse-heap, things that human society once needed and then rejected. He collects them again, and now the poor can buy them. And he buys the soldiers' bread too, when they want to go on the spree, and throws it on his muck-heap; he calls it fodder for horses, but the poor buy it of him and eat it. The refuse-heap is the poor man's larder —that is, when the pigs have taken what they want. The Amager farmers fatten their swine there, and the sanitary commission talks about ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... breathing frostily in the chill air. "I shall muck it. I know I shall," whispered Stalky uneasily; and his discomfort was not lightened by a murmur from the rear rank that the old gentleman was General Collinson, a member of ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... it so.... Probably you'll grind me into the family groove. Maybe I'm ground already, but that doesn't excuse what you've just said, and it doesn't make it any less an abominable lie, nor the man who reported it to you any less a muck-hearted sewer..." ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... Patterson," Florence replied absently. "F'r instance, Aunt Julia, I don't see what you want to go walking with Newland Sanders for, when you said yourself you wished he was dead, or somep'n, after there got to be so muck talk in the family and everywhere about his sayin' all that about the Bible when you hurt your thumb. All ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... and stay by her half an hour, till Eliza, the German nurse, comes to take her to bed. The cows 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 ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... rolled a third time. The bars are therefore cut again into pieces, piled, re-heated and rolled again. A bar of iron which has been rolled twice is formed from a pile of fourteen separate pieces of iron that have been rolled only once, or "muck bar," as it is called; while the thrice-rolled bar is made from a pile of eight separate pieces of double-rolled iron. If, therefore, one of the original pieces of iron has any flaw or defect, it will form only a hundred and twelfth part of the thrice-rolled bar. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... as we were sitting at breakfast, Mr. Carter's servant informed us that there was an "Amok" in the village—in other words, that a man was "running a muck." Orders were immediately given to shut and fasten the gates of our enclosure; but hearing nothing for some time, we went out, and found there had been a false alarm, owing to a slave having run away, declaring he ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... Muck Book. The American Muck Book; treating of the Nature, Properties, Sources, History, and Operations of all the principal Fertilizers and Manures in Common Use, with Specific Directions for their Preservation, and Application to the Soil and to Crops; drawn from Authentic Sources. Actual ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... The American Muck Book; treating of the Nature, Properties, Sources, History, and Operations of all the principal Fertilizers and Manures in Common Use, with Specific Directions for their Preservation, and Application to the Soil and to Crops; drawn from Authentic ...
— Mysteries of Bee-keeping Explained • M. Quinby
... slime runs out. Den yo' buries him in san' 'til his insides all decay. Den you puts him in a pon' an' takes him out, an' beats him wif a stick, lots o' times oveh, maybe, 'til all de jelly an' all de san' an' all de muck am out ob him. Den yo' wash him in fresh wateh 'til he's clean an' lets ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... maintaining such a stupendous machine; but no man was ever more sarcastic in his remarks upon this piece of mechanism than the naturalist, who next appealed to the patron's approbation for a curious disposition he had made touching the procreation of muck-flies, in which he had laid down a curious method of collecting, preserving, and hatching the eggs of these insects, even in the winter, by certain modifications of artificial heat. The nature of this discovery was ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... blasted, infernal ice, I tell you,' he shouted in a rage, standing in black muck almost to his knees, with the same material bespattered over him from head to foot. Indeed his red and perspiring face showed a couple of great, black smirches with which he had unknowingly ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... traffic was not confined to men; for women and children kept pace with the army, trading in every possible article of necessity or luxury. For these—disciples of the dime and the dollar—war had no terrors. They took their muck-rakes, like the man in Bunyan, and gathered the almighty coppers, from the pestilential camp and the ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... the cassock; goes to fire for his coat: returns: drags it on]. I don't know! Things 'av' got in a bit of a muck with me! I'm rather like ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy
... in print, though I am not sensitive as to what newspapers say about me or I should have been in my grave years ago; but Sergeant Smith and his knowledge touches me at a raw place. You are always messing about with narcotics and muck of all kinds, and you will understand when I tell you that the money I give Sergeant Smith every week serves a double purpose. It is an opiate and ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... as prodigally as if they had been auctioneers' announcements. Fastidious people who did not read it gave it a bad name, not recognizing the classic and heroic attitude of those engaged in pitchforking up and turning over the muck of the Augean stables under the pretense ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... 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 ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... with which the archdeacon was so well acquainted. Only last November he had recommended his son to buy a certain clod-crusher, and the clod-crusher had of course been bought. The bright blue paint upon it had as yet not given way to the stains of the ordinary farmyard muck and mire;—and here was the clod-crusher advertised for sale! The archdeacon did not want his son to leave Cosby Lodge. He knew well enough that his son need not leave Cosby Lodge. Why had the foolish fellow ...
— The Last Chronicle of Barset • Anthony Trollope
... sod ta commemorate an' start th' gurt event. An' a bonny rumpus thur wur, yo' mind, for yo' ma' think ha it wur conducted when thay wur threapin' wi' one another like a lot a oud wimen at a parish pump, wen it sud be. One sed it mud tak place at rush-buren, another sed next muck-spreadin' toime, a third sed it mud be dug et gert wind day it memmery o' oud Jack K—- Well, noan et proposishuns wud do fur the lot, and there wur such opposishun wal it omust hung on a thre'ad whether th' railway went on or net, wal at last an oud ...
— Th' History o' Haworth Railway - fra' th' beginnin' to th' end, wi' an ackaant o' th' oppnin' serrimony • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... howls, and sharp, piercing barks—much the sound that a pack of wolves raises when in full cry. Involuntarily I glanced backward to discover the origin of this new and menacing note with the result that I missed my footing and went sprawling once more upon my face in the deep muck. ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... I mighty glad you mention dat,' says Brer Tarrypin, sezee. 'Mr. Mud-Turkle is setch clos't kin ter me dat I calls 'im Unk Muck, en I lay ef you sen' dar atter dat sane you won't fine Unk Muck so ...
— Nights With Uncle Remus - Myths and Legends of the Old Plantation • Joel Chandler Harris
... over the irregular ground, occasionally striking patches of wooden sidewalk 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 forward a few feet ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... money 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
... sold if you do," said Gus. "We were down looking at it, and a pretty state it's in. Old Skinner at the Tannery took it into his head to leave his gates up last night, and his muck has got into the river and poisoned every fish in ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... keenly at the girl as they walked slowly out into the office; he was wondering what her object might be in this pilgrimage. His mind flitted briefly over the ideas of muck-raking reporters and inquisitive lady novelists; yet surely this self-possessed but quiet young lady suggested nothing of either class, and besides, a niece of Silas Osgood's could scarcely deserve suspicion. At the same ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... takes place in a moment. Thar's a clattering rush; an' then, pony a-muck with sweat an' alkali dust, Silver Phil shows in the portals of the Red Light. Thar's a flash an' a spit of white smoke as he fires his six-shooter ...
— Wolfville Nights • Alfred Lewis
... snorted, struggling gallantly. They were poised on the brink of death for a moment, two—three—and then the mare began to move slowly forward, neck curved, ears cocked to her master's urging, while the bay sloshed through the treacherous muck, found foothold, lost it, made a frantic leap, another, and landed trembling on the ledge. Sandy leaped from his saddle and caught Molly, sliding from her seat in sheer exhaustion and the revulsion of ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... fighting more than Germans—I was fighting to bring about the new heaven and the new earth. Our politicians promised us as much. You remember their phrases. 'A world safe for democracy! A land fit for heroes to live in.' When all the muck and the heartbreak were ended, we found that outwardly it was the same old world. Heaven was as far away as ever. There were no signs that any one wanted a new earth. Nations which had been comrades, began to wrangle. Soldiers came home to find their jobs held by slackers. The glorious promises ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... muttered. "You have done your work, and I fling you away, as I fling away all my tools at my pleasure. There, in the green muck and slimy filth, ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... wrong, but it is so frightfully easy to displease a cook. 'It's them children: there's that there new carpet in their room, covered thick with mud, both sides, beastly yellow mud, and sakes alive knows where they got it. And all that muck to clean up on a Sunday! It's not my place, and it's not my intentions, so I don't deceive you, ma'am, and but for them limbs, which they is if ever there was, it's not a bad place, though I says it, and I wouldn't wish to ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... appearance within the pickets, and proceeded toward the centre of the village, where all the chiefs and braves stood ready to receive him, which they did in a cordial manner by shaking hands, recognizing him as an old acquaintance, and pronouncing his name, Nu-mohk-muck-a-nah (the first or only man). The body of this strange personage, which was chiefly naked, was painted with white clay, so as to resemble at a distance a white man. He enters the medicine lodge, and goes through ...
— The Antediluvian World • Ignatius Donnelly
... have him then?" he asked. "Red, yaller, muck-dirt colour?"—and he stared significantly at the Tailless Tyke, who was lying at his master's feet. The little man ceased rubbing his knees and eyed the boy. David shifted uneasily beneath ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... be discouraging to the driver for pleasure to find in rainy weather almost bottomless muck and mud on portions of the main travelled highway between New York and Buffalo, but that, for the present, is normal. The manufacturer may regret the condition and wish for better, but he cannot be heard to complain, and if the machine, with reasonably careful driving, gives out, it is the fault ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... needn't be tryin' none of your muck on me," said Burns. "Keep still or I'll break ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... thinks fit to take his dues in kind, he then either demands his true and utmost right; and if so, it is a great hazard if he be not counted a caterpillar! a muck worm! a very earthly minded man! and too much sighted into this lower world! which was made, as many of the Laity think, altogether for themselves: or else, he must tamely commit himself to that little dose of the creature ...
— An English Garner - Critical Essays & Literary Fragments • Edited by Professor Arber and Thomas Seccombe
... hands tied? True, our feet may lag, our eyes may not see far ahead, but who should say that for this reason man should throw aside all the firmness and strength and solidity of order, forget all that he has passed through, and start afresh from the bottom rung of the ladder—from the muck of ...
— The Letters of Franklin K. Lane • Franklin K. Lane
... 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 ...
— Indian Legends of Vancouver Island • Alfred Carmichael
... "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 his sunburned face paled to the beauty of some ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... dozen times a day by the bath nurses in the receiving department of a charity hospital. When she returned, Susan too was in her chemise and ready to begin the search for the man, if man there was left deep buried in that muck. While Susan took off the stinking and rotten rags, and flung them into the hall, Clara went to the bathroom they and Mollie shared, and filled the tub with water as hot as her hand could bear. With her foot Susan pushed the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... They were as much at home in the mud as they were in the dank, humid air above. They could distinguish one type of mud from another deep beneath the surface, and could carry a dredge-tube down to a lode of the blue-gray muck with the unfailing accuracy of a ...
— The Native Soil • Alan Edward Nourse
... 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
... neared the walls, half a huge double gate Lay prostrate, though the other by stone hinges Hung to its flanking tower. The path they followed Threaded an old paved road whose flags were edged With dry grass and dry weeds, even cactuses Had pushed the stones up or found root in muck heaps: The path struck up the slope of the fallen door, Basalt like midnight, o'er which dusty feet Had greyed a passage, for it rested on Some debris fallen from the left-hand tower, And from its upper edge rude blocks like steps Led down into the straight main street, that ran Past ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... said—"here we go through all this muck and moil to help fix things nicer for her at home, and what's it all amount to? Seems like she's just gone ahead the way she'd 'a' gone anyhow; and now, I suppose, getting ready to up and leave us! Ain't that a puzzle to you? It is ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... much," protests 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 |
