"Smudge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the increase of light made her look up. Over the valley she saw a grave sullen down, and on its flanks a little brown smudge—her sheep, together with her shepherd, Fleance Thompson, returned to his duties at last. A trickle of water came through the arbour ...
— The Longest Journey • E. M. Forster
... wolves ever since he first "toted" a gun, now more than fifty-five years ago. Perhaps he understood how difficult it is to smoke out a pack of wolves, that invariably seek a cave with a depth sufficient to get away from all the influences of the smudge. ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... morning ardour of your face Was like a summer rose; One sooty smudge but seemed to grace The challenge of your nose; The gaudy thing that hid your hair Performed ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... May was a little red-faced, and her hair was kind of wild, when we heard somebody laugh, and there was the painter-man down by the river, laughing as hard as he could laugh; and Aunty Edith trying to look severe at Aunty May and not able to, on account of her looking so comical. She had a black smudge from the end of the beanpole, which had been in a bonfire, across her forehead. You see she had just jumped the farthest, and was ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... Englishman, you are great; you are wise; you are rich beyond comparison. You are noble; you are generous; you are the prince among nations." He smiles a calm smile, and thinks you a very sensible fellow. But you add, "Oh, my lord, if I may venture to say so, there is a smudge on your nose, which I make bold to attribute to the settlement of a black on your intelligent countenance." He is not angry. He is not even contemptuously amused. He responds, "My friend, you are wrong. There ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen
... charcoal, in which the very texture of the coal is preserved. And, if you will permit me, note the half tones of my own charcoal drawings now on exhibition in the adjoining gallery. So perfect is the reproduction that one is careful not to smudge his fingers in turning the leaves of the publication in which they ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... Casey saw the smoke smudge against the mountains to the south, he remembered his misadventure of the lower desert and swore. When he looked again, the majestic sweep of distance gave him a satisfied feeling of freedom from the crowded pettinesses of the city. ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... bag down from the rack, pulled on his jacket. He jumped down to the cinders, followed them to where they ended. He hesitated a moment, then pushed between the knee-high stalks. Eastward across the field he could see what looked like a smudge on the far horizon. ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... smudge for so small a paper, and the king sat on the edge of the bed and watched ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... black smudge of eyebrow appraised the junior constable with faint, musing interest. "A quare chap is Yorkey," he continued gently—shielding a match-flame and puffing with noisy respiration—"a good polisman—knows th' Criminal Code from A tu Z—eyah! but mighty quare. I misdoubt how th' tu av yez will ...
— The Luck of the Mounted - A Tale of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • Ralph S. Kendall
... repeating here." They know that that is not true. It is a low kind of flattery. They know that the reader has forgotten every detail of it, and that nothing of the tremendous event is left in his mind but a vague and formless luminous smudge. Aside from the desire to flatter the reader, they have another reason for making the remark-two reasons, indeed. They do not remember the details themselves, and do not want the trouble of hunting them up and copying them out; also, they are afraid that if they search them out and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... very often that there are continents of dirt underneath—"things," and "systems," and men—which it chooses to patronize; but then, it is covered up, and so it says, "Let it alone; we cannot have a smudge. Let it alone. Peace! Peace! Never mind righteousness—the church must be supported, if the money does come out of the dried-up vitals of drunkards and harlots; never mind, we must have it. Never mind if our songs are mixed with the shrieks of widows and orphans, of the ...
— Godliness • Catherine Booth
... with willowy trunks of trees as thick as a man's arm. Here we refreshed ourselves with drinking-coconuts, while a cowboy rode a dozen miles to the nearest telephone and summoned a machine from town. The town itself we could see, the Lakanaii metropolis of Olokona, a smudge of smoke on the shore-line, as we looked down across the miles of cane-fields, the billow-wreathed reef-lines, and the blue haze of ocean to where the island of Oahu shimmered like a dim opal ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... their pencils and tore their hair, Down, a-down, a-down—hey down! But those blessed bills, they wouldn't come square, With a down; 'Midst muddle and smudge it is hard to fix If a six is a nine or a nine is a six, With a down ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... every gust, When the tall oaks are rent up by the roots. What is vain beauty but an idle breath? Why are we proud of that which so soon changes? But rather wish the beauty of the mind, Which neither time can alter, sickness change, Violence deface, nor the black hand of envy Smudge and disgrace, or spoil, or make deform'd. O, had my riotous husband borne this mind, He had been happy, I had been more blest, And peace had brought our ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... and, with wide eyes, looked first at me and then at the battling sea-things which fought for the corpse of their comrade. To them it must have seemed a miracle that I should be able to stand at thrice the range of the most powerful javelin-thrower and with a loud noise and a smudge of smoke slay one of their ...
— Pellucidar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... face of Age, with a pitiful smudge of Youth, Carmine and heavy and lined, like a jester's mask on Truth; And she laughed from the red lips outward, the laugh of the brave who die, But a ghost in her ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... which would have dazzled and corrupted some men, retained all the simplicity, the modesty, and the generosity of his character. He felt, as he said, nowhere so much at home as among his own machinery, surrounded by thoughtful mechanics, dressed like them for work, and possibly with a black smudge upon his face. In his person, however, he was scrupulously clean and nice, a hater of tobacco and all other polluting ...
— Captains of Industry - or, Men of Business Who Did Something Besides Making Money • James Parton
... friendship that was thought to be growing too strong, she was quick instantly to resent the slur on her chum. She had been sent for immediately after "evening prep.," and having, as usual, inked her fingers generously, and rubbed an ink-smudge across her face, to say nothing of really disgracefully tumbled hair, she looked a comical enough object standing before the impressive ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... captain's gaze, saw something like a faint smudge growing on the horizon's line against the faintly tinted hue, and, even as they watched, it deepened ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... to care for Trina again. She would never be the same to him, never so radiant, so sweet, so adorable; her charm for him would vanish in an instant. Across her forehead, her little pale forehead, under the shadow of her royal hair, he would surely see the smudge of a foul ordure, the footprint of the monster. It would be a sacrilege, an abomination. He recoiled from it, banding all ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... captivates us with its youthful spell. But it has no structure with which to resist the shocks of fortune, which it goes out so jauntily to meet. It turns only too often into vulgarity and worldliness. A snow-flake is soon a smudge, and there is a deeper purity in the diamond. Happiness is hidden from a free and casual will; it belongs rather to one chastened by a long education and unfolded in an atmosphere of sacred and perfected institutions. It is discipline that renders men ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... long evenings the two sat close to the smudge of the camp-fire and talked of many things, ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... his back teeth are awash by midnight 'most every day. You can see him muling around the dance floor till you get sick of the sight of his darn fool smile, and you wish all the diamonds Maude wears were lost in the deepest smudge fires of hell. Start? There is no start. But there's a ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... couldn't have been the reason, dear." And she stopped, but to still her own fears hurried on again. "If I'd known you'd been coming, I'd have kept Cecil Tharp. Vic has had such dear little puppies. Would you like one? They've all got that nice black smudge round the eye." ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... men besides Watusk and himself. It was close quarters. When it became light enough to see clearly, they lined up in front of him, eagerly looking over. One was lighting a little fire and putting grass on it to make a smudge. ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... Kayerts stood still. He looked upwards; the fog rolled low over his head. He looked round like a man who has lost his way; and he saw a dark smudge, a cross-shaped stain, upon the shifting purity of the mist. As he began to stumble towards it, the station bell rang in a tumultuous peal its answer to the impatient ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... in. She was planting the last aster in the row. She went on scooping out the hole for it, slowly and deliberately, with her trowel, and patting the earth about it with wilful hands. There was a little smudge of grey earth above the crinkles in her soft, ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... him in But would rush to the lake to unhouse the sin! For any charnel This ghost is too carnal; There is no volcano, burnt out and cold, Whose very ashes are gray and old, But would cast him forth in reviving flame To blister the sky with a smudge of shame! ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... second time the King shouted angrily, "Smudge and blazes!" and at a third ring he screamed in a fury, "Hippikaloric!" which must be a dreadful word because we don't know ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... put her aside from the other peasant girls as a queen may masquerade as a slave and yet betray herself as a queen. Other girls there were as pretty, with their hair like flax and their eyes like blue water; with hair like a dim blue cloud and eyes like a smudge of charcoal. But none had her teeth, her small ankles, her long, sensitive hands. Some strain of the Stuart cavaliers had crept into that hardy peasant stock on the way to the defeat of the Boyne Water.... She might have seemed nothing but a pretty lady's maid in London or ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... was told to me by two old men. We sat in the smoke of a mosquito-smudge, in the cool of the day, which was midnight; and ever and anon, throughout the telling, we smote lustily and with purpose at such of the winged pests as braved the smoke for a snack at our hides. To the right, beneath us, twenty feet down the crumbling bank, the Yukon gurgled lazily. ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... round, where the snow was cut up as though there had been a struggle, and, finally, where a few drops of blood had fallen, to show me that I was not mistaken. Boots had then run down the lane, and another little smudge of blood showed that it was he who had been hurt. When he came to the highroad at the other end, I found that the pavement had been cleared, so there was an end ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... are thrown up in the sky and distorted into the most fantastic shapes. They climb, trembling, upwards, spreading out into long lines at different levels, then contract and fall down, leaving nothing but an uncertain, wavering smudge which comes and goes. Presently the smudge swells and grows, taking shape until it presents the perfect inverted reflection of a berg on the horizon, the shadow hovering over the substance. More smudges appear ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... to light again, there was a house which seemed in being. I entered it, for I was told by a soldier companion that from a displaced tile in its roof I might see La Bassee. I looked through that gap, and saw La Bassee. It was very near. It was a terracotta smudge. It might have been a brickfield. But it was ...
— Waiting for Daylight • Henry Major Tomlinson
... separate ways to their houses, which always seemed divided by absurd distances, and the faces of the negro cooks who met me at the kitchen steps and relieved me of my burden. In the beginning I was accompanied on my rounds by a fat, smudge-nosed youth some six or eight years my senior, who smoked vile tobacco and enlivened the way by villainous abuses of John Chitling and the universe. For the first months, I fear, my outlook upon the customers I served was largely coloured by ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... wall, over a draped dressing-table which had apparently once been boxes. Yes, she did look tired and draggled. Her wild-rose color was nearly gone, and there were big circles under her eyes. And there was a smudge on her face that nobody had told her a thing about. And her hair was mussed too much to be becoming, even to her, who looked best with it tossed a little. And there was not a sign of water to wash in anywhere, and the ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... they had to learn in campercraft. The Mosquitoes were always more or less of a plague. At night they forced the boys into the teepee, but they soon learned to smudge the insects with a wad of green grass on the hot fire. This they would throw on at sundown, then go outside, closing the teepee tight and eat supper around the cooking fire. After that was over they would cautiously open the teepee to find the grass ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the people, swarthy, with impudent black eyes, tangled hair, and a big, pouting mouth, above which a premature mustache showed like a smudge. He looked into her face and began to laugh. She saw his white teeth, and her tears rushed back to their sources. At once her eyes were dry. And, almost at once, she thought, her heart became hard as stone, and she felt self-control like ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... fire almost ready; the Red Fox Scouts helped me, and gathered smudge stuff while I proceeded to send up the council signal in the Elks code. Fitz talked while he worked. The general looked on and winced as his ankle throbbed. But he was busy, too, ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... had better go to Sue's to thaw out some of my loneliness over this play," I answered him as I looked up with desperation and a smudge on my face. Then I went to my room and left Tolly alone with Peter's poor little heroine. "Say, tell the poet to get the man with the dinner-pail who is eating hunk sandwiches at lunch-time on the ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... Thuran, "you see the fate that awaits us all unless we are picked up within a day or two. That there is little hope of that is evidenced by the fact that during all the days we have drifted we have seen no sail, nor the faintest smudge ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... A smudge the size of a quarter and the color of Hattie's guaranteed-not-to-fade cheek, lay incredibly ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... by the Martian's name. He wiped the smudge of ink off his hand and said, "You both know, of course, that Perimeter D is reserved for couples who have intermarried and are about ...
— Blind Spot • Bascom Jones
... rolling over twice, each time clawing at the earth, and then remained still, about four feet from me, in a sort of sitting position. I called to him, "Are you hurt badly, Jock?" but no answer. He was dead. A dark, red smudge was coming through his tunic right under the heart. The blood ran down his bare knees, making a horrible sight. On his right side he carried his water bottle. I was crazy for a drink and tried to reach this, but for the life of me could not negotiate that four feet. Then ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... your name on the outside of this paper; and as there's 7 pence to pay, I think it's rather dear for such a smudge." ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... wild-looking, seemingly as fierce, and certainly as avaricious as he was himself. These auxiliaries, through various little circumstances, were known among us that same afternoon, by the several appellations of Smudge, Tin-pot, and Slit-nose. These were not heroic names, of a certainty, but their owners had as little of the heroic in their appearance, as usually falls to the lot of man in the savage state. I cannot tell the designation of the tribes to which these four worthies belonged, nor do ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... Bobbie! Why, the whole place is one mellifluous smudge. What do you say we chuck Colversham and get a job here? Think of having pounds of candy—tons of it—around all the time! Wouldn't ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... tingling through his skin. Out of the tangled scrub on the old overgrown barrow two human faces were looking out at him; the sinking sun glimmered full upon them, showing up every line and feature. The one was an oldish man with a thin beard, a crooked nose, and a broad red smudge from a birth-mark over his temple; the other was a negro, a thing rarely met in England at that day, and rarer still in the quiet southland parts. Alleyne had read of such folk, but had never seen one before, and could scarce take his eyes from the fellow's ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... her breath seemed to choke her, Adelle saw the man in the glare of the flame pull himself up, inch by inch, until his head was level with the glass, butt his head against the heavy pane, and with a final heave disappear within while a black smudge of smoke poured from the vent ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... melt the solder and convert it into a liquid. Place the iron in the vessel containing the mixture of sal ammoniac and solder. Rotate iron in the mixture until the soldering edge of the iron has become bright or thoroughly covered with the solder. All particles of smudge, burned material, and so forth, should be removed ...
— Every Step in Canning • Grace Viall Gray
... warm earth before their cabin, their backs propped comfortably against a log, watching the sun sink behind a distant sky-line all notched with purple mountains upon which snow still lingered. Beside them a smudge dribbled a wisp of smoke sufficient to ward off a pestilential swarm of mosquitoes and black flies. In the clear, thin air of that altitude the occasional voices of what bird and animal life was abroad in the wild broke into the evening hush ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... was useless. The horseman had made the road and was speeding down it. Rushing ahead of the others, Fairchild gained a point of vantage where he could watch the fading black smudge of the horse and rider as it went on and on along the rocky road, finally to reach the main thoroughfare and turn swiftly. Then he went back to join ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... however, that he did not tell Jane after all, for, going down from Bewes in the red of the sunset, Jack fell in with Milly Boon, whose gait was set for the farm. He passed her a good evening, then marked a world of woe in her face and the smudge of tears upon it, clear to see in the last of the light, so he bade her stand a moment and tell him why for she was going up ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... smudge which we ourselves could endure was sufficient in the earlier part of that evening to prevent serious annoyance from the same cause; but later ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... canvas from the wall and placed it on the easel and stood back, examining it critically. His face lighted and he hummed softly, gazing at the rough outline.... Slowly, in the smudge of the vague face, gleaming eyes formed themselves—Giorgione's eyes! They looked out at him, ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... Within two hours MacRae was the owner of two motor launches under British registry. Payment in full left him roughly with five thousand dollars working capital, enough by only a narrow margin. At sunset Vancouver was a smoky smudge on a far horizon. At dusk he passed in the narrow mouth of Squitty Cove. The Bluebird was swinging about to go when her sister ship ranged alongside. Vincent Ferrara dropped his hook again. There were forty trollers in the Cove. MacRae called to them. They came in skiffs and ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... door opened again a little way, almost at once, and the trim-cut, academic face, with the lamplight falling upon the round glasses and blotting them out in a yellow smudge, appeared ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... infinite labor and the help of a very precise article in The Heavens, a little monthly magazine that catered for those who were under this obsession, he had at last got his opera-glass upon the new visitor to our system from outer space. He gazed in a sort of rapture upon that quivering little smudge of light among the shining pin-points—and gazed. My troubles had to wait ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... face was marred by one or two scratches and by a smudge of dirt. But it was as calm and as eternally smiling as ever. In place of his wontedly correct, if garish, form of dress, he was clad in ragged calico shirt and soiled drill trousers whose lower portions were in ribbons. All of which ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... the child should make a good impression on the Platypus, and tried with the long claws on her little black hands to comb through Dot's long gleaming curls; but they were so tangled that the child called out at this awkward method of hairdressing, and the Kangaroo stopped. She then licked a black smudge off Dot's forehead, which was all she could do to tidy her. Then she started back a hop, and eyed the child with her head on one side. She was not quite satisfied. "Ah!" she said, "if only you were ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... predicted for Peter; For, of a morning in spring when lay the mist in the valleys— "See," quoth the folk, "how the witch breweth her evil decoctions! See how the smoke from her fire broodeth on woodland and meadow! Grant that the sun cometh out to smother the smudge of her caldron! She hath been forth in the night, full of her spells and devices, Roaming the marshes and dells for heathenish magical nostrums; Digging in leaves and at stumps for centipedes, pismires, and spiders, Grubbing in poisonous pools for hot salamanders and toadstools; Charming ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... Annie's voice through the chink. 'And there's the portrait! Oh! and what a smudge across the nose! Henry, it doesn't make you look at all nice. You're too black. Oh, Henry! what do you think it's called? "Lions in their Lairs. No. 19. Interview with the brilliant author of Love in Babylon." And you told ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett
... facilities in the working of it are due to the fact that it demands a different application of the universal principles. Don't think that landscape drawing is easier than that of the figure because smudges of green and blue and brown can be accepted as a landscape, while a smudge of pink will not do duty for the nude figure. It is only that the drawing of the figure is more obvious, and variations from the more obvious ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... hostess cutting capers in a Mandarin's palace, Helen herself was reading, over and over again, a most wonderful letter that had fallen from her sky. It had all the appearance of any ordinary missive. The King's face on a penny stamp, or so much of it as was left uninjured by a postal smudge, looked familiar enough, and both envelop and paper resembled those which had brought her other communications from "The Firefly." But the text was magic, rank necromancy. No wizard who ever dealt in black letter treatises could have devised a more convincing ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... properly prudent hesitation, clicked brokenly. Miss Francis looked as though she'd added insomnia to her other abstentions, otherwise she had not changed, even to her skirt and the smudge on her left nostril. "If youve come about the icebox youre a week late. I fixed it myself," she ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... measure of protection from those terrible mosquitoes which still buzzed angrily about his head. In an hour chance favored him, as he reached a low ridge much rockier than usual in that region. He would have built a little smudge fire to protect himself from the mosquitoes, but it would be sure to draw the lurking sharpshooter, and instead he found a nook in the ridge, under the low boughs of a great oak. Then he took a light blanket which he carried tied to his saddlebags, and wrapped ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... about you, with your rumpled blouses, and your shabby gloves and shoes, and your somewhat doubtful linen collars. The last time you saw him you were just coming home from the office after a dickens of a day, and there was a smudge on the end of your nose, and he told you of it, laughing. But you didn't laugh. You rubbed it off, furiously, and you wanted to cry. Cry! You, Dawn O'Hara! Begorra! 'Tis losin' your sense av humor you're ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... him. An' there's five thousand dollars in gold gone, an' no trace of it. An' there's been no strangers in town. An' here's your gun, showin' plain that it's been shot off lately, for there's the powder smudge on the cylinder an' the barrel. That's a pay streak of circumstantial evidence or ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... as Bonzig had finished a picture, which didn't take very long, he carried it round, still wet, to the small dealers, bearing it very carefully aloft, so as not to smudge it. Sometimes (if there were a sailor by Lirieux) he would get five or even ten francs for it; and then it was "Mon Aldegonde" with him all the rest of the day; for success always took the form, in his case, of nasally humming that ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... it difficult to keep their countenance, and, with one voice, they exploded into a boisterous fit of laughter. Lady Feng as well could not help feeling amused, and smilingly she upbraided her. "You stupid wench!" she said; "Have you by gorging lost your eyesight that you recklessly smudge your mistress' face?" ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... dressing-table and peered into the mirror. It must be said she saw a girl whom under other circumstances she would hardly have recognized. Her heavy hair was dishevelled. Her long, blue broadcloth ulster was stained with salt water and altogether out of shape. A great black smudge ran along her cheek, and on her chin was ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... of a Swede foreman. The Great World, as he saw it through a tiny hole in one of the opaque wire-glass windows, consisted of three bars of a rusty fire-escape-landing against a yellow brick wall, with a smudge of black on ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... in the following account from my sister of her visual peculiarities: 'When I think of Wednesday I see a kind of oval flat wash of yellow emerald green; for Tuesday, a gray sky colour; for Thursday, a brown-red irregular polygon; and a dull yellow smudge for Friday.'" ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... stair-opening came the head of Mrs. Kantor, disheveled and a smudge of soot across her face, but beneath her arm, triumphant, a violin of one string and a ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... course, then," Michael said to himself, observing these, "and quite pretty if that smudge of grime was ...
— The Man and the Moment • Elinor Glyn
... boys got up and soon had a real smudge throwing out a sickly smoke over their blankets. All this time Bill slept peacefully. It seemed that with his head buried in his blankets he was able to stand the gnats, but the smoke got him. Evidently a good puff got under his blankets, for he woke up suddenly and said in ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... great agitation and almost illegible, and at the bottom of the paper there was a dirty smudge that might have been a tear stain or a finger ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... mournfully astute. 'The margravine might say to herself, "Here's Doctor Death in full diploma come to cure the wench of her infatuation." I am but quoting the coarse old woman, Richie; confusion on her and me! for I like her. It might pass in my handwriting, with a smudge for paternal grief—it might. "To Her Serene Highness the Margravine of Rippau, etc., etc., etc., in trust for the Most Exalted the Princess of Eppenwelzen-Sarkeld." I transpose or omit a title or so. "Aha!" says she, "there's verwirrung ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of his fellow-citizens, to wit: Cap'n Aaron Sproul, first selectman of the town; Hiram Look, Zeburee Nute, constable; and a nervous little man with a smudge of smut on the side of his nose—identity and occupation revealed by the lettering on the ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... what the matter was, but he let Mr. Balmy walk a little ahead of him, so that he could see the banners, the most important of which he found to display a balloon pure and simple, with one figure in the car. True, at the top of the banner there was a smudge which might be taken for a little chariot, and some very little horses, but the balloon was the only thing insisted on. As for the procession, it consisted entirely of men, whom a smaller banner announced to be ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... our first idea. But see!" Barker drew aside the curtain, and showed that the long, diamond-paned window was open to its full extent. "And look at this!" He held the lamp down and illuminated a smudge of blood like the mark of a boot-sole upon the wooden sill. "Someone has ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... who had dropped in by appointment with some ducks' eggs on which Bell's clockin hen was to sit, performing some sleight-of-hand trick with his coat-sleeve. Craftily he jerked and twisted it, till his own photograph (a black smudge on white) gradually appeared to view. This he gravely slipped into the hands of the maid of his choice, and then took his departure, apparently much relieved. Had not Bell's light-headedness driven him away, the grieve would have soon followed up his ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... And that was a chance shot, too, though he meant it for you. I say, sir, he won't blow up no more magazines;" and Peter made a great smudge across his moist forehead with his powder-blackened hand. For the second spear had found its billet in the chest of the Frenchman, whose sufferings ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... descending from the main to the lower deck. A finnam, I must also explain, is a blow inflicted on the hand, with a cane generally, by the master-at-arms or the ship's corporal. To the said finnams poor Bobby Smudge's black ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... fire called a "smudge" will sometimes keep the pests away from the neighbourhood of the tent or if we build it in the tent will drive them out, but the remedy is almost as bad as the disease. As a rule they will only be troublesome at night and the net over our bed will enable ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... tray carefully in order not to smudge it, Wallie stepped out of the elevator and stood in the wide doorway, agreeably aware that he was a pleasing figure in his artist's smock and the flowing scarf which he always put ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... She was maybe thirty-five or so, clean but not company-dressed. There was a smudge of flour on her cheek and a smile on her face and she looked ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... shaded his eyes with one fat hand, muttering: "All poachers have eyes like sea-hawks. There is a smudge of smoke to the north. Holy Virgin, ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... day that I rode toward a smudge in the sky, and found men and boys at work burning and cutting. The superb aisle was down. I turned the horse and rode back. I learned that in the fields on either side of the lane a strip of land, fifty or sixty ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... presently I came across a page of the illustrated supplement that the Novoe Vremya publishes once a week. There was a photograph of a long-fronted building with a flag flying over it, labelled 'The new standard floating over Buckingham Palace.' The picture was not much more than a smudge, but the flag, possibly touched up, was unmistakable. It was the eagle of the Nemetskie Tsar. I have a vivid recollection of that plainly-furnished little room, with the inevitable gilt ikon in one corner, and the samovar hissing and gurgling on the table, and the thrumming music of a balalaika ...
— When William Came • Saki
... two policemen, and made for a striped blue and white skirt that lay motionless on the ground. Across the white apron ran a broad, dirty smudge. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... one of the casks with his stick, when, stumbling over the skid on the floor, he brought the whole pile of tierces tumbling down in a heap of mould, rust and dirt. Escaping from the smudge and smell of dead wood, we went up a few steps to another level in the foundations, and came into the kitchens of the 'new house.' The main kitchen is a vaulted chamber, divided by rows of pillars, the ceiling being perhaps twenty feet in the clear, and the area of the entire ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... could be seen flying into Omdurman. Pending the answer, we waited; and looking back northwards, across the front of the zeriba, where the first attack had been stopped, perceived a greyish-white smudge, perhaps a mile long. The glass disclosed details—hundreds of tiny white figures heaped or scattered; dozens hopping, crawling, staggering away; a few horses standing stolidly among the corpses; a ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... and feature and her low-toned harmony of colouring:—ivory-white skin, ash-blond hair and hazel eyes, clear as a Highland river; the pupils abnormally large, the short thick lashes very black, like a smudge round her lids. She was tall, in fine, and carried her beauty like a brimming chalice; very completely mistress of herself; and very completely detached from her florid, effusive, worldly-wise mother. Unquestionably, a young woman to ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... like a pretty expensive sort of smudge, but seeing how much wax Ravick had burned uptown, it was only fair to let him in on some of the smoke. I mentioned that if we got into the building and up to Main City Level, we'd need some way of signaling to avoid being shot by our ...
— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper
... snapped and gaped in horrible fury. But already I had shot away on the steepest glide that I dared to attempt, my engine still full on, the flying propeller and the force of gravity shooting me downwards like an aerolite. Far behind me I saw a dull, purplish smudge growing swiftly smaller and merging into the blue sky behind it. I was safe out of the deadly jungle of the ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gas light inspired me with interest and respect; the spars were big, the chains and ropes stout and the whole thing looked powerful and trustworthy. Barely touched by the light her bows rose faintly alongside the narrow strip of the quay; the rest of her was a black smudge in the darkness. Here I was face to face with my start in life. We walked in a body a few steps on a greasy pavement between her side and the towering wall of a warehouse and I hit my shins cruelly against the end of the gangway. The constable hailed her quietly in a bass undertone ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... and head erect, honor intact, walked fearlessly back to his room. But there, a new dilemma! The tie was indeed of whitest lawn but, alas! across one end was a smudge which defied the most persistent rubbing. Skippy, as has been observed, was at the period when the imagination is not confined by tradition. In desperation he resorted to the washbasin and with the aid of a brush, triumphantly banished the damned spot. Then having wrung the limp mass, ...
— Skippy Bedelle - His Sentimental Progress From the Urchin to the Complete - Man of the World • Owen Johnson
... the guillotine or the gallows, I opened the letter. For as long as I might have counted "one, two," slowly, the paper looked black before my eyes, as if ink were spilt over it, blotting out the words: but the dark smudge cleared away, and showed me—nothing, except that, if Alexis Godensky held a trump card, I was not to have a sight of it until later, when ...
— The Powers and Maxine • Charles Norris Williamson
... wasn't built in a day, as I ever heard of," protested Harkness, a smudge over his nose and two long nails between his teeth. "I guess there's truck enough in the attic up there at the Manor to fill this house and a ...
— Red-Robin • Jane Abbott
... at himself. He washed his face so that it glistened. He scrubbed his neck and ears till they were scarlet. And still using the soap liberally, even contrived to get rid of a coal smudge of long standing, situated down along his ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... to be just a tiny smudge, up behind this debris, where Kut-le can't spot it," answered DeWitt. "I won't mind having a red eye of fire for company. It will help to ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... moment the boy was in the cellar, and Ned was not far away when the creeping flame was extinguished. While Frank and Jack looked in at the window, shielding their eyes and faces from the smudge as well as it was possible to do, Ned called ...
— Boy Scouts on Motorcycles - With the Flying Squadron • G. Harvey Ralphson
... of a cigarette-box, some three inches long, two inches wide and one inch deep. It was neatly tied with thin scarlet twine, and innocent of markings except for the superscription in a precise, copperplate hand, and the smudge of the postmark across the ten-cent stamp in the upper right-hand corner. The imprint of the cancellation, faintly decipherable, showed that the package had been mailed at the Madison Square substation at half-past seven o'clock of ...
— The Diamond Master • Jacques Futrelle
... little pigtails were no longer smooth and glossy, but frowsy and loose, and the rest of her hair was ruffled until it looked something like the Bird Fairies' soft plumage. Eric's head, too, was shaggier than ever, and a smudge from firebuilding had darkened one of his cheeks since the morning before. They had not bathed in the "bird bath" since Helma had gone away. They never seemed to have time, or ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... hunt, and in which the novices, riding astride of chairs, are made to run the gauntlet through the 'fellows' who are armed with blackened corks, and who, without moving from their places, attempt to smudge the faces of the youngsters as they hop past. These 'foxes' are young students who have just joined, and who are not admitted to the rank of fellows until they have fought a certain number of times. They are raised to the higher dignity after a ballot, at which they are ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... he said. "I have it—and those three fellows had it, too. We've overrun 'em. They've turned off, below, and I'll wager they're making for that smudge! Remember that smudge on the map—what looked to be another 'G. H.,' in capital letters? Well, sir, if that sign isn't 'G. W.' instead of 'G. H.' I'll miss my guess. 'G. W.'—'Golden West'! How does that strike you? It's yonder in the new ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... the horizon to port and slipped astern. Paris closed up, telescoped its panorama, became a mere blur, a smoky smudge. But it was long before the distance eclipsed that ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... Old Sol cast his rays upon the sea which gave them back broken and shattered into a thousand shafts of shimmering light. The air was cool and clear. Here and there in the distance a white sail like a fleeting gull marked the position of a sailing vessel, while a smudge of smoke from a steamer far away to the west lent a ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... he, grinning, 'you'd better tell her straight off it's bosh, and then she's not likely to make a fool of herself again. Hullo, though, I say,' he exclaimed, picking up a paper in front of him, every smudge and blot of which I knew only too well, 'why, she's at it again. ...
— Reginald Cruden - A Tale of City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... but just as they were all wondering with regard to her absence, the door was opened, and a girl, with a smudge on her face and her hat pushed crooked on her head, entered the room. She held her little ...
— A Bunch of Cherries - A Story of Cherry Court School • L. T. Meade
... therefore, was to travel by canoes during the less heated parts of the day, and tie up at night, making camp on shore in the net-protected tents. As for the Indians, they did not seem to mind the bites of the insects. They sometimes made a smudge fire, Val Jacinto had said, ...
— Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders - or, The Underground Search for the Idol of Gold • Victor Appleton
... hydroplanes, at least fifty of them, from all the battleships, now skimmed over the water, and a moment later soared in the air. Flying on beyond the French ships, a smudge of smoke came into view, then another, and then many more. Ships of all kinds, Jack could see, dreadnoughts, cruisers, torpedo boats and scout ships, ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... even my brain began to arouse from its daze to a faint realization of the conditions. The small dory to which I clung, caught in some mysterious current, floated at the very extremity of its slender towline, and in consequence the sloop appeared little more than a mere smudge, when my eyes endeavored to discover its outlines. Evidently the bloody work had been completed, for now all was silent on board. I could not even detect the sound of a footstep on the deck. Then, clear enough to be distinctly heard across the ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... dretful smudge, and Josiah run right up-stairs: it had only jest ketched a fire, and Elburtus was sound asleep; and Josiah, the minute he see what wus the matter, he jest ketched up the water-pitcher, and throwed the water ...
— Sweet Cicely - Or Josiah Allen as a Politician • Josiah Allen's Wife (Marietta Holley)
... first; we stole from our blind, chilled and stiffened, and wandered back to camp to breakfast and sleep. The former was a fairly successful event, but the latter was made almost impossible by the swarms of mosquitoes that beset us. A smudge fire and canvas head- coverings gave us only a partial immunity. By sundown we were on our way again to the blind, but another cold ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope |
