"Grime" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for himself. He began making tours of the city, discovering New York, laying bare the confusion and ugliness and grime and crime and poverty of a great industrial center. He poked into the Ghetto, into Chinatown, Greenwich Village, and Little Italy; he peered into jails, asylums, and workhouses; he sneaked through factories ...
— The Nine-Tenths • James Oppenheim
... Almost the very first thing. It clears my brain of city noise and sights and grime. It soothes my nerves. Nothing does that like our keen air ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... camp of the regulars who had taken part in the fight. On one side stood a Colonel, who himself had aimed a Hotchkiss gun in the last battle—covered with grime and sweat, and with the passion of battle not quite gone from his eyes; and across the road soldiers were digging one long grave. Grafton pushed on a little further, and on the top of the ridge and on the grassy sunlit knoll ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... pungent vapor many groups of men, men half-naked, perspiring; their glistening bodies smeared and stained with the grime of conflict. ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... about noon to find clothes laid out for them, the immaculate white clothes which the tropics require. They were led to a high-ceilinged bathroom cool with glazed, white bricks which lined it, where the two servants poured over them bucket after bucket of cold water, and the grime of the voyage and the labors in the fireroom and the mighty weariness of their muscles disappeared little by little in slow degrees. Then a shave, then the white clothes, and they were ready for presentation to Senor Jose, ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... dealer whom, in one of the back streets of Chatham, the keen eyes of the precocious child, seeming to look at nothing, had curiously watched hovering like a hideous spider on the pounce behind his grime-encrusted window. ...
— Dickens-Land • J. A. Nicklin
... a genial temperament, Phoebe soon grew to be absolutely essential to the daily comfort, if not the daily life, of her two forlorn companions. The grime and sordidness of the House of the Seven Gables seemed to have vanished since her appearance there; the gnawing tooth of the dry-rot was stayed among the old timbers of its skeleton frame; the dust had ceased to settle down so densely, from the antique ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... smallest part of the horror. A man with a sensitive hide has no right to sleep in dak- bungalows. He should marry. Katmal dak-bungalow was old and rotten and unrepaired. The floor was of worn brick, the walls were filthy, and the windows were nearly black with grime. It stood on a bypath largely used by native Sub-Deputy Assistants of all kinds, from Finance to Forests; but real Sahibs were rare. The khansamah, who was nearly bent double ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... that echoed to the deafening din of some riveters at work on her sides. Though short and stout, she was nine thousand tons. Hideous, she was practical, as practical as a factory. In her the romance of the sea was buried and choked in smoke and steam, in grime, dirt, noise and a regular haste. One morning as her din increased and the black, sooty breath of her came drifting in through our window, my father rose abruptly and ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... least, never anticipated it. I never anticipated the part I was to play. I never anticipated that I should come to hanging about rehearsals, waiting, bored and frozen, behind the scenes, breathing in the smut and grime of the theatre, making friends with all sorts of utterly unpresentable persons.... Making friends, did I say?— cringing slavishly upon them. I never anticipated that I should carry a ballet-dancer's shawl; buy her her new gloves, clean her old ones with bread-crumbs (I did even ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... him and walked on. He was making real progress. He had at last found someone who acknowledged that there was something up there above eye-level. The others—old lost children, figures of scab and grime—had been unaware of anything but inner cavities of craving and fear above the sidewalk firmament of trodden gum disks, sputum stars and the ends ...
— In the Control Tower • Will Mohler
... presented so comical a spectacle that his stalwart rescuer had to lay him down and laugh until the tears rolled down his cheeks. Mrs. Lloyd, too, relieved from all anxiety, and feeling a reaction from her first fright, could not help following his example. His face, black with grime, which was furrowed with tears, his hands even blacker, his nice clothes smutched and soiled, and indeed, his whole appearance suggested a little chimney-sweep that had forgotten to put on his working clothes before going to business. Bert certainly ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... that morning in putting the machine to rights. You ought to have seen the man that took my hat, which he did with the air of a person receiving pearls and diamonds on a golden platter, and smudged his lordly fingers with the grime of my Fourth of July. And that darling of a girl, who never noticed my discomfiture, but whose eyes sparkled at times with a hidden merriment—shall I ever forget her as she sat there and helped me to mutton-chops from simply priceless old Charles ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handy work," comes that rare time when the spirit—unconsciously worshipping—is uplifted in an ecstasy of wonder and joy, who then can but pity the dull eye ever abased to the grime of ...
— Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration - Norwich, July 5th, 1913 • James Hooper
... Stonewall, grey, grey, with gleaming steel, with glints of red, pouring from the woods, through the fields—the Pennsylvanians, working the battery, did not laugh; they were pale, perhaps, beneath the powder grime. But pale or sanguine they bravely served their guns and threw their canister, well directed, against the mediaeval engines ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... dusted the chair with his handkerchief, and sat down, nursing one silk-clad ankle across his knee, in order not to expose more of his garments than was necessary to the grime of Mr. Gooch's abode. ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... glass, as I say, is mostly overladen with grime; but the circular windows in the dome seem to be magnificent in design. They are attributed to Ghiberti and Donatello, and are lovely in colour. The greens in particular are very striking. But the jewel of these circular windows of Florence is that by Ghiberti ...
— A Wanderer in Florence • E. V. Lucas
... seven years before, thought exactly as she does now, and who occasionally thinks so still. "Who that ever lived for six months among all its grime and smoke and turmoil but would pine ...
— Molly Bawn • Margaret Wolfe Hamilton
... weeping over the body of the dead. The fine cast of the Lion of Chaeronea should also be brought up, and so should the stele with the marvellous portrait of the Roman slave. Economy is an excellent public virtue, but the parsimony that allows valuable works of art to remain in the grime and gloom of a damp cellar is little short of a ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... Young Graham paid no attention to anything going on about him. He seemed occupied as usual with his own thoughts solely. First he dug cinders out of his blinking eyes. Then he rubbed the coating of grime and soot from his face, and began groping in his pockets. Very ruefully he turned out one particular inside coat pocket. He shook his head ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... the good priest of the little place, Father Serapion, disguised in overalls and the honest grime of his labour; like a true Benedictine, praying with his strong and skilful hands. He was down from his roof in a moment, a youngish man with the face of a practical dreamer, strangely happy-looking ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... the archway of a manufactory exchanged rude but admiring remarks about her as she passed. The paces of the cob, the dazzle of the silver-plated harness, the fine lines of the cart, the unbending mien of the driver, made a glittering cynosure for envy. All around was grime, squalor, servitude, ugliness; the inglorious travail of two hundred thousand people, above ground and below it, filled the day and the night. But here, as it were suddenly, out of that earthy and laborious bed, rose the blossom of luxury, grace, and leisure, the final elegance ...
— Leonora • Arnold Bennett
... allowance came, the question was what to do with them. They were too precious for use. What should I do with those scraps of white on that field of grime? Our gaunt horror became grotesque, in view of such unwonted luxuries. What! A whole dozen or two little straw pillows among one hundred and sixty men! Who should elect the aristocrats to be cradled in such luxury ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... sheriff stepped to the side of the bed, the latter gently withdrew the covering and disclosed a peaceful face, from which every trace of grime and smoke ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... fair wind for all, thank God!" said Emanuel Pyecroft, throwing back the cowl-like hood of his blanket coat. His face was pitted with coal-dust and grime, pallid for lack of sleep; but his eyes shone ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... "line," he saw things stripped to the buff, saw life and death in all their nakedness. The veneer of so-called civilization has been worn off, and the real man shows through. That, to my mind, is why friendships made amid the blood, mud, hunger, and grime of the trenches are friendships that will endure through life. It is there Man meets Man, and admires him. I have met men in the trenches to whom, had I met them in ordinary life, I would not have given a second thought. When they ...
— Through St. Dunstan's to Light • James H. Rawlinson
... and the ball were given on a first floor above a wineshop in the Rue de Charenton. It was a large room, lighted by oil lamps with tin reflectors. A row of wooden benches ran round the walls, which were black with grime to the height of the tables. Here some eighty persons, all in their Sunday best, tricked out with ribbons and bunches of flowers, all of them on pleasure bent, were dancing away with heated visages as if the world were about to come to an end. ...
— Facino Cane • Honore de Balzac
... dismissed she began to realise all this. She was glad he was away from it. She was glad he was going to sea. It would be a complete change. It would do him good. He had been fiddling about too long at the Works, in his overalls and in the grime and oil and general dodginess of the place. The ship would take him about, and show him the way people did things. It would open his eyes and his brains. Electrically, something self-protective within her added the further message: it would keep him out of the way for a time. Sally breathed ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... you. His shoes all shined and a clean collar on and his face carefully shaved at home. But his hands wouldn't wash clean. The shop grime lingers on his hands and in his broken nails. But his eyes are blue and he's going to sing. The boys at the shop know his songs. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... more. The road was very much like the one by which they had approached the town, pleasant and shady, and with a tiny brook running along the side. Marjorie bent over the little stream to wash the grime of the city from her hands, and then stopped for a moment to splash the bright drops upon some thirsty flowers growing on the bank and leaning as far over as they could. While she was doing this, she heard the sound of a ...
— By the Roadside • Katherine M. Yates
... bestowed by nature, and grime artificially acquired, Jimmy Anstice was a well-looking lad, and added a distinct note of human interest to the barren flats, as he stood, spade in hand, staring ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... I came upon seated astride of an empty cask, with his musket across his knees. His cap was gone, and his hair was awry; he was scarcely recognizable for a mask of perspiration and powder grime. ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... order, but not only was there an absence of smartness and neatness, but there was not the smallest trace or cleanliness to be seen anywhere. On the contrary, in every corner one was struck by neglect, dirt, grime; here a pane of glass was broken, there the plaster was coming off; in another place the boards were loose; in a third, a door gaped wide open. A large filthy puddle covered with a coating of rainbow-coloured slime stood in the middle of the ...
— Virgin Soil • Ivan S. Turgenev
... for yer, Tim,—ther, ther Mayflowers. They're close by; don't yer smell 'em? Close by—I'm goin'—to find 'em for yer, Tim!" And with a radiant smile of anticipation Becky's soul went out upon its happy quest, leaving behind her the grime and ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... long, muddy, dirty, sordid, gas-lit dreariness of Oxford Street as his dingy four-wheeler dragged its weary way to Charing Cross. He did notice one peculiarity about it worth remembering. London was still London. A certain style dignified its grime; heavy, clumsy, arrogant, purse-proud, but not cheap; insular but large; barely tolerant of an outside world, and absolutely self-confident. The boys in the streets made such free comments on the American clothes and figures, that the travellers ...
— The Education of Henry Adams • Henry Adams
... a sturdy man in a jumper and overalls, his face smeared with grime, peered cautiously around a bulkhead, and seeing nobody, stepped quickly to the side of the vessel, bearing a limp and spineless figure in a black frock and silk hat. With a dextrous movement, he cast ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... her vigorous arm. The roof seemed lower and more smoke-blackened than ever, but the hearth was cold, and he noticed that no supper was laid. Filomena led him into the bailiff's parlour, where a mortal chill seized him. Cobwebs hung from the walls, the window-panes were broken and caked with grime, and the few green twigs which Giannozzo presently threw on the hearth poured a cloud of smoke ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... end of the last sitting she looked round the dismal place—it had discoloured, uneven, bulging whitewashed walls, an unutterably dirty loose plank floor, and a skylight patched with maps of hideous worlds on Mercator's projection, and was furnished with packing cases and grime and the sacking which was Cazalet's bed—and sighed wistfully, as if she had been an unoffending Eve thrust ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... covered with dust, his face streaked with grime and sweat, and the short beard that he wore still further transformed him. But it seemed that a look of recognition struggled with the terror ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... from a light green to a dark olive, with a degree of transparency equal to that of wax and susceptible of a fine polish. By some writers it is called a black stone; but this colour may have been given to it by frequent handling when in use, and by the grime of age since. It was called by the Romans, from the use made of it in fabricating measures of weight, lapis aequipondus, and from its supposed efficacy in the cure of diseases of the kidneys lapis nephriticus. ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... and Albert turned instantly, and beheld the strangest specimen of humanity that either had ever seen. An unmistakable tramp, with a pale, sickly face, covered partly with grime and partly with stubby black beard, stood leaning with his arms on top of the wall, looking down at them. Although it was summer, he wore a greasy winter cap, and his coat, too, spoke of many rough journeys through dirt and bad weather. His ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... the grime on them helped to conceal activities within by a sort of ground-glass effect. But Vaniman could see well enough to understand what was going on. Every once in a while a canvas flap came over in a half circle across Vaniman's line of vision through ...
— When Egypt Went Broke • Holman Day
... the bathtub. More sharp than the distinction between labor and capital or between socialism and despotism is that between the people who bathe daily and those who go to the tub only on Saturday night or less often. The people with whom personal cleanliness is a habit find dirt, grime, and sweat revolting. To them "the great unwashed" ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... bristle on his unkempt head; it shone in the unhealthy gloss of his battered hat; it wallowed on the stock that clung around his dirty neck; it glistened in the grease on his dingy clothes; it starved on his thin, claw-like hands; it flourished in the grime imbedded under his nails; it creaked in his worn-out, down-trodden shoes. Men, as he shambled by on the streets, unconsciously muttered, "Beast!" women, shrinking from him, whispered, "Beast!" between ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... the empty, dimly lit theatre, swathed and bandaged in dust-sheets, looked ominously dreary. Had any one ever laughed in this shrouded desert? The long lines of stalls huddled under their wrinkled coverings stretched before and behind her. The boxes were shapeless holes of pallid grime. It was as if a London fog had trailed its dingy veil over everything. There was a fog outside as well, and the few electric lights which had been turned up peered blurred and yellow. An immense ladder, three ladders tied together, reared itself from the stalls to the roof. Something was being ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... slenderly elegant carriage of a Prussian officer was not disguised even by his shapeless wreck of a naval lieutenant's uniform, a man with a countenance of singularly unpleasant cast, leaving out of all consideration the grease and grime that discoloured it. His narrow forehead slanted back just a trace too sharply, his nose was thin and overlong, his mouth thin and cruel beneath its ambitious mustache a la Kaiser; his small black eyes, set much too close together, blazed ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... pictures of lovely women and men of the nobility in their fine clothes, or of wonderful saints and angels, and pictures showing only the happier side of life. To them Millet's pictures came as a shock, bringing to mind the dirt and grime of the common, everyday tasks of the poorer French peasants. And, more than that, he made them realize the dreadful condition in which the French Revolution had left many of these same peasants, and that was something of which they did not care to be reminded. So they refused to buy his ...
— Stories Pictures Tell - Book Four • Flora L. Carpenter
... memorable field of Bannockburn and reached the Torwood, a place glorious or terrible to the recollections of the Scottish peasant, as the feats of Wallace or the cruelties of Wude Willie Grime predominate in his recollection. At Falkirk, a town formerly famous in Scottish history, and soon to be again distinguished as the scene of military events of importance, Balmawhapple proposed to halt and repose for the evening. ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... met us and took us to an uncle's. We did not stop to wash the grime of travel from our faces until after we had filled our stomachs. Once refreshed with food, our religion returned to us, in the desire to be clean and to establish a household. I learned then that food is the first thing in the world. Cleanliness may be ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis
... getting ready for that journey to Beckenham, happy in the idea of escaping from the monotonous unfriendly streets, and the grime and mire and general dinginess of London life, when an unlooked-for calamity befell them, and the prospect of release had, for the time at least, to be given up. Young Lovel fell ill. He was "about his teeth," the woman of the house said, and tried to make light of the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... table, while in one corner was the heap of evil-smelling, dirty linen. Cockroaches appeared in the crevices of the woodwork, the wall-paper bulged from the damp walls and began to peel. Trina had long ago ceased to dust or to wipe the furniture with a bit of rag. The grime grew thick upon the window panes and in the corners of the room. All the filth of the alley invaded their quarters like a rising ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... so grand without this drapery of black." Since we are told that the cost of the building was defrayed by a tax on all coals brought into the port of London, it gets its blackness by right. This grime is at all events a well-established fact, which has to ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun
... old man's mouth. From them arose exhalations of stagnant wood, decaying stairways; of bodies from which the sweats of lust and work were never washed. Soft bubbling alleys under a stiff sun. The stench like a grime leadened the air. Something to think about in places like this. Revolution crawling up and down soft alleys ... something in the mud ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... Nature's hand seemed against man, and man had succumbed to her power. Inside the camps one felt a still more cruel desolation—that of sordidness and animalism. There were a few pitiful attempts at vegetable-gardens, but the cinders and smoke killed everything, and the prevailing colour was of grime. The landscape was strewn with ash-heaps, old wire and tomato-cans, and smudged ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... his face, hoping the grime there—a mixture of road dust, sweat, and powder blacking—was an effective disguise. No use recalling the old days for Mr. McKeever. Allowing his shoulders to slump dispiritedly as he was herded by his file guard, he rode sullenly on to ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... had once been white cotton drill, but the whiteness had long before given up the unequal struggle against grime and grease and subsided to a less conspicuous, less perishable grey. They had been cut off just below the knees and, unhemmed, hung flapping with every step he took above a stretch of white-socked, spindly shanks. But it was the coat he wore which held ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... about to lift him, when he stirred, opened his eyes, and sat up of his own accord. He appeared about five years of age. He might have been a handsome child, but hardship and poor feeding had taken away his infantile plumpness, and he looked old and haggard, even beneath the grime on his face. The kindly woman lifted him up and began to ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... must save them again; they are about to be dragged from the shanctity of the home, from the altar of the fireside, into the grime and dirt of publicity. There is a movement on foot to thrust the ballot, gentlemen, into their unsteady hands! My God! My God! where is your gallantry and courage? Where is your manhood that you think of giving these gentle creatures your work to do, ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... shriek, Between teeth set; I fling an arm up, Scramble up the grime Over the parapet! I'm up. Go on. Something meets us. Head down into the storm that ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... trifle stolid, and something gruff, Yet, though unpolished, of sturdy stuff. With grave grey eyes, and a knitted brow, The glare of sun and the gleam of snow Those eyes have stared on this many a year. The crow's-feet gather in mazes queer About their corners most apt to choke With grime of fuel and fume of smoke. Little to tickle the artist taste— An oil-can, a fist-full of "cotton waste," The lever's click and the furnace gleam, And the mingled odour of oil and steam; These are the matters that fill the brain Of the Man in ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... half a dozen persons of this class, to whom towns were genuinely abhorrent. They would come to London once or twice in their lives, visit certain market towns in their district at intervals, and escape back into the country with the joy of wild birds liberated from a cage. The mere grime and dirt of cities horrified them; they were suffocated in the close air, and they were driven half distracted by the clamour of the streets. These men lived, upon the whole, lives of not immoderate labour: or, as one might say, of sober ease, They possessed little ...
— The Quest of the Simple Life • William J. Dawson
... uncovered floor. The birch-log walls had been rudely panelled with match-boarding half-way up, which was a somewhat unusual luxury, but the half-seasoned boards had rent with the heat, and exuded streaks of resin to which the grime and dust had clung. A pail, which apparently contained potato peelings, stood amidst a litter of old long boots and broken harness against one wall, and the floor was black and thick with grease all round the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... already swaggered into the room. The long and arduous search throughout the house had not improved either his temper or his personal appearance. He was more covered with grime than he had been before, and his narrow forehead had almost disappeared beneath the tangled mass of his ill-kempt hair, which he had perpetually tugged forward and roughed up in ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... rain, he noticed the innumerable bell-handles, with names that seemed about to vanish of old age graven on brass plates beneath them, and here and there a richly carved penthouse overhung the door, blackening with the grime of fifty years. The storm seemed to grow more and more furious; he was wet through, and a new hat had become a ruin, and still Oxford Street seemed as far off as ever; it was with deep relief that the dripping man caught sight of a dark ...
— The House of Souls • Arthur Machen
... furniture and disgrace her house, and bade the fellow carry us into the kitchen to take off our cloaks and change our boots for slip-shoes, adding that if we had any respect for ourselves, we should trim our hair and wash the grime off our faces. So we enter the kitchen, nothing loath, where a couple of pullets browning on the spit, kettles bubbling on the fire, and a pasty drawing from the oven, filled the air with delicious odours that nearly drove us mad for envy; and to think that these good ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... the others in reaching the house, for I had delayed about some last arrangements for Leon's comfort, and then it had been necessary that I should make a hasty toilet. Hands and face were soiled with blood and grime (my purple velvets I feared were ruined forever, but I would not take the time to change them), and my hair was in much disorder. A hasty scrubbing of hands and face and a retying of my hair-ribbon to try to confine the rebellious yellow curls that were ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... not too safe. Murphy was killed there one afternoon, and Claude Grime badly wounded later on. Claude caused a good deal of amusement. He had a rooted objection to putting on clothes and wore only a hat, pants, boots and his smile. Consequently his body became quite mahogany-coloured. When he was wounded he was put under ...
— Five Months at Anzac • Joseph Lievesley Beeston
... And spake not, neither sighed nor made a moan. Saw from the blood of heroes roses spring, And where the clangor of steel-sinewed War Roared o'er embattled rage, heard gentle Peace To bleating hills and vales of rustling gold Flute her glad notes from morn till even-tide. Grim with the grime of a thousand years he stood— Grand in his silence, mighty in his years. Under his shade the maid and lover wooed; Under his arms their children's children played And lambkins gamboled; at his feet by night The heart-sick wanderer laid him down and ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... he struck the woods, for there was shade; but the air was more sultry and the added exertion of climbing started the perspiration and turned the coating of dust to sticky grime. Still the breeze delayed, and the fragrant odors of the woods were cloying. His luggage grew heavier and yet more heavy; his arm and ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... pathos of his sunken cheeks and prominent eyes. As he took the lamp, the light fell on his bulging forehead and wide skull thinly covered with grayish hair. His hands were pale and broad, with knotty joints and square finger-tips rimmed with grime; but his touch was as light ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... of stars that rolled in grime. All glory twinkled through some sweat of fight, From each tall chimney of the roaring time That shot his fire far up the sooty night Mixt fuels — Labor's Right and Labor's Crime — Sent upward throb on throb of scarlet light Till huge hot blushes in the heavens blent With golden ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... the crowds of sweethearts and wives and sisters and mothers and watched them march away through the dust and heat and grime of the Southern summer, drums throbbing, banners streaming, bayonets flashing ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... brick- making going on along the spruit, with the mud-streaked niggers standing knee-deep in the water, packing the wet dirt into the boxes, and spilling them out to be baked in the sun or fired, as the case might be. There was too much grime and discomfort to it ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... out of the Oakland Creek channel and the mist suddenly thinned before us. It left the bay and the city fair and wholesome in the gray light, as though the storm had washed the grime and foulness from air and earth and renewed the freshness of life. The clear outline of the hills was scarcely broken by smoke. The ever-changing beauties of the most beautiful of bays took on the faint suggestion of a livelier ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... Frederick, who is tending slowly, as it seems to me, towards an as yet sufficiently remote ninth birthday, had been vigorously and successfully scrubbed till he shone with an unwonted absence of grime; his hair had been temporarily battened down; his Eton collar was speckless, and his knickerbocker suit, while not aggressively new, was appropriate and free from visible rents. I cannot say he was impressed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CL, April 26, 1916 • Various
... knew Ike Webb was thinking of what Vogel had told him. Vogel was a gifted but admittedly erratic genius from the metropolis who had come upon us as angels sometimes do—unawares—two weeks before, with cinders in his ears and the grime of a dusty right-of-way upon his collar. He had worked for the sheet two weeks and then, on a Saturday night, had borrowed what sums of small change he could and under cover of friendly night had moved on to parts unknown, leaving us ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... these excursions. It was a joy to see her drink in the fragrance of the flowers and the fir trees or study the various cloud formations and the alternating scenes of the landscape. When she did this she was like a bird gliding along on noiseless wing in the upper regions, far removed from the grime of the earth, bathing in the undefiled ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... Selim were working in the museum on the second floor, scrubbing the grime from the glass cases, noting contents, and grease-penciling numbers; Lattimer and a couple of Space Force officers were going through what had been the administrative offices on the other side. It was one of these, a young second lieutenant, who came hurrying in from the mezzanine, almost ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper
... know, are perpetual and copious contributors, either to the heating apparatus or to the contents of the pot. Let grander similes besought. This one fits for the smoky receptacle cherishing millions, magnetic to tens of millions more, with its caked outside of grime, and the inward substance incessantly kicking the lid, prankish, but never casting it off. A good stew, you perceive; not a parlous boiling. Weak as we may be in our domestic cookery, our political has been sagaciously adjusted as yet to catch the ardours of the furnace ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... little annoyed during the course of the evening because this man, Babcock, persisted in pawing over the plans with dirty hands. They declare that the marks of both thumbs are to be seen on drawings, not in plain dust and grime, ...
— The Call of the Beaver Patrol - or, A Break in the Glacier • V. T. Sherman
... impelled me to obey. He clambered in and shut the window behind him. Then, turning to face me, I encountered a double shock. The lameness had gone; the figure was erect; the face, in spite of its grime, was youthful and handsome! That was the first shock. The second was even greater. For I suddenly recognised in the form that stood before me my old acquaintance, ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... of the chaliced centre, From the amorous anthers' golden grime, That scorch and smutch all wings that enter, I fly forth hot ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Good Lord knew That man would want something to do When worn and wearied with the stress Of battling hard for world success. When sick at heart of all the strife And pettiness of daily life, He knew he'd need, from time to time, To cleanse himself of city grime, And he would want some place to be Where hate and greed he'd never see. And so on lakes and streams and brooks The Good Lord ...
— Just Folks • Edgar A. Guest
... wash the grime from his face, to cleanse the wound on his head, and readjust the bandage. Then his hands, after another trip to the stream to rub out the soiled end of the towel; and she was still busy with one of them, when she started back with a cry. His coat had opened wider, and she saw that his shirt was ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... blaze of hostile arms, every rifle sighted by savage, vengeful foe. "Check it, lads, ten yards out!" shouted Ray, to his gallant fellows, now lost in the smoke, while he again rushed across the front to meet the charging Sioux. With his brave young face all grime, Field was already at work, guiding, urging, aiding his little band. "Both hands! Both hands!" he cried, as, wielding his folded blanket, he smote the fringe of flame. "Stamp it out! Great ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... held to be safe beyond a doubt; it may have been merely that these men had for nearly twelve hours been achieving and repeating the impossible, the heroic, and that this last blow had been more than they could bear. Their faces were gray beneath the smoke and grime, their eyes stung and smarted almost unendurably from the heat and smoke and their long vigil; and now for the first time since this whirling maelstrom had engulfed them, they were finding the opportunity to realize that human endurance is ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... wind, pavement glistening in the flickering light of street lamps. A dismal morning to be setting off to the sea! Portent of head winds and foul weather that we may meet in Channel before the last of Glasgow's grime and smoke-wrack is ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... bent upon drowning myself, none of the Bandokolo, it appeared, possessing the slightest knowledge of natation. My use of soap, too, and the facility with which by its aid I was enabled to remove the dust and grime accumulated during the day's travel, was another revelation to him; as was also the comb wherewith I arranged my now much too luxuriant locks. My bath towels likewise came in for a share of his admiration; ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... it,' broke out Charles. 'Let's look! yes, I protest, why, the old grime between his eyes is gone after all. How ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were found in deserted monasteries, marbles were digged up in buried palaces. Men came back from their journeys with some lovely terra cotta, some ivory or bronze, some painting by an old master, whose beauty had been hidden for centuries under smoke and grime. The enthusiasm of the collectors exceeds the zest of men searching for gold and diamonds amid the ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... whole is thought a happy time, Its praise is often sounded; 'Tis told in books, 'tis sung in rhyme, In every age and every clime; Of youth and manhood 'tis the prime, Except when on the sordid grime ...
— Harper's Young People, June 1, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Stokes-Harding, noted author of primitive life and love, ate a hearty meal with his pretty spouse, after they had washed off the grime of another planet. He spent the ...
— The Cosmic Express • John Stewart Williamson
... work he found the bath and the magic soap all ready for him, and he began to wash off the grime and dirt and soot of the smithy. When he was through, and came out of the bath, he had grown wonderfully bright and handsome, for the magic soap had made his cheeks rosy and his eyes bright as moonlight. Then he put on ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... Prendergast, and showed him the letter. Then we called the engineer and asked about the coal. He had not been into the bunkers, but went and returned with his face white, through the black grime, to report "not four days' consumption." By some cursed accident, he said, the bunkers had been filled with ...
— If, Yes and Perhaps - Four Possibilities and Six Exaggerations with Some Bits of Fact • Edward Everett Hale
... Aldgate and had gone some distance in the direction of Whitechapel, and the new scene had a character of its own. Both felt the spirit of toil here, where the grime of industry struck a coarser ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... the city he met the heavy carts of rustics, laden with cages of geese and crates of produce, moving slowly in from the wide highways of the Memphian nome. The broad backs of the oxen were gray with dust and their drivers were masked in grime. ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... in 'ot towels, and leave yer five minutes to bake, And that's the "Aix Douche," as they call it. I call it the funniest fake In the way of a bath I 'ave met with; but, bless yer, it passes the time, And I shan't want a tub for a fortnit when back in Old Babbylon's grime. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... be a great student of human nature. I went, every day, to study these domestic groups; at first they did not attract the crowd; but later it was next to impossible to get at them. Every one was taken from life, and you see the grime on their knuckles. Almost every face expressed strong and agreeable character. There were very few good and a great many had pictures. Of statuary "The Forced Prayer" was very popular; the child has his hands folded, ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... till we landed on the railway pier. My first experience of American travel was not attractive. The crazy old craft puffed and snorted furiously, but failed to persuade any one that she was doing eight miles an hour; the grime of many years lay thick on her dusky timbers—dust under cover, and mud where the wet swept in, and her close, dark cabins were stifling enough to make you, after five minutes of vapor-bathing, plunge eagerly into the bitter weather outside. Indeed, there was not much to see, for the track lies ...
— Border and Bastille • George A. Lawrence
... grime of the Flats, a woman sat on the doorstep of a wretched house. Her rounded shoulders slouched wearily—her tired hands were folded in her lap. She stared with dull, listless eyes at the squalid homes of her neighbors across the street. The Interpreter had described ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... streets of that dingy place, and her way, which she was not quite sure of, took her through some of the worst of them. They were filled with loud-laughing uncleanly women, and skulking hang-dog- looking men, and the grime-clogged atmosphere was heavy with foul odours; but she noticed nothing of this. The golden glow the sun made in his efforts to shine through the clouds of smoke might have been a visible expression of her own ecstatic feeling, and ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... cooing, chirping, carolling upon his lips. And all they sang about was love—love—love—a father's love for his delightful daughter. Sweet and pure and wholly lovely was the melody which filled the room and held the charming woman it was meant for spellbound; held the little slavey from the grime of London as one hypnotized upon her chair; sang its way out of the window, down into the grimy court between this dingy tenement and the whole row of dingy tenements which faced the other street, and made ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... up toward the spot of fiery light overhead. Across the floor of the courtyard went an endless procession of people, light-shy creatures who emerged from the womb of the "Ark" or disappeared into it. Most of them were women, weirdly clad, unwholesomely pale, but with a layer of grime as though the darkness had worked into their skins, with drowsy steps and ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... call a fresh-water wash. The same bucket, to be sure, had to go through several hands, and was spoken for by one after another, but as we rinsed off in salt water, pure from the ocean, and the fresh was used only to start the accumulated grime and blackness of five weeks, it was ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... and gentleness. Their mothers had been "pit-girls" in their time, their grandmothers in theirs; they had been born in coarse homes; they had fared hardly, and worked hard; they had breathed in the dust and grime of coal, and, somehow or other, it seemed to stick to them and reveal itself in their natures as it did in their bold unwashed faces. At first one shrank from them, but one's shrinking could not fail to change to pity. There was no ...
— That Lass O' Lowrie's - 1877 • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... face, and his uniform was streaked with the smoke and sweat of battle, but the face beneath the grime, and the hands that reached to embrace and pound the flyer upon the back, could be only those of one he had ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... could talk of the sweet valleys of County Monaghan from which he came, of the lovely, distant island, the low hills and green meadows of which seemed the more beautiful when imagination viewed them from this place of grime and snow. ...
— The Valley of Fear • Arthur Conan Doyle
... less than ever a gentleman at five o'clock in the morning, was another. Mannix retained, in spite of his sleepiness and his sensation of grime, a slight amount of self-control. He was moderately grateful to an obsequious sailor who relieved him of his kit bag. He carried, as he had the night before, his own gun-case and fishing-rod. The elderly gentleman, ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... guess with what feelings I have just made the discovery that my berth is in the same closet with those engaged by Professor Woodensconce, Mr. Slug, and Professor Grime. Professor Woodensconce has taken the shelf above me, and Mr. Slug and Professor Grime the two shelves opposite. Their luggage has already arrived. On Mr. Slug's bed is a long tin tube of about three inches in diameter, ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... the paper from her, and said: "that is a crest shining through the different strata of dust and grime, probably that of his own family. We'll have it cleaned, and it will enable us to track the villain. You want him punished, don't you?" he said, with a little, sly ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... in the lamplight, and a double rush of water in the gutters which swirled and gurgled towards the sewer gratings. The door which faced them was blotched and discoloured, and a faint light in the fan pane above, it served to show the dust and the grime which covered it. Above in one of the bedroom windows, there was a dull yellow glimmer. The merchant knocked loudly, and, as he turned his dark face towards the light, Douglas Stone could see that it was contracted with anxiety. A bolt was drawn, and an elderly woman ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... household; no Yankee captain so audacious that he ventured to oppose her law; no cynic so cold as not to be melted by her tenderness. She was clad always in black, with a white cap and ribbons, always spotless amid the grime of Liverpool; in her more active moments—though she was always active—she added a white apron to her attire. She was ever anywhere where she was needed; she was never anywhere where she could be dispensed with. Wherever she went she brought comfort ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... mouse from a blind kitten," chuckled Tom, as he wiped the grime and perspiration from ...
— Army Boys in the French Trenches • Homer Randall
... went me one better when you made out that his hands were white under the grime," answered ...
— The Boy Scouts' First Camp Fire - or, Scouting with the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... open before the foot of Mordacks; but no Tommy appeared, till his sister ran in. The poor little fellow was quite dazzled with the light; and the grime on his cheeks made the inrush of fresh air come like wasps to him. "Now, Tommy, you be good," said Geraldine; "trouble enough has been made ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... whined through the scarlet and golden autumn, it had almost seemed to him that he was executing living and beloved friends. Now an inimical force of Nature threatened to rob him of them and of his remuneration as well. Yet as he stood there, with the sweat and grime of his labor drying on his forehead, his brooding eyes held a ...
— A Pagan of the Hills • Charles Neville Buck |
