"Bootblack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... my hair's being very black and growing so that a lock of it often falls down the middle of my forehead is a coincidence. The malicious and insinuating story that I used to go under another name arose, no doubt, from my having been a bootblack in my early days, and having let my customers shorten my name into Matt Black. But, as soon as I graduated from manual labor, I resumed my rightful name and have borne it—I think I may say without vanity—in honor ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... up almost any boy and make a good bootblack of him. The bootblack is already a business man ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... old hat that Howard was trying to make last till the end of the season. When he had finished the survey his eyes travelled complacently back to his own immaculate attire, and his well-polished shoes fresh from the hands of the city station bootblack. With a well-manicured thumb and finger he flecked an imaginary bit of dust from the knee of ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... white mates, at marbles or ball or wrestling,—just as he has been studying on the same bench with them,—he is as clean, as well-dressed, as well-behaved, as they. Now, five years hence, to what occupation can that colored boy turn? He can be a bootblack, a servant, a barber, perhaps a teamster. He may be a locomotive fireman, but when he is fit to be an engineer, he is turned back. Carpentry, masonry, painting, plumbing, the hundred mechanical trades,—these, for the most part, are shut ...
— The Negro and the Nation - A History of American Slavery and Enfranchisement • George S. Merriam
... Peace, little bootblack; others bite their nails. See yonder night garment laid out for the heir of a kingdom. It is of Canton flannel, a plain, homely thing, in one piece, buttoning ignominiously down the back, and having no apertures for the august hands and feet to come ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... the future. It may seem that, for an American statesman, he had an unusual grasp of European politics. This is easily explained by the fact that he had been talking with the bootblack ...
— The Agony Column • Earl Derr Biggers
... of Alexander, Carlyle, Pagallini, Taglioni, or even that of the honest bootblack who "shines them up" so hard that the perspiration comes through his check jumper in cold ...
— Editorials from the Hearst Newspapers • Arthur Brisbane
... suitable terms, and left the office elated at his good fortune. A surprise awaited him. At the junction of Wall and New Streets he came suddenly upon a large-sized bootblack, whose ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... hovering about the piers and railway stations on the chance of obtaining a job to carry a carpetbag or valise. This was a precarious employment, and depended much more on good fortune than the business of a newsboy or bootblack. However, in the course of the afternoon Julius earned twenty-five cents for carrying a carpet-bag to French's Hotel. That satisfied him, for he was not very ambitious. He invested the greater part of it in some coffee and cakes at one of the booths in Fulton Market, and about nine o'clock, tired ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... vulgar and ignorant girl—for Azalea was not the person to perceive or appreciate these defects. She saw her, with mute wonder, blooming out before her very eyes, from a stout, stocky, frowzy child, with coarse red cheeks and knuckles like a bootblack, into a tall, slender girl, whose oval face was as regular as a conic section, and whose movements were as swift, strong, and graceful, when she forgot herself, as those of a race-horse. There were still the ties of habit ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... looking at the stars. He shouted as he saw the stacks of a big Cunarder bulking up at the end of Fourteenth Street. He stopped to chuckle over a lithograph of the Parthenon at the window of a Greek bootblack's stand. Stars—steamer—temples, all these were his. He owned ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... and as they sat in his study, Darrell put his arm about him, and told him a little of his own career. He had begun life as a street-waif, a newsboy and bootblack; and once when he was ill, he had gone to a drug-store for help, and the druggist had given him a poison by mistake, so that all his life thereafter he had more sick days than well. He told how, at an early age, he had gone to ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... care," said he, "if a couple of hundred babblers of deputies put one king in place of another? Kings! I've seen enough of them in the dirt. If the Empire had lasted ten years longer, I could have had a king for a bootblack." ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... care for us any more when they see us out of uniform," grinned Roy, as he shook hands with Mrs. Irving. "You know the old saying that a uniform has made many a hero of a bootblack." ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Wild Rose Lodge - or, The Hermit of Moonlight Falls • Laura Lee Hope
... for a shine at the Greek bootblack's. Enthroned on the dais, a minion at his feet, he was momentarily monarchial. How's the boy? Good? Same here. Down, his brief reign ended. Out into the bright noon-day glare of ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... down on your knees and rub my feet dry," and the old man drew one foot out of the tub and rested it on the edge, while the boy took a Turkish towel that looked like a piece of tripe, and began polishing the foot, like a bootblack. ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... lad was Tom the Bootblack. He was not at all ashamed of his humble calling, though always on the lookout to better himself. The lad started for Cincinnati to look up his heritage. Mr. Grey, the uncle, did not hesitate to employ ...
— Adrift on the Pacific • Edward S. Ellis
... instinctively we have a great respect for a good workman. Skill is not confined to those who are engaged in what is conventionally regarded as art. Indeed, the distinction implied in favor of "art" is unjust to the wide range of activities of familiar daily life into which the true art spirit may enter. A bootblack who polishes his shoes as well as he can, not merely because he is to be paid for it, though too he has a right to his pay, but because that is his work, his means of expression, even he works in the spirit of an artist. Extraordinary skill is often developed by those who are quite outside ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... corner of the cupboard in my room, where they must soon have been discovered in case of a domiciliary visit, took the excavated boots out to throw them into the river, choosing the earliest darkness of the rainy evening of the same day. I knew that if the bootblack saw the excavated heel he would in all probability report the fact, and my arrest would follow. In my ignorance of the fact that the city was under martial law, and that without a pass no one could be in the streets after 8 P.M., I had waited till ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... the bootblack has to be consulted, too, my boy, before we're at all sure that you're ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Lieutenants - or, Serving Old Glory as Line Officers • H. Irving Hancock
... is that your chambermaid, bellboy, hotel clerk, taxi driver, dressmaker, saleslady, cook and laundress, hairdresser, waiter and bootblack may all and each be a so-called divorcee. (For convenience sake, I speak of them all as "divorcees," although Webster defines a "divorcee" as a man or woman who has already obtained a divorce.) What is more, a great many of these people who are working are well fixed ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... soil, which instantly appeared on his high arched instep, marred the harmonious glitter of his boots. Sir Edward was fastidious. Casting his eyes around, at a little distance he perceived the stand of a youthful bootblack. Thither he sauntered, and carelessly placing his foot on the low stool, he waited the application of the polisher's art. "'Tis true," said Sir Edward to himself, yet half aloud, "the contact of the Foul and the Disgusting mars the general effect of the Shiny and the Beautiful—and, yet, ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... crossing than the young Arab who carried his bag. So, at one broad thoroughfare, the latter got safely across, while Robert was still on the other side waiting for a good opportunity to cross in turn. The bootblack, seeing that communication was for the present cut off by a long line of vehicles, was assailed by a sudden temptation. For his services as porter he would receive but twenty-five cents, while here was an opportunity ...
— Brave and Bold • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Bert found himself besieged by hackmen, representing different hotels. But he did not think it right to waste Uncle Jacob's money in unnecessary expense. He picked out a bootblack, and showing him the address of Mrs. Stubbs, asked: "Is ...
— Five Hundred Dollars - or, Jacob Marlowe's Secret • Horatio Alger
... and fortune." Every year they send back handsome sums to the expectant family. Business is an instinct with the Greek, and he has almost monopolized the ice cream, confectionery, and retail fruit business, the small florist shops and bootblack stands in scores of towns, and in every large city he is running successful restaurants. As a factory operative he is found in the cotton mills of New England, but he prefers merchandizing to ...
— Our Foreigners - A Chronicle of Americans in the Making • Samuel P. Orth
... servants, 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; ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton
... supposed demands of householders living out of town. The retail Mammon dethrones his proud wholesale rival. The sidewalk- or gutter-stand thrusts itself out in advance of the store. The peripatetic dealer in small wares, the newsboy, the apple-woman, the bootblack, and the mendicant marshal you the way. The whole vicinity acquires the look and stir of a bazaar. Baskets and paper parcels and travelling-bags are conspicuous and general. Perhaps you find yourself on the greasy edge of some huge market. The hacks accumulate like ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... leave it. Uncle rushed out and bought a pair of dogskin gloves, some ugly, thick shoes, and an umbrella, and got shaved a la mutton chop, the first thing. Then he flattered himself that he looked like a true Briton, but the first time he had the mud cleaned off his shoes, the little bootblack knew that an American stood in them, and said, with a grin, "There yer har, sir. I've given 'em the latest Yankee shine." It amused Uncle immensely. Oh, I must tell you what that absurd Lennox did! He got his friend Ward, who ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... all right. But if yer didn't have no pull I would advise yer to go back home. A feller widout a pull in New York can't do nuthin' nohow," and the bootblack gave an extra dash with his brush to emphasize ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield
... the other trim little houses around me. Was it actually possible that a man could starve in such a community? It seemed like a satanic joke. Why, every year this country was absorbing immigrants by the thousand. They did not go hungry. They waxed fat and prosperous. There was Pasquale, the bootblack, who was earning nearly as much as ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... human nature. When young the orphan is commonly sent to an asylum, where by careful cultivation of its rudimentary sense of locality it is taught to know its place. It is then instructed in the arts of dependence and servitude and eventually turned loose to prey upon the world as a bootblack ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... grades and the high school was intermittent. Often he had to stop for months at a time to earn money for their living. In turn he was newsboy, bootblack, and messenger boy. He drove a delivery wagon for a grocer, ushered at a theater, was even a copyholder in the proofroom of a newspaper. Hard work kept him thin, but he was like ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... the case with Mr. Robinson Asbury. Mr. Asbury had started life as a bootblack in the growing town of Cadgers. From this he had risen one step and become porter and messenger in a barber-shop. This rise fired his ambition, and he was not content until he had learned to use the shears and the razor and had a chair of his own. From this, in a man of Robinson's ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... entering the captain's presence. The keen, good-looking face was warm and moist as the result of a most violent soaping. He wore corduroy riding-breeches, cavalry boots that betrayed their age in spite of a late polishing at the hands of an energetic and carefully directed bootblack, and a broad leather belt from which only half an eye was required to see that a holster had been detached with a becoming regard for neatness. His hair was thick and sun-bleached; his eyes, dark and unafraid, ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... office-boy hums it, The book-keeper drums it, It's whistled by all on the street; The hand-organ grinds it, The music-box winds it, It's sung by the "cop" on the beat. The newsboy, he spouts it, The bootblack, he shouts it, The washwoman sings it all wrong; And I laugh, and I weep, And I wake, and I sleep, To the ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Jimmy, only I lent 'em both to a bootblack of my acquaintance who's going to attend a ball ...
— Mark Mason's Victory • Horatio Alger
... "Kid's" sponge, sponge-holder, pal, Mentor and Grand Vizier, drew him out to the bootblack stand at the saloon corner where all the official and important matters of the Small Hours Social Club were settled. As Tony polished the light tan shoes of the club's President and Secretary for the fifth time that day, Burke spake words of wisdom ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... all his niceties of conduct; he sat in holy rapture with the toy between his paws, took it to bed with him, ate it in the night, and searched for it so longingly next day that I had to go out and buy him the man with the scythe. After that we had everything of note, the bootblack boy, the toper with bottle, the woolly rabbit that squeaks when you hold it in your mouth; they all vanished as inexplicably as the lady, but I dared not tell him my suspicions, for he suspected also and his gentle heart ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... Good Lord! I couldn't have believed that any fellow could have thought any other fellow could be such a fool as he thought I was. He went perfectly crazy after a month or so and ordered me about and patronised me as if I was a bootblack he meant to teach something to. So at last I had a talk with Lily and told her I was going to put an end to it. Of course she cried and was half frightened to death, but by that time he had ill-used her so that she only wanted to get rid of him. So I sent ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... gave me the slip and was gone, and I wandered into the office of the hotel. A newsboy sold me a paper, and the next minute a bootblack wanted to give me a shine. Well, I took a seat for a shine, and for two hours I sat there as full as a tick, and as dignified as a judge on the bench. All the newsboys and bootblacks caught on, and before any of the outfit showed up that morning to rescue me, I had bought a dozen papers and had ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... tailor, a bootblack, a physician, and a detective are standing on the street corner as you pass by. What will each one be most likely to observe ...
— The Mind and Its Education • George Herbert Betts
... of Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the matter of woman's rights and equal rights, but my sentiments are tinged a little against The Revolution. There was in the address to which I allude the employment of certain names, such as "Sambo," and the gardener, and the bootblack, and the daughters of Jefferson and Washington, and all the rest that I can not coincide with. I have asked what difference there is between the daughters of Jefferson and Washington and other daughters. (Laughter.) I must say that I do not see how any one can pretend ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... found on the battle-fields of Europe to-day. There we men are finding ourselves in that we are finding true sympathy with our brother man. We have everything in common. We have the hardship of the trench, and the nearness of death. The man of title, the Bachelor of Arts, the bootblack, the lumberjack and the millionaire's son meet on common ground. We wear the same uniform, we think the same thoughts, we do not remember what we were, we only know what we are—soldiers fighting in ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... A little bootblack and a water-boy held the places now, and occasionally begged for custom from any one ...
— Rafael in Italy - A Geographical Reader • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... Carter, and that he cannot remember ever having a father or a mother. I questioned him very closely this morning. He comes from the worst of the Chicago slums. He slept in the cellar of one of its poorest tenement houses, and lived in the gutters. He has a brother only a little older, who is a bootblack. On days when shines were plentiful they had something to eat, ...
— Two Little Knights of Kentucky • Annie Fellows Johnston
... An Italian bootblack who already owns several bootblacking establishments in this country, was trained to a beggar's life in Italy, and ran away. "Now and then I had heard things about America—that it was a far-off country where everybody was rich ...
— Aliens or Americans? • Howard B. Grose
... grocer is our bootblack, who has set up a sturdy but shabby throne to catch the business off the "L." How majestically one sits aloft here with outstretched toe, for all the world like the Pope offering his saintly toe for a sinner's kiss. The robe pontifical, the triple crown! Or, ...
— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks
... proved by the fact that every square foot of floor space and ground is put to some practical use, and one finds cobblers, barbers, fortune-tellers and a multitude of small tradesmen carrying on a business in a jog, or niche in the wall, not as large as an ordinary bootblack's stand. Along the narrow sidewalks are seen many of these curbstone merchants. Some have their goods displayed in glass show-cases, ranged along the wall, where are exhibited queer-looking fancy articles of Chinese workmanship, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... won't give me a job," said the bootblack. "My taxes comes due to-day, and I ain't got ...
— The Errand Boy • Horatio Alger
... nothing against them. I suppose I do not understand them. If I had an opportunity to study them—but I have no opportunities at anything. It is a new experience to me to be so—so disregarded by the general scheme of things. I seem to be of no more consequence in this place than a bootblack was in the world, or a paralytic person. It seems useless for me to fly in the face of fate, since this is fate. I have no hope of being able to reach my wife. You have privileges in this condition which are evidently far superior to mine. I have been thinking that ...
— The Gates Between • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... him", said Tom, "unless he should prefer to go to New York and set up as a bootblack. I believe ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr. |
