"Blacking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... silence in French that would strike terror to the soul of the bravest native. But when she saw that poor, dear, hard-worked garcon blacking boots by the light of the moon, her heart melted with pity; and, resolving to give him an extra fee, she silently retired to her stone-floored bower, and fell asleep in a stuffy little bed, whose orange curtains filled her dreams with volcanic eruptions and conflagrations of ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... plunge. "Why, a score of his chums had better have died than him! I didn't ought never to ha' left him last night, seeing what a state he was in. You might ha' saved his life, Jerry, and done more good than you'll ever do blacking boots and brushing clothes, if yer lives ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... offer, not so much because he thought the blacking would last, as for the opportunity of questioning the free and independent young citizen who was doing, what he hoped to do, that is, ...
— Cast Upon the Breakers • Horatio Alger
... attracted a little circle of listeners, among whom I observed an eccentric-looking young man with a club-foot, an enormously long neck, and a head of short, stiff, dusty hair, like the bristles of a blacking-brush. ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... string. What a man can want with so many gig-whips I can never conceive. These, and fishing-rods, and landing-nets, and spurs, and boot-trees, and balls for horses, and surgical implements for the same, and favourite pots of shiny blacking, with which he paints his own shoes in the most elegant manner, and buckskin gloves stretched out on their trees, and his gorget, sash, and sabre of the Horse Marines, with his boot-hooks underneath in atrophy; and the family medicine-chest, ...
— The Book of Snobs • William Makepeace Thackeray
... else. But I have only lately found this out. When I first got away from home I thought this place was not worth troubling about. I thought our life here was contemptible. To oil your boots instead of blacking them, to dust your coat with a switch instead of a brush: was there ever anything more ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... should have told you yesterday that all my boys were got up for their work in moustaches and side-whiskers of some sort of blacking—I suppose wood-ash. It was a sight of joy to see them return at night, axe on shoulder, feigning to march like soldiers, a choragus with a loud voice singing out, "March—step! March—step!" in imperfect recollection of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... comprised, besides a respectable skew of cabbages, carrots, lettuces, and other things in season, a barrel of small beer, a side of bacon, a few red herrings, a black looking can of 'new milk,' and those less perishable articles, Warren's blacking, and Flanders' bricks; while the window was graced with a few samples of common confectionary, celebrated under the sweet names of lollypops, Buonaparte's ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... services, it came into Arthur Clennam's mind that he would speak to Little Dorrit again before he went away. She would have recovered her first surprise, and might feel easier with him. He asked this member of the fraternity (who had two red herrings in his hand, and a loaf and a blacking brush under his arm), where was the nearest place to get a cup of coffee at. The nondescript replied in encouraging terms, and brought him to a coffee-shop in the street within ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... courted by the sword. But I have not been severe upon her.' BOSWELL. 'Yes, Sir, you have made her ridiculous.' JOHNSON. 'That was already done, Sir. To endeavour to make her ridiculous, is like blacking the chimney.' ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... Hungerford Stairs have disappeared, beside which was the blacking factory, wherein the novelist's first bitter experiences of London life were felt,—amid a wretchedness only too apparent, when one reads of the miserable days which fell upon the lad at this time,—the market itself being replaced ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... cultivate this plant universally in their gardens, but use its flowers on all occasions of festivity, and even in their sepulchral rites: he mentions also an oeconomical purpose to which the flowers are applied, little consistent with their elegance and beauty, that of blacking shoes, whence their name of Rosae calceolariae; the shoes, after the colour is imparted to them, are rubbed with the hand, to give them a gloss, and which thereby receives a blueish tinge, to discharge which they ...
— The Botanical Magazine, Vol. V - Or, Flower-Garden Displayed • William Curtis
... Mr. McCoy to do the work of a porter, to black boots, &c, for which he was to pay me $12 per month. I soon found the landlord to be bad pay, and not only that, but he would not allow me to charge for blacking boots, although I had to black them after everybody had gone to bed at night, and set them in the bar-room, where the gentlemen could come and get them in the morning while I was at other work. I had nothing extra for this, neither would he pay me my regular wages; ...
— Narrative of the Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb, an American Slave, Written by Himself • Henry Bibb
... five precisely!!!—a glaring impossibility. We know that in our enterprising country adventures are sometimes undertaken, in the spirit of competition, which are entirely out of the common course of things: thus, one man will sell a bottle of blacking for ninepence with the charitable intention of ruining his neighbour (so think the worthy public) who has the audacity to charge his at a shilling—the intrinsic value of the commodity being in either case, a fraction less than five farthings. Such a manoeuvre, however, is ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 17, No. 471, Saturday, January 15, 1831 • Various
... me the chance of blacking his boots every day for a week, if I'd lend him the money; but I had to resign the glorious privilege, not havin' been to the bank this mornin' to ...
— Rufus and Rose - The Fortunes of Rough and Ready • Horatio Alger, Jr
... beside Perkins Brown, who took an opportunity, while the others were engaged in conversation, to jog my elbow gently. As I turned towards him, he said nothing, but dropped his eyes significantly. The little rascal had the lid of a blacking-box, filled with salt, upon his knee, and was privately seasoning his onions and radishes. I blushed at the thought of my hypocrisy, but the onions were so much better that I couldn't help dipping into ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume I. (of X.) • Various
... in 1812 and died in 1870. His boyhood was hard because of his father's thriftlessness, and it always rankled in his memory that at nine years of age he was placed at work pasting labels on boxes of shoe blacking. But he had many chances in childhood and youth for reading and study, and his keen mind took advantage of all these. He was a natural mimic, and it was mere blind chance that kept him from the stage and made him a great novelist. He drifted into newspaper work as a shorthand reporter, ...
— Modern English Books of Power • George Hamlin Fitch
... the old gardener, stretching out one hand, and catching Bob by the collar, so as to drag him back into his corner—a job he had not the slightest difficulty in doing. "None o' that. They'd be blacking one another's eyes, and there'd ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... officers of the Royal Navy. They were dressed in Flushing coats; the lieutenant in a battered old sou'-wester, with a red woollen comforter round his throat; Nettleship had on an equally ancient-looking tarpaulin, and both wore high-boots, long unacquainted with blacking. They carried stout cudgels in their hands, their hangers and pistols being concealed under their coats. In about an hour and a half we reached Passage, when Nettleship and Larry and I got ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... white. He would have died of the Miller of Dee. But the worst was he did not stop at clothes; he loathed ill-blacked shoes. Woe to all foot-leather that did not shine; his own skin furnished a perilous standard of comparison. He was eternally blacking boots en amateur. Fullalove got in a rage at this, and insisted on his letting his fellow-creatures' leather alone. Vespasian pleaded hard, especially for leave to black Colonel Kenealy. "The cunnell," said he pathetically, "is such a tarnation fine gentleman spoilt for ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... of mission furniture which may be used as a tabouret or plant stand as well as a blacking case, in which there is a receptacle for brushes, blacking and a shoe rest, is shown in the illustration. The stock can be secured mill-planed, sandpapered and in lengths almost ready to be assembled. The stock list consists of the ...
— Mission Furniture - How to Make It, Part I • H. H. Windsor
... the feeble light of the match he could see that he was in a sort of a scullery, which bore traces of recent occupation. A bit of yellow soap, some blacking and a couple of brooms in one corner, a pail and a wooden chair in another, were evidently not ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden
... the address of three clergymen and told him to call on them for help if he had any trouble. He looked everywhere for these cards. They couldn't be found. He had been so cocksure of himself he had lost them. He couldn't make up his mind to stoop to blacking boots and cleaning spittoons. He had always lived with aristocrats. He felt himself one to his ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... nervous, Gordon waited for Rudd in the dark boot-hole under the Chief's study on Pack Monday night just before twelve. In stockinged feet he had crept downstairs, opened the creaking door without making any appreciable noise, and then waited in the boot-room, which was filled with the odour of blacking and damp decay. There was a small window at the end of it, through which it was just possible to squeeze out on to the Chief's front lawn. After that all was easy; anyone could clamber over the wall by ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... me. I am of an active turn—I want to go into business that will occupy me all day long—business that requires some head. Even his reverence, the first man in the country, acknowledged my talents—and what is the vent for them here? The blacking-bottle." ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... he, sitting down and sulkily drawing on his foot-gear, "why this piece of punctiliousness should have made any more difficulty about bringing me my boots than about blacking them." ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... talk as though I made a habit of blacking up! You talk as though you expected me to come to the altar smothered ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... acquainted with the Crooks, Mrs. Marsden, and others. Had tea with the Masons, and had a good deal of talk about old matters in England. Servetus, a very respectable young man carrying on an extensive blacking trade; the sister a very steady girl had lived some time with Mr. Furness. The old man as eccentric as ever, his wife ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... named Tom, was the bootblack of the hotel. He had a young negro under him as a sort of an apprentice. The duties of the apprentice, though apparently slight, were in reality arduous, as he had to supply all the spittle required to moisten the blacking; and for this purpose placed himself under a course of diet that rendered him as ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... Yonder ass licking his lips at a thistle, sees but water for him to drink in Windermere a-glow with the golden lights of setting suns. The ostler or the boots at Lowood-inn takes a somewhat higher flight, and for a moment, pausing with curry-comb or blacking-brush in his suspended hand, calls on Sally Chambermaid for gracious sake to look at Pull-wyke. The waiter, who has cultivated his taste from conversation with Lakers, learns their phraseology, and declares the sunset ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Gong-donkey has in the world, is a sort of Jackall, in a dull, mangy, black hide, of such small pieces that it looks as if it were made of blacking bottles turned inside out and cobbled together. The dearest friend in the world (inconceivably drunk too) advances at the Gong-donkey, with a hand on each thigh, in a series of humorous springs and stops, wagging his head as he ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... what changes the new occupant had made. The only unfamiliar thing he saw was a large sheet of brown paper tacked up at the end of the hogshead. On this paper was printed the following notice, the letters having evidently been made by a chewed stick, with liquid blacking considerably diluted ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... Amiens has been celebrated since the middle ages include manufactures of velvet, cotton-, wool-, silk-, hemp- and flax-spinning, and the weaving of hosiery and a variety of mixed fabrics. Manufactures of machinery, chemicals, blacking, polish and sugar, and printing, dyeing and iron-founding are also carried on. Market gardens, known as hortillonnages, intersected by small canals derived from the Somme and Avre, cover a considerable ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... was very black, and Alfonso was very dignified. But his blackness, compared with the blackness of the pilot who came off at St. George's Island, and piloted us through the Narrows, was as that of a kid shoe to a boot that has been polished by blacking. As to dignity, no comparison can be made. The dignity of that nigger pilot exceeded anything, regal, municipal, or even parochial, that I have ever seen. As he came up the ship's side, Dennis was looking ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... professional men who are afflicted with pretension to fashion, of which we shall give abundant examples when we come to treat of gentility-mongers. But the heavy swell, who is of all classes, from the son and heir of an opulent blacking-maker down to the lieutenant of a marching regiment on half-pay, is utterly destitute of brains, deplorably illiterate, and therefore incapable, by nature and bringing-up, of respecting himself by a modest contented demeanour. He is never so unhappy ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... his proofs, but to hammer them into the heads of his audience by incessant repetition. It is no small proof of artistic skill that a writer who systematically adopts this method should yet be invariably lively. He goes on blacking the chimney with a persistency which somehow amuses us because he puts so much heart into his work. He proves the most obvious truths again and again; but his vivacity never flags. This tendency ...
— Hours in a Library - New Edition, with Additions. Vol. II (of 3) • Leslie Stephen
... hat scarcely covering his crown; so much the thicker the long pigtail, with the slender neck crammed into a very narrow horsehair stock; the felt put under the white spatterdashes, smirched by traces of shoe-blacking, giving to the legs a bigger diameter than the thighs, squeezed into their tight-fitting breeches, could boast of. Hardly, or not at all, able to bend his knees, the whole ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... the fireplace in his office. Brad was blacking a pair of shoes. "Shawn," said the old doctor, "I'm going up to Old Meadows this afternoon to hunt quail, and I want you to go along. Go down and get ready while Brad hitches ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... baking bread blinded me so long to the mysteries of sun and sky and wind in the trees? We passed a white farmhouse close to the road. By the gate sat the farmer on a log, whittling a stick and smoking his pipe. Through the kitchen window I could see a woman blacking the stove. I wanted to cry out: "Oh, silly woman! Leave your stove, your pots and pans and chores, even if only for one day! Come out and see the sun in the sky and the river in the distance!" The farmer looked blankly at Parnassus as we passed, and then I remembered my mission as a distributor ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... the soap in the bath-room or chew a newly-blacked boot. He chews and chuckles until, by and by, he finds out that blacking and Old Brown Windsor make him very sick; so he argues that soap and boots are not wholesome. Any old dog about the house will soon show him the unwisdom of biting big dogs' ears. Being young, he remembers and goes abroad, at six months, a well-mannered little beast with a chastened ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... of acquaintances getting into pumps and gloves, and, in a few extreme cases, readjusting hair before a mirror. Some even went so far—after removing their shoes and putting on their pumps—as to wash traces of blacking from their hands in the adjacent bathroom before assuming their gloves. Penrod, being in a strange mood, was one of these, sharing the basin with little ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... terrible weapon reform was to become in the hands of the excitable French people. If, in the city where the tragedy was being enacted, the customary baking and brewing, the promenading under the trees, and the dog-dancing and the shoe-blacking on the Pont-Neuf could still continue, it is not strange that those who watched it from afar ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... branch of the public service to which the pictorial cherub is much addicted), this domestic cherub discharged as many odd functions as his prototype; with the difference, say, that he performed with a blacking-brush on the family's boots, instead of performing on enormous wind instruments and double-basses, and that he conducted himself with cheerful alacrity to much useful purpose, instead of foreshortening himself in the air ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. VI (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland IV • Various
... lent things sent after, and every tool and article belonging to the farm was returned to its own place at exactly such an hour every Saturday afternoon, and an hour before sundown every item of preparation, even to the blacking of his Sunday shoes and the brushing of his Sunday coat, was entirely concluded; and at the going down of the sun, the stillness of the Sabbath seemed to settle down over the ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... it is; come and find it for me. Everything here is in the vilest mess," cried Carne, growing reckless with wrath and hurry. "I want the despatch of this morning, and I find tailors' bills, way to make water-proof blacking, a list of old women, and a stump of old pipe! Come here, this instant, and ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... for he had been long intimate with the family.) "If you can't get on without the boy's earning something, why don't you do as white women and men do? Do you ever find them sending their boys out as servants? No; they rather give them a stock of matches, blacking, newspapers, or apples, and start them out to sell them. What is the result? The boy that learns to sell matches soon learns to sell other things; he learns to make bargains; he becomes a small trader, then a merchant, then a millionaire. Did you ever hear of any ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... hand an old cricket stump, with which he "presented arms," as it were, every time that I came in and went out of the room. I at once decided to try him. It was about nine o'clock in the morning, when I, having many people to see, handed Chanden Sing, for that was his name, a pair of shoes and some blacking. ...
— In the Forbidden Land • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... accomplishment, state documents are not signed but sealed—"chopped" it is called—and much importance is accordingly attached to the official seals or chops, which are large circular metal stamps, and the chop is affixed by oiling the stamps, blacking it over the flame of a candle and pressing it on the document to be sealed. The chop bears, in Arabic characters, the name, style and title of the Official using it. The Sultan's Chop is the Great Seal of State and is distinguished by being the only one of which the circumference ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... suddenly broken by the creaking and clanging of the front gate, heralding the tardy coming of Easton. Slyme went out into the scullery and, taking down the blacking brushes from the shelf, began ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... you, sir!" exclaimed the soldier, astonished at the amount. "How can I repay you? I have nothing in the world but this"—pulling out a dirty piece of paper from his pocket; "it is a receipt for making blacking; it is the best that was ever seen; many a half-guinea I have had for it from the officers, and many bottles I have sold; may you be able to get something for it to repay you for your kindness to the poor soldier." ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... small brunette minister asked if he was not entitled to some credit for blacking the farmer's eyes. Says he: "When he got over the fence and grabbed the near horse by the bits, and said he would have the whole gang in jail, I felt as though something had got to be done, and I jumped out on the other side of the wagon and walked around to him and put up my hands and gave ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... to his present case, she sits gazing in resigned imbecility, till finally she desperately resolves to improvise him some gruel, and, after a laborious turn in the kitchen,—after burning her dress and blacking her fingers,—succeeds only in bringing him ...
— Household Papers and Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for making tea) has become an institution in Galician hotels. The main street is pervaded by small boys selling Russian newspapers or making a good thing out of cleaning the high Russian military 'sapogee' (top boots). They get five cents for a penny paper and ninepence or a shilling for boot-blacking, but considering the mud of Galicia (I have been up to my boot tops—that is, up to my knees—in it), the charge is not too heavy, especially if the unusual dearness of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... hardly dwell on the boot-cleaning process: three good brushes and good blacking must be provided; one of the brushes hard, to brush off the mud; the other soft, to lay on the blacking; the third of a medium hardness, for polishing; and each should be kept for its particular use. The blacking ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... abounding in hills and valleys. As Dave Cowan said, the judge's feet were lumpy. But the Wilbur twin was conscientious here, and the judge's heels would be as resplendent as the undulating toes. The task had been appreciably delayed by Frank, the dog, who, with a quaint relish for shoe blacking, had licked a superb polish from one shoe while the other was under treatment. His new owner did not rebuke him. He conceived that Frank had intelligently wished to aid in the work, and applauded him even while securing the shined ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... ROSA SINENSIS.—The flowers of this malvaceous plant contain a quantity of astringent juice, and, when bruised, rapidly turn black or deep purple; they are used by the Chinese ladies for dyeing their hair and eyebrows, and in Java for blacking shoes. ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... thinking of her. She wanted to go on seeing his faults, but in her changing mood she could see only her own. "He is one of the noblest gentlemen in the world," something inside her said. "You aren't worthy to black his boots!" Then the picture of herself blacking them—the shiny ones that were too tight—rose before her eyes, and she was afraid that she was going to laugh—or else to sob. Anyhow, he was gone, and there was ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... reading! But he was awfully fond of reading aloud in the evenings, in a slow, even, sing-song voice, as though over the dead. It is interesting that that is how he has ended: he hires himself out to read the psalms over the dead, and at the same time he kills rats and makes blacking. But at that time I could not get rid of him, it was as though he were chemically combined with my existence. Besides, nothing would have induced him to consent to leave me. I could not live in furnished lodgings: my lodging was my private solitude, ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... The Ghorawalla watches for it, and stopping the good-natured woman, brings her in and submits a request for a bottle of neat's foot oil, for want of which your harness is going to destruction. She has blacking as well as oil, but he will call her in for that afterwards. He never concludes two transactions in one day. When he has succeeded in reducing you to such a state of irritability that it is not safe to mention money in your presence, he stops ...
— Behind the Bungalow • EHA
... had commenced. He had no office to open. His little blacking-box was ready for use, and he looked sharply in the faces of all who passed, addressing each ...
— Ragged Dick - Or, Street Life in New York with the Boot-Blacks • Horatio Alger
... the United States, television reception was blacking out for hours at a time, with no explanation available. The Civil Aeronautics Administration and the Air Force banned all plane movements under instrument flight conditions, because radar navigational equipment had become so unreliable as to ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... he said. "What you took to be blood, ROPES, was blacking off your razor. You really ought not to strop them on your boot. I'll walk round to your shop with you. I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... yelled, naturally, or unnaturally, and tried to get loose, but another contrivance shot out from the wall somewhere and clutched me by the leg and began to make frantic gestures at my shoes like a wild boot-blacking emporium. I decided to stand still rather than run the risk of getting hit somewhere else. Meanwhile Walter was laughing so hard he couldn't answer my emphatic request to know what the thing was going ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... before a mirror in his room, his face lathered and an open razor in his hand. His wife came in. She looked at him and said, "Are you shaving?" The man, a foe to surplusage, replied fiercely, "No; I am blacking the kitchen range. Where are you—out driving or at a ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... naive story," began Tutt, seating himself in the chair reserved for paying clients—that is to say, one which did not have the two front legs sawed off an inch or so in order to make lingering uncomfortable. "A plain, unvarnished tale. Our client is one who makes an honest living by blacking shoes near the entrance to the Brooklyn Bridge. He is one of several hundred original ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... BLACKING. For the ship's bends and yards. A good mixture is made of coal-tar, vegetable-tar, and salt-water, boiled ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... their cheeks. One of the chiefs was an exceedingly tall man, since he could not have measured less than six feet three inches, and was about 24 years of age. He was painted with red ochre, and his body shone as if he had been polished with Warren's best blacking. His companion was older and of shorter stature. We soon got on good terms with them, and I made a present of a knife to each. They told us, as intelligibly as it was possible for them to do, that we were going away from water; ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... harness-blacking for your pouches. I don't approve of that. And your pipe-clay; it's got too blue ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... the blacking from his face and had put on his best clothes; he wanted to go to the market with a bundle of washing, which the butcher from Aaker was to take home to his mother, and Pelle walked behind him, carrying ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... despondently. In that house there was no messenger to be procured. The landlady was elderly, and kept no servant—employing only a mysterious female of the charwoman species, who came at daybreak, dyed herself to the elbows with blacking or blacklead before breakfast, and so remained till the afternoon, when she departed to "do for" a husband and children—the husband and children passing all the earlier part of the day in ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... anything that Uncle Sim himself couldn't go to Athens tomorrow and order a cup of coffee and a hard-boiled egg! Or, if he did order them, he'd get a morning newspaper and toothpick. Last Spring I was in the boot-blacking emporium in the village one afternoon and Horace came in to get his shoes ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Lloyd. "Didn't you know better than to put stove-blacking on that stove? When it gets het up, it will smoke to fare-ye-well, and start my asthma to going again full tilt. Some folks are mighty thoughtless, never have no consideration for ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Landport, near Portsmouth, where his f. was a clerk in the Navy Pay-Office. The hardships and mortifications of his early life, his want of regular schooling, and his miserable time in the blacking factory, which form the basis of the early chapters of David Copperfield, are largely accounted for by the fact that his f. was to a considerable extent the prototype of the immortal Mr. Micawber; but partly by his being a delicate ...
— A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature • John W. Cousin
... with a long frontispiece and with a button on the top. His coat was what is called a "roundabout," scarcely reaching to his waist, but it abounded with pockets, as did the vest which it partly inclosed. His trousers were coarse, thick, and comfortable, and his large boots were never touched by blacking, Nick's father having no belief in such nonsense, but sticking ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... which he can creep out of his present position, is one which lets him down into a still lower and fouler depth of infamy. To whitewash an Ethiopian is a proverbially hopeless attempt; but to whitewash an Ethiopian by giving him a new coat of blacking is an enterprise more extraordinary still. That in the course of Shaftesbury's dishonest and revengeful opposition to the Court he rendered one or two most useful services to his country we admit. And he is, we think, fairly entitled, if that be any glory, to have his name eternally associated ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... no baker, and only two shops. In 1845 there were eight bakers and forty-six grocer's shops, in nearly all of which shoe blacking was sold to some extent, an unmistakable evidence ...
— Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1 (of 2) • Harriet Elizabeth (Beecher) Stowe
... accomplishments were of a mechanical nature; he was an extraordinary arithmetician, he was a very skilful chemist, and kept a laboratory at his lodgings—he mended his own clothes and linen with incomparable neatness. Philip suspected him of blacking his own shoes, but that was prejudice. Once he found Morton sketching horses' heads—pour se desennuyer; and he made some short criticisms on the drawings, which showed him well acquainted with the art. Philip, surprised, sought to draw him into ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... said Harry. "No matter—I'm no spaker—but I know that man's character nevertheless: he is rich; but a very bad character the poor gives him up and down." "Perhaps, because he is rich." "Not at all; the poor loves the rich that helps with the kind heart. Don't we all love King Corny to the blacking of his shoes? —Oh! there's the difference!—who could like the man that's always talking of the craturs, and yet, to save the life of the poorest cratur that's forced to live under him, wouldn't forbear to drive, and pound, and process, for the little con acre, the potatoe ridge, ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
... their own way, we descried an old gentleman approaching up the winding street. As he drew nearer he presented rather a shabby, or, at least, rusty appearance. His felt hat was not so black as it had been; his coat was creased and soiled; his boots needed a blacking. He swung a cane as he stumped along, and there was a sort of faded smartness in his bearing and a knowingness in his grim old visage, indicating some incongruous familiarity with the manners of the great world. He came to a halt in front of the house, and, after quizzing it for ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... advertised himself as having "no incumbrance," was by no means an ease-taking man. He united in his august person the duties of coachman, butler, waiter, useful man, and body-servant to Mr. Manning. Seeing him at early dawn, blacking his employer's boots, or, later, attending to the lighter duties of the coachhouse (he had a stable-boy to help him), one could never imagine the grandeur of that same useful individual when ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... old canoe and dob his address and general destination onto it with a blacking-brush and a stencil-plate, 'long with a verse from some likely hymn or other, and pint him for the tomb, and mark him C. O. D., and just let him flicker. He warn't distressed any more than you be—on ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... up that job for blacking somebody's shoes, or carrying papers, or running errands, or being shut up all summer in a big hot ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of mutton suet with twelve ounces of beeswax; add twelve ounces of sugar-candy, four ounces of soft soap dissolved in water, and two ounces of indigo, finely powdered. When melted and well mixed, add one-half pint of turpentine. Lay the blacking on the harness with a sponge, and polish ...
— Practical Suggestions for Mother and Housewife • Marion Mills Miller
... method of his work I quickly discerned, and the discovery threw some light upon the size of the heap in front of my trunk. A dress-hat and its case, when their natural relationship is dissolved, occupy nearly twice as much space as before, even if the former contains a blacking-box not usually kept in it, and the latter contains a few cigars soaking in bay rum. The same might be said of a portable dressing-case and its contents, bought for me in Vienna by a brother ex-soldier, ...
— Helen's Babies • John Habberton
... back had come his star. He wore it secretly at first, but was moved at length to display it to a few chosen friends; not wisely chosen, it would appear, for now there were mockers of Billy among the irreverent of the town. As he sat aloft on his boot-blacking throne, waiting for crime to be done among us, conning meantime one of those romances in which his heroes did rare deeds, he would be subjected to intrusion. Some coarse town humorist would leer upon him from the doorway—a leer of ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... mentions having heard of a bear of this species who delighted in cherry brandy, "and on one occasion, having been indulged with an entire bottle of this insinuating beverage, got so completely intoxicated that it stole a bottle of blacking, and drank off the contents under the impression that they were some more of its favourite liquor. The owner of the bear told me that he saw it suffering from this strange mixture, and evidently with, as may easily be ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... information, concerning which dull folks make so much fuss, can be attained by anybody who chooses to spend his time that way; and by persons of intelligence (who are not so solicitous to know how blacking is made) can be turned, in a manner not dreamt of by cram-coaches, to ...
— Some Private Views • James Payn
... at dinner were excellent; we hardly knew which was best. A peasant boy brought us a bundle of sticks for our fire. The sun became exceedingly hot. Esmeralda and myself went and sat in some shade near our tents." "Noah stood in the shade blacking his boots, and observed to Esmeralda, 'I shall not help my wife as Mr. Petalengro does you.' 'Well,' said Esmeralda, 'what is a wife for?' 'For!' retorted Noah, sharply, giving his boot an extra brush, 'why, to wait upon her husband.' 'And what,' said Esmeralda, 'is ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the last rail was finally bolted as we ran upon it. Carefully and gingerly we pushed along, my triumphal chariot in front of the engine, over the shivering embankment, on each side of which were deep-cut channels which seemed to have been hewn through acres of Day and Martin's blacking, so jetty and oily seemed this Irish bog. The subsidence of yesterday had forced the boundary walls of the line into wide semicircles, and it seemed likely to be touch-and-go with the engine, truck, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... think this dose will do me all my life. I am willing to do anything you ask me, even to blacking ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... francs a year for washing! Three clean shirts a day, three cravats! Boots blacked, soles and all, and with such varnish! But then he has such exquisite taste! why, he blackballed a friend of his who wanted to enter his club, because the candidate's boots were polished with bad blacking. I wonder whether the king will do anything for him? It is Mr. Brummell's dressing hour, and ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... all the time. He would ask his little white friends in the street how to spell certain words and the meaning of them. In this way he soon learned to read. The first and most important book owned by him was called the "Columbian Orator." He bought it with money secretly earned by blacking boots on the street. It contained selected passages from such great orators as Lord Chatham, William Pitt Fox, and Sheridan. These speeches were steeped in the sentiments of liberty, and were full of references to the "rights of man." They gave to young Douglass a larger idea of liberty than ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... Ben, in a low voice, suddenly bringing a blacking-brush, and beginning to polish his master's shoes,—thinking, while he did it, of how often Mars' John had interfered with the overseers to save him from a flogging,—(Lamar, in his lazy way, was kind to his slaves,)—thinking of little Mist' Floy with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... meet with, emanating from the butler's pantry, was a miscellaneous volume full of religious scraps, essays on dress, receipts for boot-tops, wise cooking cogitations, remedies for bugs, cures for ropy beer, hints for blacking, ingredients for punch, thoughts on tapping ale, early rising and killing fleas. The mischief of the wide dissemination of education is now becoming apparent, for, poor as authors confessedly are, they have generally been gentlemen, even in rags—learned men of some degree, though with exposed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... to work up through the tannery they'll likely look the part more by the time you've got a few coats of lime and blacking on them," was Carmachel's dry response. "Now we'll let the others finish this work. You come inside and you shall have a new job. You've done enough unloading for ...
— The Story of Leather • Sara Ware Bassett
... her blacking your shoes the other day. She was making an awful mess of it and he tried to take them from her. She gave him a real vicious whack with the brush. What she said was actually comical: 'He's mine; if I want to take the dirt from his shoes, ...
— The Man Thou Gavest • Harriet T. Comstock
... cometh!" so those that were in its way stood off, and threw themselves down upon the ground; by which means, and by their thus guarding themselves, the stone fell down and did them no harm. But the Romans contrived how to prevent that, by blacking the stone, who then could aim at them with success when the stone was not discerned beforehand as it had been till then; and so they destroyed many of them at one blow. Yet did not the Jews, under all this distress, permit the Romans to raise their ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... His long lean wrists and hands protruded far through the sleeves of an old brown jacket. He wore a grey flannel shirt and an old bit of black ribbon done up in a bow by way of a tie; his slouch hat, once black, was now green with age, and his boots were innocent of blacking. But my eyes were dazzled by a heavy gold watch chain across his waistcoat and I thought him the most glorious ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... prevail some seven years ago in Paris, had spread since we left the French capital. There it began, we remember, with certain members of the medical profession, who had learned to give calomel in English doses. The public next lauded Warren's blacking—Cirage national de Warren—and then proceeded to eat raw crumpets as an English article of luncheon. But things had gone farther since that time than we were prepared to expect. At the table d'hote of to-day, we found every body had something civil to say about English products; frequently ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... of boots for Mr. Peterkin; a small foot-rug in case the ground should be damp; some paint-boxes of the little boys'; a box of fish-hooks for Solomon John; an ink-bottle, carefully done up in a great deal of newspaper, which was fortunate, as the ink was oozing out; some old magazines, and a blacking-bottle; and at the bottom, a sun-dial. It was all very entertaining, and there seemed to be something for every occasion but the present. Old Mr. Bromwick did not wonder the basket was so heavy. It was all so interesting that nobody ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... Lady—save me!" cried daddy, appearing to be very much frightened, and dodging behind the stove. "Don't let the neighbors in until I have got rid of this blacking brush and got on my ...
— Janice Day, The Young Homemaker • Helen Beecher Long
... up at the house in his circus clothes this afternoon, and he certainly is a peach. Pa has been letting his chin whiskers grow for about six weeks, and today he had them colored black, and he looks as though he had swallowed the blacking brush, and left the bunch of bristles outside, on his chin. He looks fierce. Then, he has got a new brand of silk hat, with a wide, curling brim, and he has had a vest made of black and blue check goods, the checks as big as the checks ...
— Peck's Bad Boy at the Circus • George W. Peck
... pictures of this kind, figures that were originally standing may be forced to sit; babies may be placed in arms which, on the cards they were stolen from, held only cakes of soap, perhaps, or boxes of blacking; heads may be ruthlessly torn from bodies to which they belong, and as ruthlessly clapped upon strange shoulders; and you will be surprised to see what amusing, and often excellent, illustrations ...
— Little Folks' Handy Book • Lina Beard
... were as great adepts at deception in the sale of their commodity as the most knowing down-easter, or tricky horse dealer. William's occupation on board the steamer, as they steamed south, was to prepare the stock for the market, by shaving off whiskers and blacking the grey hairs with a ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown
... Receiving sprites with sympathetic vapour; He rubbed his eyes, and they did not refuse Their office: he took up an old newspaper; The paper was right easy to peruse; He read an article the King attacking, And a long eulogy of "Patent Blacking." ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... *advertir, to warn alegar, to allege al reves, on the wrong side barnices, varnishes barrica, cask batista de algodon, cambric baul, trunk betunes, blacking bicicleta, bicycle botines, boots bramante, twine bufandas, mufflers buje, hub cerradura, lock chanclos, goloshes cintos de seda, silk sashes cinturones de cuero, leather belts colchas de plumon, down quilts consignatario, consignee ejecutar, to execute, to put through *hacer ...
— Pitman's Commercial Spanish Grammar (2nd ed.) • C. A. Toledano
... clouds rose ponderously upon the hilltops, blacking out the twilight with an abruptness which must have held deep significance for men less occupied. But the dominant overcast of their minds was the coming of the sheriff. For many of them it was far more ominous than ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... and how he perceived them. He replied, 'Signs and symbols which you, in your ignorance of their true meaning, have taken for letters and words, and read, as you have thought, "Day and Martin's and Warren's blacking."' 'Oh! that is all nonsense!' 'They are only the mysterious characters which he traces to mark the boundary of his dominion, and by which he prevents all escape from his tremendous power. How have I toiled and laboured to get beyond the limit of his influence! Once I walked for three days ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury |
