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verb
Scum  v. i.  To form a scum; to become covered with scum. Also used figuratively. "Life, and the interest of life, have stagnated and scummed over."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Scum" Quotes from Famous Books



... inciting the civil riots in Geneva against the Catholics. He had circulated pamphlets purporting to be written by a Catholic, upholding the Pope, and ridiculing most unmercifully the pretenses of Protestantism, declaring it a compromise with the devil, made up of the scum of the Catholic Church. This pamphlet declared Calvin a monster, and arraigned him for burning Servetus, and hinted that all Calvinists would soon be paid back in their own coin. No one else could have penned this ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard

... hand toward the distant crowd. "Got somethin' like a reg'ment thar now, hoss and fut, an' it's safe ter bet thar 's more a-comin'. This yere fracas must be gittin' some celebrated, an' bids fair ter draw bigger 'n a three-ringed circus. All ther scum o' San Juan must 'a got a private tip thet we was easy marks. They 're out yere like crows hopin' ter pick our bones clean afore the law kin git any show at all. Wal, it 'll be a tough meal all right, an' some of 'em are mighty liable ter have trouble with ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish

... you blasted scum of the seas," he bawled to the mate, and the crew gathered around the gun. "Lug up a case of ammunition and we'll shell that bush until even a parrot won't ...
— Captain Scraggs - or, The Green-Pea Pirates • Peter B. Kyne

... in freeing the bath of melted pig-iron from excess of carbon by adding broken lumps of pure hematite or magnetite iron ore. This causes a violent boiling, which is kept up until the metal becomes soft enough, when it is allowed to stand to let the metal clear from the slag which floats in scum upon the top. The separation of the slag and iron is facilitated by throwing in some lime from time to time. Spiegel, or specular iron, is then added; about 1 per cent. more than in the scrap process. From 20 to 24 cwt. of ore are ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro

... in the wind. As they approached a dark patch of oil spread outwards from a miniature maelstrom where vast bubbles heaved themselves up and broke; the air was sickly with the smell of benzoline, and mingled with it were the acrid fumes of gas and burnt clothing. A dark scum gathered in widening circles, with here and there the white belly of a dead fish catching the sun: a few scraps of wreckage went by, but no sign of a man or what ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie

... unnecessary loads which we were afterwards taught to discard; and undergoing toilsome marches over a rough and desolate country, under the scorching rays of a Southern sun, with not enough water to wash down the dust we were compelled to breathe. The men would readily push away the thick green scum from every stagnant pool and drink with a relish. Lazy swine were forced to leave their muddy beds to give place to the cup of the thirsty soldier. The Eighty-sixth Regiment in after times was wont to look back on this campaign—its first lesson in soldiering—with more commiseration ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear

... mostly memories of sheepsheads and flanneled bathers and 'tis not for these that the poet gazes into the emerald depths whence the pearly scum, like tears of mermaids—Ah! Mermaids! Mr. P. had never seen a mermaid. These were not among his memories He deeply woulded that he could—and lo! he did! The creature came gliding to his very feet, and he ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 14, July 2, 1870 • Various

... beef into your three or four gallon pot, three parts filled with cold water, and set it on the fire to boil; remove all the scum that rises to the surface, and then let it boil gently on the hob; when the meat has boiled an hour and is about half done, add the parsnips in a net, and at the end of another half hour put in the cabbages, also in a net. A piece of beef ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli

... Zenobe Membre. His brother friar, Anastase Douay; the trusty Joutel, a man of sense and observation; the Marquis de la Sablonniere, a debauched noble whose patrimony was his sword; and a few of less mark,—comprised the leaders of the infant colony. The rest were soldiers, recruited from the scum of Rochelle and Rochefort; and artisans, of whom the greater part knew nothing of their pretended vocation. Add to these the miserable families and the infatuated young women, who had come to tempt fortune in the swamps and cane-brakes ...
— France and England in North America, a Series of Historical Narratives, Part Third • Francis Parkman

... bleeds for our people! All they ask is the God-given right to a pure government. Their petition is spurned! Rose,"—tears shone in his eyes—"I this day saw the sabres and bayonets of the government of which Washington was once the head, shielding the scum of the earth while it swarmed up and voted honor and virtue out of office!" The handkerchief he snatched from his pocket brought out three or four written papers. He cast them upon the fire. One, under a chair, he overlooked. Barbara got it later—just ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable

... to have vomited forth its scum. Uncanny beings lurk at the corners. Wild with cognac and absinthe, the unruly mob commits every wanton act which unbridled wickedness can suggest. Good men are powerless, and women exposed to every insult. Public trade is ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... often considered safer to pass the water through still another filter bed, consisting of layers of charcoal, which has the power of gathering oxygen in its pores, to attack and oxidize, or burn up, the remaining impurities in the water. A sort of scum forms over the surface of the last and finest bed of sand or charcoal, and if this scum is not too frequently removed, though it makes the filtering slower, the water comes out purer. On examining this scum, we find it to consist of a thick mat of our old friends, the purifying ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson

... Stagman, "thou art somewhat rash in this matter, for Interpreter's fee is but a trifle; and I can tell thee, that if by mischance thou shouldst come to lose thy way in the Fair, thou mayst chance to be very roughly handled. There is always a scum of villains there on the outlook to decoy strangers, and, if they will not consent to be cheated, to flout and mock them with gibes and scurril jests. 'Twas but the other day they put Truepenny into the STOCKS, and kept him there till he thought he should never get out again; and he only ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various

... to signal to me to let loose; and I half-started forward, releasing the mangled foot under my foot. I was for leaping to complete that half-formed wish of Pilate and to sweep away in blood and cleanse the court of the wretched scum that howled ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London

... unwashed Whitechapel!" I had heard Maguire remark within. "Blamed if our Bowery boys ain't cock-angels to scum like this. Ah, you biter, I wouldn't soil my knuckles on your ugly face; but if I had my thick boots on I'd dance the soul out of your ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung

... for, as when a pack of wolves are diverted by a garment dropped from the flying sledge, but the unluckier hands came after his heels in fuller howl. He noticed the singular appearance of the streets. Bands of the scum of the population hung at various points: from time to time a shout was raised at a distance, "Abasso il zigarro!" and "Away with the cigar!" went an organized file-firing of cries along the open place. ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... sighed. He was a heavy man, and he had not known sentiment for years; he was a big man, and it took much to move him, literally and figuratively; he was a man in whom the dreams of God that haunt the soul in youth, though overlaid by the scum that gathers in the fight for money, had not, as with the majority, utterly ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... while his dark eyes glowed with a fierce and passionate resentment. "For men like de Cambray there is only one caste—the noblesse, one religion—the Catholic, one creed—adherence to the Bourbons. All else is scum, trash, beneath contempt, hardly human! Oh! if you knew how I loathe these people!" he continued, speaking volubly and in a voice shaking with suppressed excitement. "They have learnt nothing, these aristocrats, nothing, I tell you! the ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy

... 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

... age the goodly customs of the Scots farmer. It was known on this occasion that he had a good bit of money to bring home; the word had gone round loosely. The laird had shown his guineas, and if anybody had but noticed it, there was an ill- looking, vagabond crew, the scum of Edinburgh, that drew out of the market long ere it was dusk and took the hill-road by Hermiston, where it was not to be believed that they had lawful business. One of the country-side, one Dickieson, they took with them to be their ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson

... it wi' me!" roared Smith, in a voice of amazing gruffness, and shook an artificially dirtied fist under the Chinaman's nose. "Get inside and gimme an' my mate a couple o' pipes. Smokee pipe, you yellow scum—savvy?" ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... at last shared the same fate, dying from the effects of their ill-treatment. The bodies of all the Englishmen, with the exception of Captain Barbazon, were restored, and of most of the Sikhs also. The Chinese officials were more barbarous in their cruelty than even the worst scum among their malefactors; for the prisoners in the jails, far from adding to the tortures of the unfortunate Europeans, did everything in their power to mitigate their sufferings, alleviate their pains, and ...
— China • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... Purple, you graceless scum, let me tell you that we will stand no reference to the two ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane

... elements, the noisy and bibulous pests in the smoking-room and the ladies of mysterious destination with whom they dallied, were dismissed by Geoffrey at once as being terrible bounders. Beneath this scum more congenial spirits came to light, officers and Government officials returning to their posts, and a few globe-trotters of leisure. Everybody seemed anxious to pay attention to the charming Japanese lady; and from such incessant ...
— Kimono • John Paris

... of saffron color or quite black, either free or slave. Will any one dare to deny this fact? I will only designate, in support of my assertion (and to say no more), the famous house of Coquet, located near the center of the city, where all that scum is to be seen publicly, and ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday

... easy for me. No, it was a happy time for me—and, by George, how they fed us! I expect the women looked after all that. I daresay that, as far as economics go, it was all wrong, and that these people are only a sort of scum on the surface of society. But it is a pretty scum, shot with bright colours. Anyhow, it is no good beginning by trying to alter them! If you could alter everything else, they would fall into line, because they are good-humoured and sensible. And as long as people are kindly and full of life, ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson

... things I see here make a new world to me. Very likely these are right, and all the rest of the world quite wrong. Englishmen always are certain of that; and as I belong to the privileged classes, my great desire is to believe it. Only I want to know how the lower orders—the dregs, the scum, the dirt under our feet, the slaves that do all the work and get starved for it—how these trampled wretches regard the question. If they are happy, submissive, contented, delighted to lick the boots of their betters, my conscience will be clear to accept their homage, and their money for any stick ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore

... involves no slight penalty. Practically all Athenians are at least literate. In Aristophanes's famous comedy, "The Knights," a boorish "sausage-seller" is introduced, who, for the purposes of the play, must be one of the very scum of society, and he is made to cry, "Only consider now my education! I can but barely read, just in a kind of way."[*] Evidently if illiterates are not very rare in Athens, the fellow should have been ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... more rocky islands were observed, with a few trees growing on the very top—their outline having the appearance of a cock's comb. It was noticed that the water here was streaked for many miles with a brown scum supposed to be fish-spawn. At evening one of the Cumberland Islands, named Pure Island, provided an anchorage for the three ships; possibly the Lady Nelson alone had been in these waters previously, and it will be remembered, that it was hereabouts she had parted with the Investigator in ...
— The Logbooks of the Lady Nelson - With The Journal Of Her First Commander Lieutenant James Grant, R.N • Ida Lee

... Challes remarked that "prentices were but the scum of the world." This led to a general rising of apprentices, and much disorder throughout the city. Fleetwood ...
— Shakespearean Playhouses - A History of English Theatres from the Beginnings to the Restoration • Joseph Quincy Adams

... while Tom was not quite so sure of the two chips on which he was to carry Eloise out if she tried to boss him. He'd wait and see. That city chap from Crompton Place had certainly been very friendly, and had not treated him as if he was scum; and after taking his seat and telling Ruby Ann, with quite an air when she asked why he was so late, that he had been detained by Mr. Harcourt, who wanted to talk with him, he took from his desk his slate and rubbed out ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... in a closely covered kettle used for no other purpose. Remove scum when it first appears; after soup has simmered for four or five hours add ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum

... 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 ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower

... abuses were not confined to the civil government and the courts of law; the army, too, was infected. In the ranks were to be found hired foreigners, unwilling peasants dragged from their farms, and the scum of the city slums. Thousands deserted every year. Had the discontented troops been well commanded, they might still have answered the purpose. But such was not the case. There were certainly enough officers—an average of one general for every ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes

... out enough of the piece until you can see no more bubbles. Leave the piece to be plated in the solution for about one-half hour, then take the article out and with a tooth brush and some pumice, clean the yellowish scum off, rinse in clear water and dry in sawdust. When thoroughly dry, take a cotton flannel rag and some polishing powder and polish the article. The article must have a fine polish before plating ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... '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 scullion!' roared the doctor, instantaneously repeating ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... to the man in the veranda, manin', as sure as I sit, to knock the life out av him. He slipped into the open. "Fwhat are you doin' philanderin' about here, ye scum av the gutter?" sez I polite, to give him his warnin', for I wanted ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... and returned thanks to God for our preservation, and offered up a petition that he would still take care of us. We then ate a little more pemmican, and took a draught of water from the river; though, to do so, we had to drive back the burned twigs and black scum which came floating down the stream. We then caught our horses, which, in consequence of being hobbled, had not strayed far; and after leading them down to drink we mounted and rode on to the north-east. Reaching some elevated ground whence we could obtain an extensive view, we ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston

... the sellers of sherbet, ices and pastry bearing their trays and barrels through the crowd with strange cries and the jingling of bells; the friars of every order in their various habits, the street-musicians, the half-naked lazzaroni, cripples and beggars, who fringed the throng like the line of scum edging a fair lake;—this medley of sound and colour, which in fact resembled some sudden growth of the fiery soil, was an expressive ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton

... The tank, then, must be large enough to hold this volume, and suitable proportions generally require that the tank be at least 5 times as long as wide. A certain allowance must always be made for deposit in the bottom and for the accumulation of scum on the top, so that an extra foot or more of depth is desirable. The tank, then, to furnish the required 33 feet, might be made 3 feet wide, 3 feet deep, and 5 feet long, and probably in no case would a tank much smaller than ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... 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 Anabaina occurs at a temperature of 125 degrees, but the same ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker

... aniline gentian violet three to five minutes. Filter as much aniline water on to the cover-slip as it will hold; then add the smallest quantity of alcoholic solution of gentian violet which suffices to saturate the aniline water and form a "bronze scum" upon its surface—if too much of the alcoholic gentian violet is added the ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre

... the loaferism and the defilement of popular sovereigns, who crawl up from the saloons greasy and foul and vermin-covered, to decide questions of justice and order and civilization—when I see a woman, I say, who wants to press through all that horrible scum to get to the ballot-box, I say: "Ah, what a pity! Vashti has ...
— New Tabernacle Sermons • Thomas De Witt Talmage

... the seamen lower down the beach, nearer the sea, their ranks compacted. "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 ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... "Scum of the earth!" burst forth Jasper, with voice like a roll of thunder, "I stooped to come amongst you—I shared amongst you my money. Was any one of you too poor to pay up his club fee—to buy a draught of Forgetfulness—I said, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... 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 ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis

... through, I was compelled to confess to myself that they were by no means a prepossessing lot; they, one and all, O'Gorman and Price not excepted, wore that sullen, hang-dog, ruffianly expression of countenance that marks the very lowest class of British seamen, the scum and refuse of the vocation. Still, we had not far to go, and I consoled myself with the reflection that they would probably prove good enough ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood

... Engels 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 tool of reactionary ...
— Violence and the Labor Movement • Robert Hunter

... that he had deeply incensed the assassins; and the more ferocious of them resolved to wreak vengeance upon him by pillaging and burning his chateau. A conspiracy was organized, and the following night about forty men of both parties, or rather the scum and refuse of both, started for Chamondrin. They knew the castle had but a small number of defenders, and that Coursegol, the most formidable of these, was absent at the time. They also knew that the isolated situation of the chateau afforded its ...
— Which? - or, Between Two Women • Ernest Daudet

... all over Europe (including the British Islands), the break-up of old institutions, the generally materialistic outlook on life, the coming to the surface of huge masses of diseased and fatuous populations, the scum and dregs created by the past order, all point to the End of a Dispensation. Protestantism and Commercialism, in the two fields of religion and daily life have, as I have indicated before, been occupied in concentrating the mind of each man solely on his OWN welfare, ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter

... lectured Richard in a kindly if sententious way; and he must have fostered the boy's natural strong spirit of revolt. Adolph loathed authority, especially the authority of irresponsible court officials; and in some of his preserved letters he lashes these gentry, the scum of humanity and the parasites of courts, with scathing sarcasm. His sarcasm had no practical result, because the officials never saw it—if they had they would have shrugged their fat shoulders and ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman

... Teutonic languages), the scum formed on the top of malt liquor when fermenting; yeast used to leaven bread, or to set up fermentation ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various

... few snails and tadpoles, for they are the scavengers and will eat the refuse stuff and keep the glass free from greenish scum. Boys and girls are almost sure to overfeed fish. This is a great mistake. The best standard feed is dried ants' eggs that can be bought for a few cents a box at any bird and fish store. Do not feed pieces of bread and meat. Study what their ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... then the slow, the pilfering race; So purge thy garden from disgrace.' 'What arrogance!' the snail replied; 'How insolent is upstart pride! Hadst thou not thus with insult vain, Provoked my patience to complain, I had concealed thy meaner birth, Nor traced thee to the scum of earth. 30 For scarce nine suns have waked the hours, To swell the fruit, and paint the flowers, Since I thy humbler life surveyed, In base, in sordid guise arrayed; A hideous insect, vile, unclean, You dragged a slow and noisome train; ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville

... breeze died away and hauled off the land. All night light breezes. Made all possible sail to the SSW. At the same time set the extremity of Hainan which bore NW by N to N. Past three Chinese vessels steering NNE. Saw much scum on the water and at 11 A.M. lost sight ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer

... shadow. Mysterious it is, for a man does not ordinarily empty his pockets of gold in order to fill them with gravel. Mysterious it is, for a thirsty man will not usually turn away from the full, bubbling, living fountain, to see if he can find any drops still remaining, green with scum, stagnant and odorous, at the bottom of some broken cistern. But all these follies are sanity as compared with the folly of which we are guilty, times without number, when, having known the sweetness of Jesus Christ, we turn away to the fascinations of the world. ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren

... by the thought of the vast accumulation of past experience; both alike will tend to minimise the value of human effort, because they will both be aware that the phenomenon of human activity and human volition is but the froth and scum working on the lip of some gigantic forward-moving tide, and that men probably do not so much choose what they shall do, as do what they are compelled to do by some unfathomable power behind and above them. This thought may ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson

... them it immediately rose to 120 degrees of Fahrenheit. We could not bear our fingers any time in the water. It tasted copperish and bitter; there was a strong sulphurous smell at the place, and a green sediment at the bottom and sides of the spring, with a reddish or copper-coloured scum floating on the surface. After again crossing the Ikan stream we arrived at dusun Simpang. The enemy had been here, and had burned nearly half of the village and carried off the inhabitants. The road from Tanjong to Simpang was entirely through a succession ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden

... heard much of The Terror. And what plainsman of that day hadn't? He was the scourge of the table-lands, with his band of a hundred cutthroats, desperadoes recruited from the worst scum of the border. More than half of his hired killers, it was said, were Mexican outlaws from Sonora and Chihuahua. Some were half-breed Indians, and a few were white gunmen who killed for the ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens

... "The bore is eight feet in diameter at the top, and forty-four feet deep. Below twenty-seven feet it contracts to nineteen inches, so that the turf thrown in completely chokes it. Steam collects below; a foaming scum covers the surface of the water, and in a quarter of an hour it surges up the pipe. The fountain then begins playing, sending its bundles of jets rather higher than those of the Great Geyser, flinging up the clods of turf which have been its obstruction ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various

... of labour troubles then. The Cargadores of the port formed, indeed, an unruly brotherhood of all sorts of scum, with a patron saint of their own. They went on strike regularly (every bull-fight day), a form of trouble that even Nostromo at the height of his prestige could never cope with efficiently; but the morning after each ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad

... themselves. The mob joined in, and clamoured for the dismissal of the "Andalusian Woman." A hothead suggested that she should be driven from the town. The cry was taken up, and a rush set in towards her house in the Barerstrasse. As there was an agreeable prospect of loot, half the scum of the city swelled the mob. Bricks were hurled through the windows; and, until the police arrived, things began to ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... sugar, a pint of molasses, and eight ounces of salt-petre, are enough to boil in four gallons of water. Skim it clean while boiling. Put it to the beef cold; have enough to cover it; and be careful your beef never floats on the top. If it does not smell perfectly sweet, throw in more salt; if a scum rises upon it, scald and skim it again, and pour it ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child

... glutton! Isn't he a greedy scoundrel? When such scum are hungry, they eat in a revolting fashion. You should see a lord sup. In my time I have seen dukes eat. They don't eat; that's noble. They drink, however. ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo

... passes, as a pale green cataract, into a trough, which conducts it into a vat, where it is dosed with quicklime to neutralize its acid, and is then run off into large heated metal vessels. At this stage the smell is abominable, and the turbid fluid, with a thick scum upon it, is simply disgusting. After a preliminary heating and skimming it is passed off into iron pans, several in a row, and boiled and skimmed, and ladled from one to the other till it reaches ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird

... stood snuffling by, With her three frowsy blowsy brats o' babes, The scum o' the Kennel, cream o' the filth-heap—Faugh! Aie, aie, aie, aie! [Greek: otototototoi], ('Stead which we blurt out, Hoighty toighty now)— And the baker and candlestick maker, and Jack and Gill. Blear'd ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various

... the sugar before you add the fruit to it, it will be improved in clearness by passing it through a flannel bag. Skim off the brown scum, all ...
— Seventy-Five Receipts for Pastry Cakes, and Sweetmeats • Miss Leslie

... everybody can be but me," she remarked, plaintively. "They can go out and stay out, while I am at the beck and call of all the scum of the earth. Well, well, I suppose there will be quiet for me sometime, if ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell

... in the basin-holes, with the wood-ash under them, which I showed you in the back-kitchen. And they must have very little heat, not enough to simmer even; only just to make the bubbles rise, and the scum upon the top set thick; and after that, it clots as firm—oh, as firm ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... been taught by his brother, and his brother's set, to believe that Dissenters were, morally and intellectually, the scum of the earth. Here were men who, though not Dissenters themselves, held doctrines practically undistinguishable from theirs, and yet united the highest mental training with the service of God and the imitation of Christ. ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul

... well 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 cent. are country ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... 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 ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... otherwise have 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 ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock

... said Rainer as they hurried through the gardens. "A week ago I got a cable from Paris saying that a kidnapping gang were after Dorothy. I'm a millionaire, and the scum are after ransom. I cabled to McNeill, my Paris agent, to come right here with half a dozen of the best detectives in France, scooped up Mr. Buist of the New York police,"—he nodded towards the short, clean-shaven, ...
— The Admirable Tinker - Child of the World • Edgar Jepson

... educate a score of children for a year. Let us give all we can; let us give more than ever. Let us do all we can; let us do more than ever. But let us give, and do, with a high purpose; not to endow the scum of the earth, to its own greater corruption, with the offals ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens

... a wonder that any person of rank, any that hath in him a spark of ingenuity, or doth at all pretend to good manners, should find in his heart or deign to comply with so scurvy a fashion: a fashion much more befitting the scum of the people than the flower of the gentry; yea, rather much below any man endued with a scrap of reason or a grain of goodness. Would we bethink ourselves, modest, sober, and pertinent discourse would appear far more generous and masculine than such mad hectoring the Almighty, such boisterous ...
— Sermons on Evil-Speaking • Isaac Barrow

... bulbous stalks, and squeezes a portion of the juice into the pot. He now adds the pounded fangs of the labarri and counacouchi snakes,—which he generally has in store, as well as the ants. The ingredients are next boiled over a slow fire, and the scum being taken off, the liquid remains till it becomes reduced to a thick syrup of a deep brown colour. It is now fit for use. The arrows are then dipped into it, and if it is found of sufficient strength, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... hypocrite. He likes praise, he likes to be talked about, he likes to know great people, and he no more cares to conceal his likings than Sancho Panza cared to conceal his appetite. Three pullets and a couple of geese were but so much scum, which Don Quixote's squire whipped off to stay his stomach till dinner-time. By the time Boswell was six-and-twenty he could boast that he had made the acquaintance of Adam Smith, Robertson, Hume, Johnson, Goldsmith, Wilkes, ...
— Boswell's Correspondence with the Honourable Andrew Erskine, and His Journal of a Tour to Corsica • James Boswell

... this I hold firm: Virtue may be assailed, but never hurt, Surprised by unjust force, but not enthralled; 590 Yea, even that which Mischief meant most harm Shall in the happy trial prove most glory. But evil on itself shall back recoil, And mix no more with goodness, when at last, Gathered like scum, and settled to itself, It shall be in eternal restless change Self-fed and self-consumed. If this fail, The pillared firmament is rottenness, And earth's base built on stubble. But come, let's on! Against the opposing will and arm of Heaven 600 May never this just sword be lifted up; ...
— Milton's Comus • John Milton

... 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 ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... as slaves for a term of years. The English courts were busy grinding out human material for the Virginia plantations; and, as the objects of commerce were considered paramount, this process of disposing of what was regarded as the scum element was adjudged necessary and justifiable. No voice was raised ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... usual city crowd gathered about the fighting men and a second later the slum saloon in front of which they were battling, emptied its filthy scum into the street, all anxious to enjoy the combat. Some of the plingers amongst this riff-raff must have recognized their mate, and thinking that the trouble was merely a case of a street beggar insulting a citizen, and noting that this one wore the hated uniform of a railroad man—every tough's ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)

... harm befell you, it could not be brought home to him. I do not suppose that next time he will employ any of his own people. He is most popular among the mob of Paris, who call him the King of the Markets, and he will have no difficulty in getting as many daggers as he wishes from the scum of the faubourgs. It would be difficult in the extreme to prove that he had aught to do with it, for you may be sure that he would really go down into the country with all speed the ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty

... 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 got dryer, and a mass of green ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... "I think the scum of society should be kept in its place," observed another, scarcely less bitter than young Richmond in his jealousy of the lad who claimed so much of the attention of the little ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis

... a fierce conqueror's scorn; The national gods o'erthrown—treasure and blood, Once boundless as the flood, That 'neath his fixed and unforgiving eye Crept onward silently; Scattered and squandered wantonly, by bands, Leaguered in shame, the scum of foreign lands, Sent forth to lengthen out their infamy, With the wild banquet ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various

... the window, gentlemen," said he. "This vile scum's none too nice. Anything it wants it'll take without so much as by your leave, or ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce

... you kin smell money; and I swear they's kind of a scum comes over your eyes when you see it. How do you know he's carryin' ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart

... with dancing eyes. "I, a So'th'n girl, actually set my foot on the head of a No'th'n scum of a co'nnle! My!" ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... for Caraquet, with the road choked with snow, even if I could have got by Macartney's garrison at the Halfway. Crossing Lac Tremblant, that by to-morrow would be lying sweetly level under a treacherous scum of lolly and drifted snow, ready to drown us all like Thompson,—I cursed and put that out of the question. That lake that was no lake offered about as good a thoroughfare as rats get in a rain-barrel. Whereas, to hold Macartney at La Chance till I ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones

... cables, hauling in of hawsers, letting go anchors, hailing from the ships and quays, boats sculling rapidly to and fro. It was almost dusk, although only half-past six o'clock. The sea was of the color and looked as solid and smooth as a sheet of lead, and covered with an oily scum. Gusts of wind swept over without ruffling it, and big drops of rain fell on its surface, rebounding, as if they could not penetrate it. There was a commotion in the air, made up of many threatening sounds, coming upon us from ...
— Stories of Authors, British and American • Edwin Watts Chubb

... in heart that he draws the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. But all the knightly pride of Claverhouse himself is knit together, in Charles, with fearless faith, and religious wrath. "This Saracen scum, led by a bastard German,—traitor to his creed, usurper among his race,—dares it look me, a Christian knight, a prince of the house of France, in the eyes? Tell the Sultan of Nocera, to-day I put him in hell, or he ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin

... dangerous. Niehl divides Society in Germany into four great classes, namely: the peasantry, the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie or middle class, and the proletariat, or mere laborers for wages. The last he regards as the decaying and corrupting class, a sort of scum in hot effervesence. This is, however, one of the classes that produce social movement; the other is the middle class; the conservative or stationary classes are the peasantry and aristocracy. The learned professions ...
— The International Monthly Magazine - Volume V - No II • Various

... park, called it "the Canadian wilds" and shot at least one man every thousand feet of film. But here in Northern Ontario, a few miles from the luxurious trans-continental passenger trains de luxe—! Scum and all as these fellows were, they would not dare do this unless they were crazy ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse

... monitions of his predecessor. But in Croker he had a first lieutenant who could not very well be checked, and who (though he, too, has had rather hard measure) had no equal in the art of making himself offensive. Besides, those were the days when the famous "Scum condensed of Irish bog" lines appeared in a great daily newspaper about O'Connell. Imagine the Times addressing Mr. Parnell as "Scum condensed of Irish bog," with the other amenities that follow, in this year ...
— Essays in English Literature, 1780-1860 • George Saintsbury

... That was mean of Wells to shoulder him into the square ditch because he would not swop his little snuff box for Wells's seasoned hacking chestnut, the conqueror of forty. How cold and slimy the water had been! A fellow had once seen a big rat jump into the scum. Mother was sitting at the fire with Dante waiting for Brigid to bring in the tea. She had her feet on the fender and her jewelly slippers were so hot and they had such a lovely warm smell! Dante knew a lot of things. She had taught him where ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce

... had light winds and the coast was but indistinctly seen. The sea was covered with a brown scum which Captain Cook's sailors called sea saw-dust, from its resemblance to that substance.* Very few fish were noticed, but they were generally more numerous nearer to ...
— Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia - Performed between the years 1818 and 1822 • Phillip Parker King

... but the fact remains that, whatever its origin, the Mafia to-day is a criminal organization, having, like the Camorra, for its ultimate object blackmail and extortion. Its lower ranks are recruited from the scum of Palermo, who, combining extraordinary physical courage with the lowest type of viciousness, generally live by the same means that supports the East Side "cadet" in New York City, and who end either in prison or on the dissecting-table, or ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train

... where the beaver pats the mud with his paddle-shaped tall; Over the growing sugar, over the yellow-flower'd cotton plant, over the rice in its low moist field, Over the sharp-peak'd farm house, with its scallop'd scum and slender shoots from the gutters, Over the western persimmon, over the long-leav'd corn, over the delicate blue-flower flax, Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and buzzer there with the rest, Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze; Scaling ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... work upon this sensitive, suspicious feeling, to accomplish their own ends. The politician does it to secure votes; but the worst class is composed of those who edit papers that circulate only among the scum of society, and embittered by the sight of luxuries beyond their reach, are always ready to denounce the rich and excite the lower classes against what they call ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley

... 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 what they mean. "A first success," says a National ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere

... being so extreme,—King August, for one item, sailing to it, with sound of trumpet and hautbois, in silken flotillas gayer than Cleopatra's, down the Elbe,—there was a rush towards Berlin of what we will not call the scum, but must call the foam of mankind, rush of the idle moneyed populations from all countries; and such a crowd there, for the three weeks, as was seldom seen. Foam everywhere is stirred up, and encouraged to ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. VI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle

... a frozen look, Sary examined her hands for a moment, then humped her shoulders and stamped back to the kitchen-range where she had been boiling soap-fat and straining out the scum before the arrival of ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy

... tricks of fence taught me by Captain Galsworthy. The only work which all the prisoners had to perform in turn was the drawing of water from a well in the keep. The water of the moat, as I had seen when we crossed it on entering, was covered with a green scum, the rivulet which fed it not being of sufficient volume ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang

... and there, in front of various resorts, and on the corners, he passed little groups of men engaged in bated, low-toned conversation. Ordinarily this would have interested Jimmie Dale, for the groups were composed, not of ordinary citizens, but of the dregs and scum of the underworld, and it was evident that something quite out of the usual run of things had suddenly seized upon the Bad Lands as a subject for gossip. But it was already long after eleven o'clock, and to-night, with Melinoff's murder disposed of now, he was through, he hoped, with ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard

... hateful to them; they conceal themselves in the forests where they have to be pursued by armed men: in a certain canton which, three years later, furnishes in one day from fifty to one hundred volunteers, the young men cut off their thumbs to escape the draft.[5406] To this scum of society is added the sweepings of the depots and of the jails. Among the vagabonds that fill these, after winnowing out those able to make their families known or to obtain sponsors, "there are none left," says an intendant, "but ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine

... Thunder hem, Maryland! The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum. Maryland! She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb— Hnzza! she spurns the Northern scum! She breathes—she burns! she'll come! she'll come! ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy

... together in the wildest chaos, like a portion of some world in the process of formation. Here and there on the dun-coloured surface of this great marsh there had burst out patches of sickly yellow reeds and of livid, greenish scum, which only served to heighten and intensify the gloomy effect of the dull, ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle

... I've had enough of moneymakin'. It's too dear at the price. And if you'll let an old servant speak his mind it ain't fit for you, this 'ere kind of work. It's good enough for black-scum and for chocolate-birds like Durnovo; but this country's not built for honest white men—least of all for born ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman

... boils, after the meat is in it, the scum should be carefully removed from time to time, while it is cooking. If the scum be allowed to boil down, it will settle on the joint and discolour it. It is best, however, as a precaution, to wrap the meat in a very clean cloth; this will effectually preserve its colour. Salt meat should ...
— The Skilful Cook - A Practical Manual of Modern Experience • Mary Harrison

... on that point while daylight lasts,—Indians do not generally travel at night, and when we sight them we will signal and warn them, and the convicts will be none the wiser. The Seminoles are no cowards and we can join them and wipe that scum of humanity off the face of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely

... upon their backs. Her demeanor on the Rochester was the demeanor of a princess among aliens whom she utterly despises. The Cook's tourists, traveling school-teachers and young married couples homeward-bound after modest European honeymoons, were plainly scum to her, and it gave her ardent joy to see that most of them were hurt when she impressed this on them mercilessly. It was safer for her son to talk about the interesting German couple to the second officer than it was for ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... stand up in the defence of their nation. "General Orders" had been found which had been scattered over a country 500 miles in extent, and these call upon the colored men to unite and drive the white men into the sea, "of which they are the scum." ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay

... living on the edge of a volcano," he told her, with grim force; "and at any moment you may be overwhelmed. Have you never faced that yet? Haven't you yet begun to realise that Maritas is a hotbed of scoundrels—the very scum and rabble of creation—blackguards whom their own countries have, for the most part, refused to tolerate—some of them half-breeds, all of them savages? Haven't you yet begun to ask yourself what you may expect from these devils when they take the law into ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell

... mise-en-scene. Gharib and Ajib (vi. 207, vii. 91) belongs to the cycle of Antar and King Omar bin Nu'man: its exaggerations make it a fine type of Oriental Chauvinism, pitting the superhuman virtues, valour, nobility and success of all that is Moslem, against the scum of the earth which is non-Moslem. Like the exploits of Friar John of the Chopping-knives (Rabelais i. c. 27) it suggests ridicule cast on impossible battles and tales of giants, paynims and paladins. The long romance is followed by thirteen ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton

... precious set of people, ain't you?' said Uriah, in the same low voice, and breaking out into a clammy heat, which he wiped from his forehead, with his long lean hand, 'to buy over my clerk, who is the very scum of society,—as you yourself were, Copperfield, you know it, before anyone had charity on you,—to defame me with his lies? Miss Trotwood, you had better stop this; or I'll stop your husband shorter than will be pleasant to you. I won't know your story professionally, for nothing, old lady! ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... tell you, you mischievous scum, the day will come when we will no longer stand this swaggering and bullying. We are a patient people; but you can provoke us too far. I know you four right well. I would sit you in the stocks in a row, or have you whipped at the cart's tail from Newgate ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green

... English, Spanish, or French pirates were much better," said the mate, laughing. "Pirates are generally the scum of the ports they sail from; reckless, murderous ruffians. But I should say that of all pirates out in the East, the gentle, placid, mild-looking Chinaman makes the worst; for he thinks nothing of human life, his own ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn

... grew faint: there came a further change: Once more uprose the mystic mountain-range: Below were men and horses pierced with worms, And slowly quickening into lower forms; By shards and scurf of salt, and scum of dross, Old plash of rains, and refuse patch'd with moss, Then some one spake [6]: "Behold! it was a crime Of sense avenged by sense that wore with time". [7] Another said: "The crime of sense became The crime of malice, ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson

... wife. Better death on the pyre than a future like that of a pariah dog. For a wife who preferred to live after her husband was gone was a social outcast, permitted not to wed again, to exist only as a drudge, a menial, the scum and contempt of all who had known her in her ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath

... him 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 ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... 'Corbet!' he replied contemptuously; 'he didn't give it up; he never even seen it. But don't I know it's hard, sir? For years I tried to paint it, and I never got nothing but the fog; when I put in more I lost that. They're pretty, those sketches—like watered silk or the scum in the docks with the sun on it; but, Lord, there ain't nothing into 'em, and that's the truth. At last, after fumbling around for years, I happened to walk into Vogler's gallery one day and saw my first Corot. Ther' it was—all I had been trying for. It was ...
— The Collectors • Frank Jewett Mather

... mulattoes in the South before the war, most of these were the offspring of white overseers—and it is a notorious fact that a majority of our professional "nigger-drivers" were from the North. This is no reflection on the character of the Northern people—these fellows were simply the feculent scum, the excrementitious offscourings of civilization. And now I remember that a second-cousin of mine in Kentucky has an overseer from Ohio named Otis. A very thrifty and choleric man was my cousin, and considering a yaller nigger less valuable ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... ground, sometimes covered with tall forest-trees, at others opening out into a sedgy morass, with perhaps a small lake or water-patch in the centre. The first required them to make way through mud, or thick stagnant water covered with scum, often reaching above their knees. These places were especially disagreeable to cross; for under the gloomy shadow of the trees they would now and then catch a glimpse of huge newt-like lizards of the genus hydrosaurus—almost as ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... promptly. "You do that, and I'll keep my eye on you and give you a chance. Not that I'm afraid of the old fellow—I told him last time that if I heard from him again, I'd kick the breeches off him. But when you got half a thousand of this foreign scum, some of them Anarchists, and some of them Bulgars and Montynegroes that's been ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair

... long, sir? Agrippina Is drawing to her net the dregs of Rome, Makes mutinous the rabble and the scum. ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips

... sufficiently apocryphal to remind one of the famous passage in the history of the barnacle, which traced the lineage of the bird to one of the pedunculated cirripedes, and the lineage of the cirripede to a log of wood. The puffin feeds its young, say the islanders, on an oily scum of the sea, which renders it such an unwieldy mass of fat, that about the time when it should be beginning to fly, it becomes unable to get out of its hole. The parent bird, not in the least puzzled, however, treats the case medicinally, and,—like mothers of another two-legged genus, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller

... scoundrels (I do no wrong to our countrymen in styling them so, for not one in twenty was a genuine American), purporting to belong to our mercantile marine, and chiefly composed of Liverpool Blackballers, and the scum of every maritime nation on earth; such being the seamen by whose assistance we then disputed the navigation of the world with England. These specimens of a most unfortunate class of people were shipwrecked ...
— The Life and Genius of Nathaniel Hawthorne • Frank Preston Stearns

... enough among the noblemen of the South, which they can fill up, in the place of the French scum who now riot over Wessex. And if that should not suffice, what higher honor for me, or for my daughter the Queen-Dowager, than to devote our lands to the heroes who have ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

... in memory to the day, when with cropped hair—with the broad-arrowed coat, the yellow stockings—this man dragged wearily the wheelbarrow in the grim silences under the sinister skies of Dartmoor, with warders to taunt, or insult, or browbeat the Irish felon-patriot—with the very dregs and scum of our lowest social depths for companions and colleagues—and then think of this same man standing up before the supreme and august assembly where the might, sovereignty, power, and omnipotence of this world-wide empire are centred, and holding it for more than an hour and a half under a spell ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... a book on the "Immortality of the Soul," printed in London in 1659, just two hundred years ago. It is full of beauty, acumen, and power. He was one of the first men of the time. Yet he seriously elaborates an argument like this: "The scum and spots that lie on the sun are as great an Argument that there is no Divinity in him as the dung of Owls and Sparrows that is found on the faces and shoulders of Idols in Temples are clear evidences that they are no true Deities."29 He also ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... this place is the way from the City of Destruction, to yonder gate) is it that this plat is not mended, that poor travelers might go thither with more security? And he said unto me, This miry slough is such a place as cannot be mended. It is the descent whither the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin, doth continually run, and therefore it is called the Slough of Despond: for still, as the sinner is awakened about his lost condition, there ariseth in his soul ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... call themselves the best people—Society, that is to say," said Mrs. Kilroy cheerfully. "Society is the scum that comes to the surface because of its lightness, and does not count, except in sets where ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand

... one of the stokers, and that provoked the nastiness. Until then it had been uncouth mirth caused by the vile liquor sold by the saloons licensed by the Government, and against the Papeete regulations that no more intoxicants shall be sold to a man already drunk. But when this British citizen, scum of Sydney or Glasgow as he might be, saw the deadly weapon, he felt aggrieved. This revolver practice is all too common on the part of Monsieur Lontane. Six such complaints I have had in as many months. As to that part of your letter that the crew of the Noa-Noa not be allowed to land here on its ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien

... scum and rotten Sewer, where ordures best forgotten And unmentioned still descend! Filth and garbage, stench and poison. Thou dost bear in fetid foison! Here I stop ...
— Wine, Women, and Song - Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse • Various

... part Jackson's arm was to play in my life. Jackson himself did not impress me when I hunted him out. I found him in a crazy, ramshackle* house down near the bay on the edge of the marsh. Pools of stagnant water stood around the house, their surfaces covered with a green and putrid-looking scum, while the stench that arose from them ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... "you are known, and flight shall put the worst construction on your case;—halt, brawlers and bullies, spendthrifts and bankrupts, breakers of the peace; sons of afflicted parents, husbands of weeping wives, brothers of sisters both ashamed and grieved; outlaws; the city's scum, the country's scourge, the harvest that shall yet be reaped for the jail, and leave gleanings for the gallows; abandoned creatures, linger;" and suddenly grasping Narcisse: "Sirrah," he cried, "here is your nightly haunt, these are your companions,—come with me, sir, ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... our conversations; and when Carlos inveighed against the Intendente, the old Don nodded sadly in his chair. He was dishonouring the name of the Riegos, Carlos would exclaim feebly, turning his head towards his uncle. His uncle's own province, the name of his own town, stood for a refuge of the scum of the Antilles. It wras a shameful sanctuary. Every ruffian, rascal, murderer, and thief of the West Indies had come to think of this ancient and honourable town as ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer



Words linked to "Scum" :   riffraff, trash, rabble, film, ragtag, scummy, remove, scoria, pond scum, pond-scum parasite, ragtag and bobtail, scum bag



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