"Smudge" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an improvement; if she removes a garment it is an improvement; if she dresses her hair it is better; if she lets it fall in a brown cascade over her white shoulders it is still better; when it is yet in curl-papers it is charming. If you smudge the tip of her nose with a burnt cork the effect is irresistible; if you stick a flower in her hair it is a fancy dress, a complete costume—she becomes Flora, Aurora, anything you like to name. Yet ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... spot I accordingly made my way. As it happened, we arrived in the very nick of time, for we had scarcely taken up a position among the reeds, in a situation that enabled me to command a view of a good wide stretch of water, when I saw a faint smudge against the clear sky southward, which rapidly resolved itself into a big flight of wild duck heading directly for the end of the pond near where I was ambushed; and I had only time to pass my rifle to Piet and receive from him the shot ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... 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 right are more ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... bell rang a 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 what ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... a complete turn in the air, hit the ground, 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 I became ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... 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 ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... ants concentrated into a swarm and, leaving the trenches, began to move in a slanting direction toward a patch of woods far over to our left. Some of them, I think, got there, some of them did not. Certain puff-balls of white smoke, and one big smudge of black smoke, which last signified a bomb of high explosives, broke over them and among them, hiding all from sight for a space of seconds. Dust clouds succeeded the smoke; then the dust lifted slowly. Those ants were not to be seen. ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... grimy and scratched. His rosy lips were blackened with heat, the smoke of gun-powder. Dirt and rust tarnished the lustre of his short beard. His shirt collar and cuffs were crumpled; the blue silken tie hung down his breast like a rag; a greasy smudge crossed his white brow. He had not taken off his clothing nor used water, except to snatch a hasty drink greedily, for some forty hours. An awful restlessness had made him its own, had marked him with all the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... never be able 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 his ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... 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 ...
— When William Came • Saki
... '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
... mile or more of seeming moorland, then a sharply defined change (or it seemed sharply defined from that bird's-eye point of view). A vivid greenness marked these changes, which merged into a dun coloured smudge and again into the brilliant green; then the moor would ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... are in any position to dictate. I left a merry party down there just now. Mrs. Whipp cracking the air with chuckles, Mehitable rocking the store with her activities, Miss Melody enveloped in a gigantic apron and with a large smudge across her cheek, having the time of her life unpacking boxes. I was sorry to bereave them of Pete, but it won't take them long now to ...
— In Apple-Blossom Time - A Fairy-Tale to Date • Clara Louise Burnham
... that 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 ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the passing of the years. Co-operation has been a pronounced success. The old conditions have passed far back down the trail. The new order of things has been fought for by men who have known the taste of smoky tea, the sour sweat of toil upon the land, the smell of the smudge fires on a still evening and the drive of the wind on the open plain. Out of the pioneer past they have stepped forward to the larger opportunities of the times—times which call for ...
— Deep Furrows • Hopkins Moorhouse
... ourselves within its depths we expected to enjoy the letters from home which Mr. Harrell was to bring back from the railway for us. Myriads of mosquitoes gave us something else to think of, for they were exceedingly ferocious and persistent, driving us to a high bluff where a smudge was built to fight them off. We were nearly devoured. I fared best, a friend having given me a net for my head, and this, with buckskin gloves on my hands enabled me to exist with some comfort. The mountains rose abruptly just beyond our camp, and the river cleaved the solid ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... of the traplike 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 ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... canvas, hanging limp and looming spectrally through the ghostly mist-wreaths. I was about to hail the deck and report the failure of my experimental journey, but was checked in the very act by feeling something like a faint stir in the damp, heavy air about me; another moment and a dim yellow smudge became visible on the port beam, which I presently recognised as the newly risen sun struggling to pierce with his beams the ponderous masses of white vapour that were now slowly working as though stirred by some subtle agency. By imperceptible degrees the pallid vision ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... this life blossomed with fair arts, That for some paltry leagues of stolen land, Or some poor squabble of contending marts, Murder shall smudge out with its reeking hand Man's faith and fanes alike; And man be man no more—but a brute brain, A primal horror mailed and fanged to strike, And bring the ...
— A Jongleur Strayed - Verses on Love and Other Matters Sacred and Profane • Richard Le Gallienne
... the 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 his narratives, but when ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... spruce-trees which grew near, and packed a big fagot through the mire to the hillock where Bryce stood guard. This wood he flung into the mouth of the lair, started the fire with his flint and steel, and when the flames began to wreathe the branches hungrily, he flung on leaves and grass to make a "smudge." His suspicions regarding the hollowness of the tree proved true, for the draft through the hollow hole acted like a chimney and sucked the smoke upward. It began to wreathe out between the first limbs, some thirty feet or more ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... usual narrow sheet of plate glass at the back of the sideboard, and to this Mr. Bultitude walked, almost under protest, and with a cold dignity. It occurred to him that he might have a smudge on his face or something wrong with his collar and tie—something to account to some extent for his son's frivolous and insulting behaviour. No suspicion of the terrible truth crossed his mind ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... blur of flying trees, then came the grandstand, a mere smudge of color, a sea of dimly seen faces and a roar that was like that ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... a justifeid man: but how it is suppressed, we know nott—of a man justified, which is extant to this day.—(In the margin,) with a smudge?] Note: This booke was printed 1584, at Edinburgh, by Tho. Utrover: (in ...
— The Works of John Knox, Vol. 1 (of 6) • John Knox
... 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 ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... board a vessel that was just receiving her spars, (she was coppered and copper-fastened, A. No. 1, of live-oak frame, and southern pine decks, &c.,) asking him how he liked her. He hoped she had a good name. "Why, she is called the Smudge," I answered. "I hope you fancy it." Moses jerked a finger over his shoulder, as much as to say he understood me, and inquired where I intended to send the craft. "To Canton, with you for master." I saw that my old mate was touched with this proof of ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... that day and the next. He dressed the game with an extraordinarily large and sharp clamshell, which he whetted from time to time on a rock beside the spring. And soon the fire was overhung with much meat, being smoked with a pine-cone smudge in preparation for the journey ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... loaded to the water's edge, with beautiful skins, and accompanied by three savages as 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 ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... had reached the end of his journey. The fog had delayed him a little, but he had paddled steadily, keeping in touch with the south bank. By-and-by daylight came like a glow in a ground glass globe. The shores made on each side of the river a dark smudge, in which one could detect hints of columnar forms and shadows of twisted branches high up. The mist was still thick on the water, but a good watch was being kept, for as Iamb' Itam approached the camp the figures of two men emerged out of the white vapour, and voices spoke ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... pausing to glance at the dejected figure in the chair, its dark curls a riot of disorder, a smudge of black upon its forehead, and its pinafore disreputable with frequent use as a duster, "I gave you too much to do! Didn't I hear you in Delia's room? You needn't have touched ...
— The Second Violin • Grace S. Richmond
... agreed Doctor Joe. "But I wasn't thinking now of The Jug alone. I was thinking of the majestic grandeur of the whole scene. I was enjoying the freedom from the noise and scramble, the dirt and smoke and smudge of the city, with its piles upon piles of ugly buildings, and never a breath of such pure air as this to be breathed. I was thinking of these fine young chaps, the Boy Scouts I saw there, who are trying to study God's big out-of-doors ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... of rising wind, half choked him. It stung his eyes until they distilled water enough to blind him. He thrashed and fought in the fumes and the murk of it, stumbling and slipping, one moment half-knee deep in quick-springing flames, the next almost overpowered by the smudge that rose from the beaten ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... 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 ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... that hung against the rough 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 room had no furniture except ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... work and went back to their smudge to give the bees a chance to rest, and to find out if mud really drew the poison out of the little lumps that covered them, the tree had been cut nearly half through. Any Nature-lover would have known that a beaver ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... the patchwork of plough and green corn, covert and hamlet commenced at the edge of the railway and stretched undulating over hill and dale to where a grey smudge proclaimed the sea. ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... the apartments to superintend the cooking of the eggs. It was a mere den, with an earth floor. A fire of twigs was kindled against the farther wall, and a little girl, half-naked, carrying a baby still more economically clad, was stooping down to blow the smudge into a flame. The smoke, some of it, went over our heads out at the door. We boiled the eggs. We desired salt; and the woman brought us pepper in the berry. We insisted on salt, and at length got the rock variety, which we pounded on the rocks. We ate our eggs ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the intervener did not present the aspect of a hero. He had been drunk, and would be again, unless some miraculous quickening of the alcohol-drugged brain-centres should rouse and revivify the dormant will. His square face, with the heavy smudge of bushy black eyebrows over the fierce blue eyes, and the short, blunt, hooked nose, and grim-lipped yet tender mouth, from the corner of which an extinct and forgotten cigar-butt absurdly jutted, bore, like his great gaunt frame, the ravaging traces of the consuming drink-lust. His well-cut, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... disaster. It was a column of smoke. Some one had encamped no great distance away; on the same stream, hidden only by the windings of the gorge. Some one? Why, then, Gratton and Brodie and their crowd, after all! He glowered angrily toward the faint smudge of smoke. Then he swung about and ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... encounter. The comparatively broad stream up which he had been steaming came to an end, and his further progress must be through Cypress Bayou, a canal just forty-six feet wide..[??-second period a smudge?] The broadest gunboat was forty-two feet wide, and to enter that narrow stream made retreat out of the question: there could be no turning round to fly. The levees rose on either side of the narrow canal ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... they glanced slowly around the camp spread out over the oasis—the clustering palm trees, the desert itself stretching away before her in undulating sweeps, but seemingly level in the evening light, far off to the distant hills lying like a dark smudge against the horizon. She drew a long breath. It was the desert at last, the desert that she felt she had been longing for all her life. She had never known until this moment how intense the longing ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... 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
... Auxiliaries, Whom earlier we had chid with spiteful names. For who defends our leafy tabernacle From bold intrusion of the travelling crowd,— Who but the midge, mosquito and the fly, Which past endurance sting the tender cit, But which we learn to scatter with a smudge, Or baffle by a veil, ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... 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
... behind her and called to her from the study. He was sitting at his desk, tapping the pad before him with the point of a pencil Aunt Josephine sat on the old horse-hair sofa, looking very excited, and Tante, a pile of books still clasped in her arm and a smudge of dust across her straight features, stood ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... have no conscientious scruples on the subject, because the thing's nose really does resemble its father's—at all events quite as much as it does anything else in nature—being, as it is, a mere smudge. ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... that. 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 dinghys, and when ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Mrs. McChesney assured him. Her expression was one of relief as the hall door closed behind him. "Good! There's a spot in the mirror over the mantel. I've been dying to find out if it was a flaw in the glass or only a smudge." ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... seeing it many times. One's first impression is, that over this canvas the artist has dashed a bucket of soap-suds, and over that a pot of red and yellow ochre. Well, after all, what was a snowstorm but a bucket of soap-suds on a big scale! Call it suds, a mad smudge, anything you like, but it was a miracle of art all the same if it produced the effect aimed at, and gave one some idea of that darkness and whiteness, and rush and mad mingling of elements, and sublime confusion ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... the 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 to ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... David bowed to the wife of a Standard Oil director in a passing limousine, and one of the season's prettiest debutantes, who was walking; and because he was only twenty-four, and his mother was very, very ambitious for him, he wondered if the tear smudge on the face of his companion had been evident from the sidewalk, and decided that ...
— Turn About Eleanor • Ethel M. Kelley
... while 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
... clothes, wears a black Windsor tie, cloth cap. Yank is in his dirty dungarees. A fireman's cap with black peak is cocked defiantly on the side of his head. He has not shaved for days and around his fierce, resentful eyes—as around those of Long to a lesser degree—the black smudge of coal dust still sticks like make-up. They hesitate and stand together at the corner, swaggering, looking about them ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... his gaze from the woods before him to the tall sapling on Lookout Point. At last a smudge of red showed near the sapling's top for a minute, then disappeared, and he gave a shout of relief. "Walter's there all right," he called to his companions, "I ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... us. Besides, as I have said, I was greatly helped by the weather, which continuing hazy, though happily never so thick as to oblige me to stop, delivered me to the sight only of such vessels as passed close, and offered me as a mere smudge to ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... where he might secure a 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 ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Olafsson, the 'copter driver, was standing at the entrance to the breakfast nook, a smudge of oil on his cheek and his straw-colored hair in disorder. "How do I go ...
— Null-ABC • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... luncheon?' she said, with a sly archness, looking none the less bewitching for a smudge or two on her lovely face, or the blackness of the delicate hands which she held up like two paws for ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... was one of the sights no one could afford to miss. But by and by a piece began to peel off here and another piece there, and then the nose cracked, and then an ear dropped off, and then one of the eyes began to get mushy and watery looking, and finally it was a mere smudge, a false-face, a scarecrow. My father spent a lot of money trying to fix it up, but what good did it do? By the time he had the nose cobbled the ears were loose again, and so on. In the end he gave it ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... copy-writer, looked up, frowning a little. Then she smiled. Miss Galt had a complete layout on the desk before her—scrap books, cuts, copy, magazines. There was a little smudge on the end of her nose. Grace Galt was writing about magnetos. She was writing about magnetos in a way to make you want to drop your customer, or your ironing, or your game, and go downtown and buy that particular kind of magneto at once. Which is the secretest part of the wizardry of advertising ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... 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 feet wide, had been too much shaded so that the corn and oats had not prospered. ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... the boys sat in the protecting smudge of the campfire, the sound of paddles was heard up the river. The swish and splash came on steadily for a moment ...
— Boy Scouts in Northern Wilds • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... them from the lookout and made a long and careful study of the slight, black smudge which was ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... has his ideas on what's called realism," Phyllis laughed. "'Realism in painting is the ideal with a smudge.'" ...
— Phyllis of Philistia • Frank Frankfort Moore
... Retiarius). These tricks are not wise, my friend. The audience likes to see a dead man in all his beauty and splendor. If you smudge his face and spoil his armor they will show their displeasure by not letting you kill him. And when your turn comes, they will remember it against you and turn ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... mare for the cow-boy camp below the cliff. Half a dozen men lounged round a smudge fire. The old man paused to sort out the scene; the box of a gramaphone laid out for a card table, a bottle of whiskey in the centre, two empty bottles with candles stuck in the necks for lights, a dull smudge fire, four rough fellows sprawling on the ground, one with corduroy velveteen trousers, ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... by railroads, a division headquarters of the great A. and P., near the soft-coal beds, with a tin-plate factory, a carpet factory, a carriage factory, and a dozen other mills and factories, Torso is a black smudge in a flat green landscape from which many lines of electric railway radiate forth along the country roads. And along the same roads across the reaches of prairie, over the swelling hills, stalk towering poles, bearing many fine wires glistening ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... that grass, burning some of it for a smudge to keep mosquitoes at bay, and an hour after dawn, reaching rising ground again, realized that we had our quarry ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... the roots of her hair. She stepped back a pace, and was about to answer them when, chancing to glance in La Boulaye's direction, she paused. He had risen, and was standing with his back to the fire. There was a black smudge across his face, which seemed to act as a mask, and his dark eyes glowed with an intensity of meaning which arrested her attention, and silenced the answer which was rising to ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... watch had seen smoke. Far off on the horizon appeared a smudge from the funnels of some passing steamer. It was too far away however to discover their signal or even to see their island. He had watched it hopefully until it finally disappeared over the rim of the ...
— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay
... McMillan Shafter, you're a Judge— At least you were when last I knew of you; And if the people since have made you budge I did not notice it. I've much to do Without endeavoring to follow, through The miserable squabbles, dust and smudge, The fate of even the veteran contenders Who fight with flying colors and suspenders. Being a Judge, 'tis natural and wrong That you should villify the public press— Save while you are a candidate. That song Is easy quite to sing, and I confess It wins applause ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... was a grace and carriage to her that 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 Dublin but in North ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... scouts and woodsmen. They aroused considerable interest among the boys, many of whom had never bothered their heads before to discover that kinds of wood burned in various ways; that one might give out only a light brown smoke, hard to discern, while another would send up a dense smudge that could not fail to attract the eye of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... by one, stabbing the dusk with their beams, steady, conspicuous. One only, far in the distance, seemed ill-defined—a faint smudge against the twilight. Then it ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... washed that face and those hands that still have the supper smudge on them, in the pool down there. I left the soap and the dry sleeves and bosom of a flannel shirt for you. Don't you pack towels in a kit in your country?" With which laughing answer my Gouverneur Faulkner denied unto me an ...
— The Daredevil • Maria Thompson Daviess
... the faintest idea 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 workmen from the Fairmead iron and steel works. There was a third ...
— Erewhon Revisited • Samuel Butler
... have never gone to any new place where the climate has been able to stand the shock. It is always an unusual season. I do know, however, that bringing up a crop of oranges is as anxious an undertaking as "raising" a family. Little black smudge pots stand in rows in the groves, ready to be lighted at the first hint of frost. The admonition of the hymn applies to fruit growers as well ...
— The Smiling Hill-Top - And Other California Sketches • Julia M. Sloane
... Company money to spend among the local merchants, work for many applicants, Symes felt that he could do little else than step into the niche which clearly belonged to him. The one smudge upon the picture was Augusta. Her eyes were ever upon him in adoring, dog-like fidelity and it irritated him. Her appearance had altered amazingly, she no longer called him "Mister Symes," and by repeated corrections he had succeeded in inducing her to refrain from folding her hands ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... not proof against Hermia's persistent audacity, especially as she was aware of a smudge of face-powder on John Markham's coat lapel which could not have been attributed by any chance to the deficiencies of her ...
— Madcap • George Gibbs
... rain, despite its discomfort, but the sun was in its greatest splendor, and the air was absolutely translucent. The lake and the mountains sprang out, sharp and clear. Far to the south the hunter saw a smudge upon the water which he knew to be Indian canoes. They were miles away, but it was evident that the French and Indians still held the lake, and there was no escape for the three by water. There had been ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... I 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 pavement ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... between them, for Steve saw the huge man's arm lift to strike Shayne to the ground, and then drop harmlessly back to his side. And Steve knew what that bit of pantomime meant. Big Louie had been to bid his team good-bye. There was a smudge of brown sugar across his coat, though the watcher was too far away to see that. But he knew that Big Louie had been crying, knew that Shayne had smiled. It was the second time that Shayne had smiled that evening—his second ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... snatched furtively by the bearer of a glass of grog on the ladder 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 paws were ...
— Salt Water - The Sea Life and Adventures of Neil D'Arcy the Midshipman • W. H. G. Kingston
... the old man's pointing finger. "There's only one kind of boat makes a smudge like that," he declared; "and it's a destroyer. Safe and well out of a glorious adventure. Faith, we're the lucky devils; and by this and by that, I'll enlist aboard that destroyer, now that I'm here on ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne
... 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 ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... Art-Hobbies are ambling about with their 'eads in the air, And their riders are tilting like true toothpick paladins. SMUDGE over there Makes a bee-line for SCRATCH in this corner, whilst MUCK and the Mawkish at odds, Clash wildly, and Naturalism ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... But when he saw anything he saw everything. His eye was caught by the green smudge on her ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... faces and necks a kind of guard or veil, shaped exactly like an Egyptian fanous or folding lantern. It is cylindrical, made of tulle or coarse lace, with rings. At every house people sat in the porticos over a tin bucket, in which there was a smudge—that is to say, in smoke. In the evening some one goes with a tin or iron pail containing a smudge, and fills the bedrooms with dense smoke. One evening Mr. Hinckley and another of our party went fishing without veils. They ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... on its tremendous mission. The smoke of its funnels made but a tiny smudge on the wide, shining Southern skies. But with swift and terrible swirl this cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, grew into a storm whose black shadow shrouded ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... up a very fair smudge, and we stood to the leeward of it, until Euphemia began to cough and sneeze, as if her head would come off. With tears running from her eyes, she declared that she would rather go and be eaten alive, than ...
— Rudder Grange • Frank R. Stockton
... carefully at both sides of his messmate's cheeks. "You're scorched horribly, and the whisker shoots are all gone—No, there's about half of one left; and you'll have to shave that off, Dick, so as to balance the other bare place. No, no; it's all right; that's not hair, only a smudge of sooty cinder off your burnt cap. I say, you ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... us in the woods to the west of the village of Lucy le Bocage, in which German shells were continually falling. To the west and north another nameless cluster of farm dwellings was in flames. Huge clouds of smoke rolled up like a smudge against the ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... have 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
... beautiful, almost, with her twofold grace of carriage 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
... cardboard, with ostentatious red-letter inscriptions underneath, "Madonna and Child by Raphael. In the possession of Frederick Fairlie, Esquire." "Copper coin of the period of Tiglath Pileser. In the possession of Frederick Fairlie, Esquire." "Unique Rembrandt etching. Known all over Europe as THE SMUDGE, from a printer's blot in the corner which exists in no other copy. Valued at three hundred guineas. In the possession of Frederick Fairlie, Esq." Dozens of photographs of this sort, and all inscribed in this manner, were completed before I ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... the light ripples melted away into a blue and white haze upon the water, a small black smudge, like the back of a porpoise, seemed to ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... 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
... the second day out of Honolulu keen eyes scanned the eastern horizon through powerful glasses, until about two bells of the afternoon watch a slight smudge became visible about two points north of east. Immediately the course of the Halfmoon was altered so that she bore almost directly north by west in an effort to come safely into the course of the steamer which was seen rising ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to wipe that smudge of paint off your nose, Laura," she said sarcastically. "You don't seem to get on very fast with your lace. How long is it since you began it? ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... 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 its office ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 9, 1919 • Various
... at eight bells; the weather was thickening, and it might be well to have the thing done. The hands stood around, bareheaded, with the grating in the middle of them, one edge resting on the rail, the other supported by two men. There was a dark smudge on the sky up to windward, and several times the captain glanced up from his book towards it. He read in German slowly, with a dwelling upon the sonorous passages, and towards the end he closed the book and finished without ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... the 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 laughter murmured, "I ...
— The Broadway Anthology • Edward L. Bernays, Samuel Hoffenstein, Walter J. Kingsley, Murdock Pemberton
... he is a nice clean man," declared Grace, "for there wasn't a smudge on that little note, and I have noticed since that the paper is a fine quality. Oh, I am perfectly sure he is a very nice young man," and the bright-eyed, pink-cheeked girl laughed ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... have all his beard white too, by that time he hath read over this booke. For his stature, he is such another pretie Jacke-a-Lent as boyes throw at in the streete, and lookes in his blacke sute of veluet, like one of these jet-droppes which divers weare at their eares instead of a iewell. A smudge peice of a handsome fellow it hath been in his dayes, but now he is olde and past his best, and fit for nothing but to be a nobleman's porter, or ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 1 (of 2) - With an Introduction upon Ancient Humour • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... delegation 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 side of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... 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 ...
— The Martian • George Du Maurier
... 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 clamour of ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... 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. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana
... the riddles that perplexed me! Be that as it may, my first thought was to efface the marks on the floor. I found this easier than I had ventured to hope. I rubbed the circle and the pentacle away from the boards with the sole of my foot, leaving but an undistinguishable smudge behind. I know not why, but I felt the more nervously anxious to remove all such evidences of my nocturnal visit to that room, because Margrave had so openly gone thither to seek for the staff, and had so rudely named me to ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... from her side and set his foot upon it. There was a thin squeak and then—there was nothing left of the little gray spinner but a tiny gray smudge on the floor. ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... a 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 ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... 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 ...
— W. A. G.'s Tale • Margaret Turnbull
... walk home, was sitting squarely in the middle of the floor, teasing the Sarah-cat with a wishbone. Joseph and Rusty were both curled up in her lap. A warm plummy odor filled the whole house, for Priscilla was cooking in the kitchen. Presently she came in, enshrouded in a huge work-apron, with a smudge of flour on her nose, to show Aunt Jamesina the chocolate cake she ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... magazines of F. Walter Taylor's drawings in 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 ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... it was with the most intense and absorbing interest that I watched the plate under the action of the developer. Presently I saw a faint smudge of black appear in the upper part, and after that others, indistinct and wavering of outline. I held the negative up to the light. The marks were rather small, and were almost entirely confined to one end ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... separate from the shadows, let the half tone paper always come as a buffer state between them. Get as much information into the drawing of your lights and shadows as possible; don't be satisfied with a smudge effect. Use the side of your white chalk when you want a mass, or work in parallel lines (hatching) on the principle described in the ...
— The Practice and Science Of Drawing • Harold Speed
... 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 ...
— It Could Be Anything • John Keith Laumer
... hours, only minutes had passed since he had tooled his scout into the rack. Ahead, he could see the smudge of the Black Fleet's smoke on the horizon. Not so very far away, but a lot could happen in the distance still separating dirigible ...
— Raiders Invisible • Desmond Winter Hall
... to me, and when she had driven away I emerged, and, walking to the doorway, also struck a light and examined the same stone wall. At first I could discover nothing, but after considerable searching my eyes at last detected a dark smudge, as though ...
— Hushed Up - A Mystery of London • William Le Queux
... 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 ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... up against the wall of the ravine, and was small and dirty as to interior. A fire burned in a big stone fireplace at one end, filling the room with a suffocating smudge. ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... he, dismounting, "is little more than a dim trail. Sorry I didn't think about it sooner, but we ought to have built a smudge fire where this road intersects the cattle trail. In case the doctor doesn't reach there by noon, I sent orders to fly a flag at the junction, and Joel to return home. But if the doctor doesn't reach there until after darkness, he'll never see the flag, and couldn't follow ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... though, for my stick could not turn the corners of his burrow, and he often appeared out of some other exit, laughing at my stupidity, no doubt. Sometimes, when very hungry, I tried smoking him out. The stone porch of his burrow usually sloped, so a small smudge started at its lower side would travel up-hill, into the tunnel. Mr. Rabbit, thinking the woods were on fire, would make a dash for the open and fall victim to the snare. But despite the fact that rabbits are credited with little wit, I have often known them to nose aside ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... quite alone, his hands blue-black with the smudge from a refractory typewriter ribbon which he was vainly endeavoring to adjust. It took some time for him to get his hands clean again, and Claire sharpened her pencils while she waited. But there really proved to be nothing ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... 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. For the first time ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... the tall seat of your wagon, driving townward with a red heifer for sale, I can show you that life—your life—is not all a gray smudge, as you think it is, but crammed, packed, loaded with miraculous things. I can show you wonders past belief in your own soul. I can easily convince you that you are in reality a poet, a hero, a true ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... "Excuse a smudge, but Emmeline and I are bound to do a good deal of hugging and kissing just now—a honeymoon after an elopement is something remarkably sweet, as you may suppose—and her sleeve brushed the wet ink. This particular embrace was on the occasion ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, November, 1878 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... complimented, pricked up one ear, lifted a foot, and jogged off. The depot wagon became merely a shadowy smudge against the darkness of the night. For a few minutes the "chock, chock" of the hoofs upon the frozen road and the rattle of wheels gave audible evidence of its progress. Then these died away and upon the windswept platform of the South Harniss station descended the black gloom of lonesomeness ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... the wood now. The green of the trees deepened and blackened, turning into a crooked smudge upon the sky-line. The road fell between them like a long gray ribbon. Nothing was to be seen upon it; nothing was to be heard but the rustle of the early night wind and the pleasant sounds of the ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... was exactly in the middle, but we arranged it very fairly comfortably by putting some straw under our buffalo robes, and our clothes as pillows. The men had to make their couch under the carriage with whatever cloaks we didn't want, to keep the dew off them; and by lighting a large "smudge" to keep off the mosquitoes, we all slept pretty well, though Mother Earth is very unrelenting. If, however, we wanted to change our position we were sure to awake. The following morning, Tuesday, the men had a bathe in the river, which we very much envied them; though, having brought our india-rubber ...
— A Lady's Life on a Farm in Manitoba • Mrs. Cecil Hall
... is called the fox- 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 not present, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... delicious food. He doesn't really care 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
... ever because some one calls out, in a foolish voice of terror and regret, 'Too late!' Yet, in reality, we stand still; the rush of the hours is a sham. We see things out of proportion, like trees from the window of a train, their beauty hidden in a long, thick smudge. We do not move; it is the train that hurries us along: the trees are always steadily there—and beautiful. There is enough of everything for everybody—no need to try and get there first. To hurry is to chase your tail, which some one has suggested does not belong to you. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... scare me to have a fire Begin in smudge with ropy smoke and know That still, if I repent, I may recall it, But in a moment not: a little spurt Of burning fatness, and then nothing but The fire itself can put it out, and that By burning out, and before it burns out It will have roared first and ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... fifth night of the waning of the moon—and the night was dark. No birds were singing. The lichi tree by the tank looked like a smudge of ink on a background a shade less deep. The south wind was blindly roaming about in the darkness like a sleep-walker. The stars in the sky with vigilant unblinking eyes were trying to penetrate the darkness, in their effort to fathom ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... have tea first and see your mother afterward," observed Uncle Geoffrey; but I would not take this prudent counsel. On the stairs I came upon Jack, curled up on a window-sill, with Smudge, our old black cat, in her arms, and was welcomed by both of them with much effusion. Jack was a tall, thin girl, all legs and arms, with a droll, freckled face and round blue eyes, with all the awkwardness of fourteen, and none of its precocity. Her real name was Jacqueline, but we ...
— Esther - A Book for Girls • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Casey wore a smudge on his upper lip. Gabby's face was still un-hairy, but a little lined by the last few years of bucking the business line for a living. Casey has no cause for wrinkles, having a wealthy Dad. And, anyway, Fat's disposition ...
— The Stars & Stripes, Vol 1, No 1, February 8, 1918, - The American Soldiers' Newspaper of World War I, 1918-1919 • American Expeditionary Forces |
