"Scum" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the colonies as slaves for a term of years. The English courts were busy grinding out human material for the Virginia plantations; and, as the objects of commerce were considered paramount, this process of disposing of what was regarded as the scum element was adjudged necessary and justifiable. No voice was ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus
... fertile enough for anything;—so that there was much excuse for the men of the second stage. But then came Dr. Lionel Giles* who belongs to the third stage, and perhaps is the third stage. He shows that though there is in the Book of Liehtse a residue or scum of immoral teaching, it is quite in opposition to the tendency of the teaching that remains when this scum is removed; and deduces from this fact the sensible idea that the scum was a later forgery; the rest, the authentic work of a true philosopher with an original ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... Crush then the slow, the pilfering race; So purge thy garden from disgrace.' 'What arrogance!' the snail replied; 'How insolent is upstart pride! Hadst thou not thus with insult vain, Provoked my patience to complain, I had concealed thy meaner birth, Nor traced thee to the scum of earth. 30 For scarce nine suns have waked the hours, To swell the fruit, and paint the flowers, Since I thy humbler life surveyed, In base, in sordid guise arrayed; A hideous insect, vile, unclean, You dragged a slow and noisome train; And from your spider-bowels drew Foul film, ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... the cycle of Antar and King Omar bin Nu'man: its exaggerations make it a fine type of Oriental Chauvinism, pitting the superhuman virtues, valour, nobility and success of all that is Moslem, against the scum of the earth which is non-Moslem. Like the exploits of Friar John of the Chopping-knives (Rabelais i. c. 27) it suggests ridicule cast on impossible battles and tales of giants, paynims and paladins. The long romance is followed ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... Lastly the snakes' fangs, ants and pepper are bruised and thrown into it. It is then placed on a slow fire, and as it boils more of the juice of the wourali is added, according as it may be found necessary, and the scum is taken off with a leaf: it remains on the fire till reduced to a thick syrup of a deep brown colour. As soon as it has arrived at this state a few arrows are poisoned with it, to try its strength. If it answer the expectations it is poured ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... uncheck'd, heroic WOOD! Regardless what the player's son may prate, Saint Stephens' fool, the Zany of Debate— Who nothing generous ever understood. London's twice Praetor! scorn the fool-born jest— The stage's scum, and refuse of the players— Stale topics against Magistrates and Mayors— City and Country both thy worth attest. Bid him leave off his shallow Eton wit, More fit to sooth the superficial ear Of drunken PITT, and that pickpocket Peer, When ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb IV - Poems and Plays • Charles and Mary Lamb
... that Signor Fenshawe cables from Aden when he tells how the Governor of Massowah aided and abetted this half-crazy poltroon in onslaughts on defenseless women. It was not enough that Italian law should be misused to further his ends, but the scum of the bazaar is enlisted under his banner, and he is supported by the authorities in an act that would be reprobated by any ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... Purple, you graceless scum, let me tell you that we will stand no reference to the two ...
— The Third Violet • Stephen Crane
... turning spheres of heaven; For earth and all this airy region Cannot contain the state of Tamburlaine. [Stabs CALYPHAS.] By Mahomet, thy mighty friend, I swear, In sending to my issue such a soul, Created of the massy dregs of earth, The scum and tartar of the elements, Wherein was neither courage, strength, or wit, But folly, sloth, and damned idleness, Thou hast procur'd a greater enemy Than he that darted mountains at thy head, Shaking the burden mighty Atlas bears, ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... jumped at once to this conclusion, for he murmured: "She's telling him I'm the scum of the earth, and that it's up to him to get rid of me." He added, sententiously: "She'll find, I guess, that this is about the most difficult billet a fair lady ever intrusted to a gallant knight." Whereupon, inspired by his metaphor, he proceeded to hum under his breath, by way of outlet to his ...
— The Law-Breakers and Other Stories • Robert Grant
... deeds bring disgrace on the king's cause, and on our religion. It is not because the scum who march with the Dutchman behave like brutal savages, that we should do the same. There's plenty of work for you, in fighting against the enemies of your country, instead of frightening women and ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... indifference, not in the least more laudable than misanthropic isolation. There is sympathy even among the hair-like oscillatorias, a tribe of simple plants, armies of which may be discovered, with the aid of the microscope, in the tiniest bit of scum from a stagnant pool. For these will place themselves, as if it were by agreement, in separate companies, on the side of a vessel containing them, and seem marching upward in rows; and when a swarm ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... Toley, as a matter of policy, never took his part openly. The men resented his superior manners and the fact that he was socially above them. The majority of the seamen were even more ruffianly than the specimens he had seen at the Waterman's Rest—the scum of Wapping and Rotherhithe. His only real friend on board was Bulger, who helped him to master the many details of a sailor's work, and often protected him against the ill treatment of his mates; and, in spite of his one arm, Bulger was a ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... explanation of the demoralisation of the army. He says that the Imperial Government only troubled itself about the corps d'elite; that the object in the line regiments was to get substitutes as cheaply as possible; consequently, they are filled with men physically and morally the scum of the nation. Semaphore telegraphs have been put up on all the high public buildings. There are also semaphores on the forts. I see that one opposite me is exchanging signals. The crowd watch them as though by looking ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... by boiling it thoroughly, and skimming off the scum as it rises to the top until it is quite clear like oil. It is then placed in tin canisters and soldered up. This mode of preserving butter has been adopted in the hot climate of southern Texas, and it is found to keep sweet for a great length of time, and ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... either of them to hear you making use of such language? After all, who and what are the men who thus habitually indulge in obscenity and profanity? Are they not the vicious and disreputable, the brutal drunken ruffians, the scum of the slums, the lowest of the low, the very outcasts and pariahs of society? And is it for one of these that you would like to be mistaken? is it with this repulsive brotherhood that you would choose to ally yourself? Hardly, I would fain ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... there is any frost in it when put to the fire, it will not cook well. The best way to boil it is to put it in cold water, and boil it gently, with just water enough to cover it, as it hardens by furious boiling. The part that is to be up on the table, should be down in the pot, as the scum that rises is apt to make the meat look dark—the scum should be taken off as soon as it rises. The liquor in which all kinds of fresh meat is boiled, makes a good soup, when thickened and seasoned. Boiling is the cheapest way of cooking meat, provided you make a soup of the liquor; ...
— The American Housewife • Anonymous
... three or four gallon pot, three parts filled with cold water, and set it on the fire to boil; remove all the scum that rises to the surface, and then let it boil gently on the hob; when the meat has boiled an hour and is about half done, add the parsnips in a net, and at the end of another half hour put in the cabbages, also in a net. A piece of beef weighing five or six pounds will require about two hours' ...
— A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes • Charles Elme Francatelli
... all, taking out the treads, let them be beaten very well, take a pint of Sack and a quart of Ale boyled, and scum it, then put in three quarters of a pound of Sugar and a little Nutmeg, let it boyle a little together, then take it off the fire stirring the Eggs still, put into them two or three Ladle-fulls of drink, then mingle all together and set it on the fire, and keepe it stirring till you finde ...
— The Compleat Cook • Anonymous, given as "W. M."
... unmoved the stars would pursue their nightly march across the heavens, cruel day would follow pitiless night, and the careless earth follow its accustomed orbit as though the race were not writhing in its death agony. Gazing into the infinity of space human existence seemed but the scum upon a rainpool, human warfare but the frenzy of insectivora. Unmindful of the starving hordes of Paris and Berlin, of plague-swept Russia, or of the drowned thousands of the North Baltic Fleet, these two men calmly studied the procession of the ...
— The Man Who Rocked the Earth • Arthur Train
... is an excellent citizen indeed, such as has not been seen for a long time. 'Tis truly a man of the lowest scum! As for you, Paphlagonian, who pretend to love me, you only feed me on garlic. Return me my ring, for you cease to be ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... The host, too, at the head of his own board, sitting in what should be the seat of the most honoured guest, and putting the latter on his right instead of his left hand! Truly these red-haired barbarians are the very scum of the earth. ...
— Chinese Sketches • Herbert A. Giles
... for Caraquet, with the road choked with snow, even if I could have got by Macartney's garrison at the Halfway. Crossing Lac Tremblant, that by to-morrow would be lying sweetly level under a treacherous scum of lolly and drifted snow, ready to drown us all like Thompson,—I cursed and put that out of the question. That lake that was no lake offered about as good a thoroughfare as rats get in a rain-barrel. Whereas, to hold Macartney at La Chance ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... city crowd gathered about the fighting men and a second later the slum saloon in front of which they were battling, emptied its filthy scum into the street, all anxious to enjoy the combat. Some of the plingers amongst this riff-raff must have recognized their mate, and thinking that the trouble was merely a case of a street beggar insulting a citizen, and noting that this one wore the hated uniform ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... at last, cursing Parrawhite with the anger of despair. He had not one scrap of pity for him. All his pity was for himself. That he should have been brought into this!—that this vile little beast, perfect scum that he was, should have led him to what might be the utter ruin of his career!—it was shameful, it was abominable, it was cruel! He felt as if he could cheerfully tear Parrawhite's dead body to pieces. But even as these thoughts came, others of a more important ...
— The Talleyrand Maxim • J. S. Fletcher
... solution of the riddle as it respects the strength of democratic government? It has heretofore been said by the revilers of the masses in America, that 'for two hundred years the scum, the crime, and poverty of Europe have been cast upon the shores of the Atlantic.' It is immaterial to the question of humanity, whether such has been the seed from which a new nation has been raised up in the wilderness. A few months since, 'Democracy on its trial,' was the favorite theme ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... lower down the beach, nearer the sea, their ranks compacted. "Why, you booze-bitten, lousy hunky, what in hell do you want? You never saw twenty dollars in a lump you c'u'd call yore own for more'n ten minnits. You boardin'-house loafer an' the rest of you scum o' the seven seas, git yore shovels an' git to diggin', or I'll put you ashore in San Francisco flat broke, an' glad to leave the ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... Ignorance and Vice, the Silent Foe. She pointed out the "indirect alliance between the anti-suffragists and the vicious elements, opponents of all reform, fearful that if women vote good will prevail over evil." "The chief foes of woman suffrage," she said, "are the saloon keepers, scum of society, barred from fraternal organizations, social clubs and even from some of ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume V • Ida Husted Harper
... possibly imagine - for they were soft and smooth, and every feather lay neatly in its place. And the feathers were of the most lovely mixed changing colours, like the rainbow, or iridescent glass, or the beautiful scum that sometimes floats on water that is not at ...
— Five Children and It • E. Nesbit
... they would not otherwise have attained. If we can imagine a philosophical auricula falling into a train of theoretical meditation on its original and natural nutriment, till it should work itself up into a profound abomination of bullock's blood, sugar-baker's scum, and other unnatural ingredients of that rich composition of soil which had brought it to perfection[2.1], and insist on being planted in common earth, it would have all the advantage of natural theory on its side that the most strenuous advocate of the ...
— Headlong Hall • Thomas Love Peacock
... of dried hoarhound leaves in a cup and pour over them half a cupful of boiling water, cover and let it steep until cold, strain and pour it over a pound of granulated sugar and a tablespoonful of vinegar. Boil without stirring, and if any scum rises to the top remove it. Test the candy in cold water, when brittle remove from the fire and pour into a buttered pan. Mark into squares before it is cold, or break into ...
— The Golden Age Cook Book • Henrietta Latham Dwight
... triumph,—Danton, Robespierre, Marat. And of the three it was Marat who worked deepest on her imagination, Marat always baying for {189} blood, always scenting fresh victims, always corrupting opinion with his scum of printer's ink and poison. To Charlotte Corday it appeared that in this one individual all that was noble and beautiful in the Revolution was converted into all that was hideous and ignoble; and she slowly began ...
— The French Revolution - A Short History • R. M. Johnston
... friend after supper, Stanton broke out, "Since Ida can't exist without the sight of that wretch, Sibley, I wish she would follow him to New York. If she dotes on such scum, they had better be married, as far as such people can be, and so relieve her relatives of an ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... said scornfully. "Let this Abbas Mahommed come and take me. I have a knife for his belly in any event. You go on to Ali Higg and say his wife is in the hands of that scum. Ali Higg can cross the desert in three days, and by the evening of the fourth day there will be no village left, nor a man to call Abbas Mahommed by his name. If I haven't killed him already Abbas Mahommed will be carried off to Petra with the women, who ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... pleasant balsamic odor, its only unpleasant quality being a slight amount of stickiness. The chemical analysis of this milk has shown it to possess a composition closely resembling some animal substances; and, like animal milk, it quickly forms a cheesy scum, and after a few days' exposure to the atmosphere, turns sour and putrefies. It contains upwards of 30 per cent of a resinous substance ...
— Catalogue of Economic Plants in the Collection of the U. S. Department of Agriculture • William Saunders
... the second glance to perceive about a hundred yards away a brown object, looking like an ape in the half light, meandering slowly up the margin of the water towards me. Every now and then it stopped, stooping down to pick up something or other from the scum along the torrent, and it was the fact that these trifles, whatever they were, were put into a wallet by the vision's side—not into his mouth—which first made me understand with a joyful thrill that it was a MAN before ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... will be on that point while daylight lasts,—Indians do not generally travel at night, and when we sight them we will signal and warn them, and the convicts will be none the wiser. The Seminoles are no cowards and we can join them and wipe that scum of humanity off the face of ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... are purely forced by art, and are so ready to lapse into barbarity. This, among the Romans, was the raillery of slaves, of which we have many instances in Plautus. It seemeth to have been introduced among us by Cromwell, who, by preferring the scum of the people, made it a court-entertainment, of which I have heard many particulars; and, considering all things were turned upside down, it was reasonable and judicious; although it was a piece of policy found out to ridicule a point of honour in the other extreme, when the smallest word ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... combines with the indigo to form the soluble indigo white. It takes about twenty-four hours to make an indigo vat. When properly made and in good condition, the liquor will be clear and of a brownish-yellow colour, a bluish scum may collect on the surface. If the liquor appears at all greenish it is an indication that the indigo has not been completely reduced, and the vat needs a further addition of lime and copperas, which should be of good quality. Too much of each should not be used, because ...
— The Dyeing of Cotton Fabrics - A Practical Handbook for the Dyer and Student • Franklin Beech
... their neighbours of the trade that are scattered about the town, but all over England, ay, and beyond sea, too, and send abroad their circulators, and in this manner get into their hands all that is valuable. The rest of the trade are content to take their refuse, with which, and the fresh scum of the press, they furnish one side of the shop, which serves for the sign of a bookseller, rather than a real one; but instead of selling, deal as factors, and procure what the country divines and gentry send for; of whom each hath his book-factor, and, when wanting ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... a principal highway from the Porte de Charenton to the town, the piles of refuse had been pretty thoroughly overhauled by the dogs and human scum that infested ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... thought of the vast accumulation of past experience; both alike will tend to minimise the value of human effort, because they will both be aware that the phenomenon of human activity and human volition is but the froth and scum working on the lip of some gigantic forward-moving tide, and that men probably do not so much choose what they shall do, as do what they are compelled to do by some unfathomable power behind and above them. This thought may seem, ...
— The Silent Isle • Arthur Christopher Benson
... shuddering. "Will I ever forgit it? John and me had got married just a month before Evy died in October, and gone to live up the hollow a small piece from maw, and even then she were complaining of a leetle scum over her eyes. Losing Evy, and rebelling like she done atterward, and Uncle Joshuay's talk, holp it along fast, and it were plain to all before winter were over that he had prophesied right, and her sight were a-going. I would ...
— Sight to the Blind • Lucy Furman
... will ever cleanse sin. The way to purge a soul is to do with it as they do with foul clay—thrust it into the fire and that will burn all the blackness out of it. Get the love of God into your hearts, and the fire of His Divine Spirit into your spirits to melt you down, as it were, and then the scum and the dross will come to the top, and you can skim them off. Two powers conquer my sin: the one is the blood of Jesus Christ, which washes me from all the guilt of the past; the other is the fiery influence of that Divine Spirit which makes me pure and clean for all the time ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... lay the sea, the immense gulf with slight waves; to his right was the decaying stretch of the marsh. Stagnant water stretching to the horizon, coarse grass and reeds, an extraordinary tangle of water-plants, small ponds whose greenish scum did not stir under the stiff breeze, water that was heavy and dirty. Along this narrow strip of land thrust thus between the marsh, the sky and the sea, he hurried, with many stumblings, his eyes fixed on the deserted gulf. Suddenly he turned his head at a singular ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... An observer states that, "The bore is eight feet in diameter at the top, and forty-four feet deep. Below twenty-seven feet it contracts to nineteen inches, so that the turf thrown in completely chokes it. Steam collects below; a foaming scum covers the surface of the water, and in a quarter of an hour it surges up the pipe. The fountain then begins playing, sending its bundles of jets rather higher than those of the Great Geyser, flinging up ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... original, the word is kai, or the green scum that floats on stagnant water. "Bihzad Khan, dispersed the enemy as kai is dispersed when a stone is thrown into the water," is nearly the ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli
... it said and repeated that the British soldiers are the dregs of London and the scum of the criminal classes, that their conduct ...
— The War in South Africa - Its Cause and Conduct • Arthur Conan Doyle
... them lightly and put them into a stewpan with a good beef gravy, seasoned with white pepper, salt, a couple of sliced onions (previously browned in a little oil), and a piece of whole ginger, let it simmer very slowly for two hours taking care to remove the scum or fat, have ready some rich forcemeat and spread it about an inch thick over three cold hard boiled eggs, fry these for a few moments and put them in the saucepan with the veal; before serving, these balls should be cut in quarters, ...
— The Jewish Manual • Judith Cohen Montefiore
... pot boils the scum rises to the surface, and the first result of these disloyal murmurings and agitations was to bring into prominence the two brothers, Francisco and Diego de Porras, who, it will be remembered, owed their presence with the expedition entirely to the Admiral's good nature in complying with ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young
... in a large vessel till the scum rises. Skim this off as fast as it appears on the surface, until the butter remains quite clear, like oil. It should then be carefully poured off, that the impurities which settle at the bottom of the vessel may be separated. The clarified butter is to ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... strainer, but not too hard, only the clear juice. Take the weight of the juice in fine sugar; boil the sugar candy-height, and put in your juice, and let it scald awhile, but not boil; and if any froth arise, scum it off, and when you take it up, have ready a white preserved quince cut in small slices, and lay them in the bottom of your glasses, and pour your jelly to them, it will candy on the top and keep moist on the bottom a ...
— Old Cookery Books and Ancient Cuisine • William Carew Hazlitt
... the total want of fresh air and water. All Nature seems stagnated; a distant pool is seen, and a general rush takes place toward the cheering sight. The water is thicker than pea soup, a green scum floats through the thickened mass, and the temperature is upward of 130 Fahrenheit. All kinds of insects are swarming in the putrid fluid, and a saltish bitter adds to its nauseating flavor. I have seen the exhausted coolies spread their ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... so lurid as might be gathered from the moralists, it was dark enough. For obvious reasons it is desirable not to elaborate. It is perhaps more profitable, as well as refreshing, to consider the brighter side. That there were noble women and good wives, and that the froth and scum and dregs of idle town-life did not make up the existence of the contemporary Roman world, may be seen from passages like the following, which are either quoted or condensed from a letter of Pliny concerning a lady named Arria. The events belong to the reign of Nero's predecessor Claudius. ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... alas! no verdurous visions come, Save yon exiguous pool's conferva-scum,— No concave vast repeats the tender hue That laves my ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... it will rot, and turn to a Filthy slimy Substance: Then put it into a Morter, beat it well; take it out and wash it at some running stream, till the Foulness is gone: Then put it in a close Earthen pot; let it stand Four or Five days, look to its Purging, and scum it: When clean, put it into another Earthen Pot, and keep ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... lowlands clear, a fuzz of baby trees sprang up, growing to a rank prosperity and dying suddenly beneath the sun. Along the river's edge little shreds of watercress took root and threw out sprouts and blossoms; the clean water brought forth snaky eel-grass and scum which fed a multitude of fishes; in the shadows of deep rocks the great bony-tails and Colorado River salmon lay in contented shoals, like hogs in wallows, but all the time the water grew less and less. At every shower the Indian wheat ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... book on the "Immortality of the Soul," printed in London in 1659, just two hundred years ago. It is full of beauty, acumen, and power. He was one of the first men of the time. Yet he seriously elaborates an argument like this: "The scum and spots that lie on the sun are as great an Argument that there is no Divinity in him as the dung of Owls and Sparrows that is found on the faces and shoulders of Idols in Temples are clear evidences that they are no true ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... thickets; its roads, narrow and deserted, which seem to wind on forever; the desolate fields, here and there covered with stunted bushes; the owls flapping their dusky wings; the whip-poor-will, crying in the jungle; and the moccasin gliding stealthily amid the ooze, covered with its green scum. ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... Old River was a stagnant pool, covered with thick green scum, and filled with frogs. The son of one of the tavern-keepers was skilled in catching them, and I fancy supplied them to his father's table; the important fact was his taking them, which he did by baiting a cluster of three hooks with red flannel, and dropping them at the end of a fish-line ...
— A Boy's Town • W. D. Howells
... heating the juice. Sufficient milk of lime is added here to nearly or quite neutralize the acids in the juice, the test being made with litmus paper. The juice is brought to the boiling point, and as much of the scum is removed as can be taken quickly. The scum is returned to the diffusion cells, and the juice is sent by a pump to the top of the building, where it is boiled and thoroughly skimmed. These skimmings are also returned to the ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 633, February 18, 1888 • Various
... the distant Thunder hem, Maryland! The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum. Maryland! She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb— Hnzza! she spurns the Northern scum! She breathes—she burns! she'll come! she'll come! Maryland! ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... wagons," each drawn by four or six horses or mules, or double that number of oxen. At times over 100 wagons, with double that number of teamsters, are in Cheyenne at once. A short time ago it was a perfect pandemonium, mainly inhabited by rowdies and desperadoes, the scum of advancing civilization; and murders, stabbings, shooting, and pistol affrays were at times events of almost hourly occurrence in its drinking dens. But in the West, when things reach their worst, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... "The filthy scum," he growled; "this morning's lesson was not enough. This time I'll slay, burn, smash until there isn't a single rebel left. I'll fertilize their damned Earth with their own black blood. You, Cor ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... the south, dropped, to follow those slender windrows, Chaff, straw, splinters of wood, weeds, and the sea-gluten, Scum, scales from shining rocks, leaves of salt-lettuce, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... abolishers of the apprenticeship who held that more flogging would have made it work more "splendidly." Mr. Hugh Fraser Leslie, who the February before had, in his place in the Assembly, denominated the anti-slavery delegates assembled in London, as "a set of crawling wretches;" "the scum and refuse of society." "The washings and scrapings of the manufacturing districts," &c. &c. now delivered himself of ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... cask, and bade him observe the liquor that was in it. This he did, and saw it was covered all over with a thick scum and froth. Tommy.—And is this what you call fermentation? The Woman.—Yes, master. Tommy.—And what is the reason of it? The Woman.—That I do not know, indeed; but when we have pressed the juice out, as I told you, we put it into a cask and let it stand in some warm ...
— The History of Sandford and Merton • Thomas Day
... embarrassing and deplorable; here, as nowhere else in civilized society, thousands of our fellowmen are exiled from the enjoyments of civilization, forced into life's lowest strata of existence, branded with that fatal word scum. If they aspire to rise, society shrinks from them; they seem of another world; they are of another world; driven into the darkness of a hopeless existence, viewed much as were lepers in olden times. Over their heads perpetually ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... the place, all right," she said, looking at the thick scum of dust on the top of ...
— Constance Dunlap • Arthur B. Reeve
... eaves before the break came, six feet on the level. With the end of the storm came a bright, cold sky and frost,—not the bitter frost of the high latitudes, but a nipping cold that held off the melting rains and laid a thin scum of ice on ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... strike fully five hundred waist houses were involved. Many of these settled within a few days on the basis of increased pay, a fifty-two-hour working week, and recognition of the union. Others settled later, and under the influence of the "uptown scum," as the employers' association gallantly termed the Women's Trade Union League, the Colony Club, and the Suffragists, still others reluctantly gave in. Late in January all except about one hundred ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... one God, and Mohammed is the prophet of God!" he roared. "Am I to prostrate myself before an infidel dog—the chief dog of a pack of dogs? This for the scum!" And he ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... finds much to criticise and blame. During his two or three weeks' sojourn in our cities, he tells us that he found sights and scenes that would shame Sodom and Gomorrah, and bemoans the fact that in this young, fresh land things should be as bad as in London and Paris, whither the scum and ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... gentlemen something of a sight more interesting that this," the newcomer continued. "They don't want to sit down and drink with the scum ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... will you please get Hanna a saucer of milk?" said Cousin Emelene now, seeing the maid's round eyes glaring startled from the dining-room door. "And just warm it a little bit, don't scald it. She won't touch it if there's the least bit of a scum on it. Just take that ice-box chill off. Here, I'll go with you this time. Since we're going to live here now, you'll have to do it a good many times, and I'd better show you just ...
— The Sturdy Oak - A Composite Novel of American Politics by Fourteen American Authors • Samuel Merwin, et al.
... it seemed as if he, Othman, and all would be ripped away from the boat by the tremendous suction. Great eddies boiled and swirled in every direction, and a thick scum of oil and coal dust rose and covered the surface ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... to the anarchy of aimless revolutions and to the trampling to and fro of stranger squadrons on her shores, that the news of a Lutheran troop, levied with the express object of pillaging Rome, and reinforced with Spanish ruffians and the scum of every nation, scarcely roused her apathy. The so-called army of Frundsberg—a horde of robbers held together by the hope of plunder—marched without difficulty to the gates of Rome. So low had the honor ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds
... small creek which came into the plain from the N.N.E., we found a well beaten path and several places where these animals were accustomed to camp. We encamped at a good-sized water-hole in the bed of this creek, the water of which was covered with a green scum. As the dung and tracks of the buffaloes were fresh, Charley went to track them, whilst Brown tried to shoot some Ibises, which had been at the water and were now perched on a tree about 300 yards off. At the discharge of the gun a buffalo started out of a thicket, but did not seem ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... hears us, we are most miserably dejected, the scum of the world. [3788]Vix habet in nobis jam nova plaga locum. We can get no relief, no comfort, no succour, [3789]Et nihil inveni quod mihi ferret opem. We have tried all means, yet find no remedy: no ...
— The Anatomy of Melancholy • Democritus Junior
... not confined to the civil government and the courts of law; the army, too, was infected. In the ranks were to be found hired foreigners, unwilling peasants dragged from their farms, and the scum of the city slums. Thousands deserted every year. Had the discontented troops been well commanded, they might still have answered the purpose. But such was not the case. There were certainly enough officers—an average of one general for ...
— A Political and Social History of Modern Europe V.1. • Carlton J. H. Hayes
... now on you must realize that he is the very scum of the earth, a toping man, a worthless, immoral man that hates the wife of ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... with a strong fire, and then immediately pouring it out into a clean vessel of convenient shape and matter (we used one of iron, that the great and sudden heat might not injure it), and then carefully and nimbly taking off the scum that floated on the top, we perceived, as we expected, the smooth and glossy surface of the melted matter to be adorned with a very glorious colour, which, being as transitory as delightful, did almost immediately give place to another vivid colour, and ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... way of boiling fish. A broth is made by boiling three onions, two carrots, two turnips, some parsley, pepper, salt, sufficient water, a tumbler of white wine, and a tumbler of vinegar together; the scum is removed as it rises, the fish is simmered in the broth. This broth is called Court bouillon. Fish cooked thus is eaten hot or ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 355, October 16, 1886 • Various
... famous passage in the history of the barnacle, which traced the lineage of the bird to one of the pedunculated cirripedes, and the lineage of the cirripede to a log of wood. The puffin feeds its young, say the islanders, on an oily scum of the sea, which renders it such an unwieldy mass of fat, that about the time when it should be beginning to fly, it becomes unable to get out of its hole. The parent bird, not in the least puzzled, ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... beneath, until it is skimmed off. And so we have political demagogues shouting the untenable fallacy that all men are equal, together with other flamboyant nonsense; and hooligan suffragists smashing windows. But all these are only the scum upon the outside of a great upward movement in mankind, and are not to be taken as the incontestable proof of the vicious condition of ...
— Three Things • Elinor Glyn
... but from one or other you picked up some sort of a passage home. Anyway, lost men as the I'll Away's crew might be, they were glad enough, having traded you for nothing, to up-sail and lose you out of their sight. . . . And this man I find you two gentlemen treating as your friend, whom the scum of the earth (as you would call them) abhorred! And you know, whilst those ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bookbindery girl conversed absorbedly, with their elbows on the table. Their glasses of beer were pushed to one side, scarcely touched, with the foam on them sunken to a thin white scum. Since the stroke of one the stale pleasures of Rooney's had become renovated and spiced; not by any addition to the list of distractions, but because from that moment the sweets became stolen ones. The ...
— Strictly Business • O. Henry
... clamoured for the dismissal of the "Andalusian Woman." A hothead suggested that she should be driven from the town. The cry was taken up, and a rush set in towards her house in the Barerstrasse. As there was an agreeable prospect of loot, half the scum of the city swelled the mob. Bricks were hurled through the windows; and, until the police arrived, ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... solution, agitation is stopped, and the contents of the tank passed through a filter press. The scum, which accumulates on the treatment tank, may be transferred to a perforated box suspended over the tank, and the liquor allowed to drain from it. The filtered liquor is now rendered slightly alkaline by the addition of caustic soda ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... pound of meat and bone to one and a half quarts of cold water; the meat and bones to be well chopped and broken up, and put over the fire in cold water, being brought slowly to a boil, and carefully skimmed as often as any scum rises; and being maintained at a steady boiling point from two to six hours, as time permits; one hour before the stock is done, add to it one carrot and one turnip pared, one onion stuck with three cloves, and a bouquet of ...
— The Cooking Manual of Practical Directions for Economical Every-Day Cookery • Juliet Corson
... I said gravely, more impressed than ever with the seriousness of the situation. "I heard of him two years ago—he killed a man in the Sixth North Carolina, and took to the hills. Since then he has developed into quite a leader for such scum, and has proven himself a merciless monster. You have no suggestion to offer as to how we had better attempt to ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... bagatelle, Rickshaw, knickknack, whim-wham, trifle, trifles light as air; yankee notions [U.S.]. trumpery, trash, rubbish, stuff, fatras^, frippery; leather or prunello; chaff, drug, froth bubble smoke, cobweb; weed; refuse &c (inutility) 645; scum &c (dirt) 653. joke, jest, snap of the fingers; fudge &c (unmeaning) 517; fiddlestick^, fiddlestick end^; pack of nonsense, mere farce. straw, pin, fig, button, rush; bulrush, feather, halfpenny, farthing, brass farthing, doit^, peppercorn, jot, rap, pinch of snuff, old ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... had swept the hotel office with a desperate glance, trying to select a face to which she might appeal. There wasn't one. Estabrook was filling with its usual week-end scum; crafty faces, hard faces, faces shallowly good-natured, and therefore doubly treacherous. Even the pimply clerk at the desk, discerning her unescorted state, had changed subtly ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... 'Fiends and scum of all the wicked, set free on this instant the captive princess whom you hold imprisoned in that coach, or else prepare for death, which is the just ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... it lying. By the edge grasses, water-plantains, forget-me-nots, frequently fill the space within reach. If you brush these aside it disturbs the bottom, and the mud rises, or a patch of brown 'scum' comes up and floats away. A cup, though gently used, generally draws some insects in with the water, though the liquid itself be pure. Lapping with the hollowed palm requires practice, and, unless the spot be free from weeds and of some little depth, soon disturbs the bottom. But the tube ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... merely one of those adventurers of demagogism who rise, like Masaniello, or like Hebert,[23] from the boiling scum of the masses. He was one of the middle classes, the heart of the nation. His family, pure, honest, of property, and industrious, ancient in name, honourable in manners, was established at Arcis-sur-Aube, and possessed a rural domain in the environs of that small town. It was of ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... anti-slavery people, in their really noble enterprise. It is almost superfluous to remark that a democratic Government always shows worst where other Governments generally show best, on its outside; that unreasonable people are much more noisy than the reasonable; that the froth and scum are the part of a violently fermenting liquid that meets the eyes, but are not its body and substance. Without insisting on these things, I contend, that all previous cause of offence should be ...
— The Contest in America • John Stuart Mill
... the distant thunder hum, Maryland! The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum, Maryland! She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb— Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum; She breathes, she burns—she'll come! she'll ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... vinegar 1 quart; of best brazil wood 1/2 lb. Infuse together for four days; then boil for half an hour, strain through a linen cloth, and place the liquid again over the fire. Having dissolved 1/4 lb. of alum in a pint of white wine vinegar, mix both liquids together and stir them well. Take the scum that arises on the surface, gradually dry and powder it, and it ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... Tolstoy—who avoided the "muck heap"—does not throw light on the question. Their fastidiousness does not prove anything; why, before them there was a generation of writers who regarded as dirty not only accounts of "the dregs and scum," but even descriptions of peasants and of officials below the rank of titular councillor. Besides, one period, however brilliant, does not entitle us to draw conclusions in favour of this or that literary tendency. Reference to the ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... cheering as it passed. But even the cheers were sober: Paris was not to be shaken out of her self-imposed serenity. One felt something nobly conscious and voluntary in the mood of this quiet multitude. Yet it was a mixed throng, made up of every class, from the scum of the Exterior Boulevards to the cream of the fashionable restaurants. These people, only two days ago, had been leading a thousand different lives, in indifference or in antagonism to each other, as alien as enemies across a frontier: now workers and idlers, thieves, ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... colour change? When do your eyes Sparkle with fire to revenge these wrongs? When doth your tongue break into rage and wrath, Against that scum of manhood, your vile husband?' He first ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... together into an hard cake or lump, which is sustained by the furnace, and through this the mettal as it runs trickles down the receivers, which are placed at the bottom, where there is a passage open, by which they take away the scum and dross, and let out their mettal as ...
— Iron Making in the Olden Times - as instanced in the Ancient Mines, Forges, and Furnaces of The Forest of Dean • H. G. Nicholls
... "He is scarcely scum, sir. One must allow that in point of form he is parfaitement bien. It is likely that the fortune of his father has led him quite naturally to believe himself fit ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... [Purple with rage, big, prosperous—brandishing cudgel] The Jew—show me the Jew who seduced my daughter! Show him to me, I say! That corrupt scum of society—the man who broke into my house and stole my daughter. [Waves his cane and smites the air] Where is ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... impurities, of course, however carefully the ingredients are prepared. Some of these sink to the bottom, and some rise in scum, or, as it is called here, glass-gall, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... the place of mercy, words of pardon were on his lips, when a certain Athanasius Vaya, a Greek schismatic, and a favourite of the pacha's, whose illegitimate son he was supposed to be, advanced at the head of the scum of the army, and offered to carry out the death sentence. Ali applauded his zeal, gave him full authority to act, and spurred his horse to the top of a neighbouring hill, the better to enjoy the spectacle. The Christian Mirdites and the Mohammedan guards knelt together to pray for the miserable ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Mamelukes, who seemed inclined to defy his and every other person's authority; and, on hearing that the result of all the disorders and revolutions had been the elevation of Bibars Bendocdar to the throne of Saladin, he remarked, in homely oriental phrase, 'when the pot boils, the scum rises to the top.' Above all, Musteazem was a miser, and covetous to the last degree; and when it was explained to him by his grand vizier, whom the Templar had already bribed with a purse of gold, that the King of France was liberal in money matters, and was ready to pay handsomely ...
— The Boy Crusaders - A Story of the Days of Louis IX. • John G. Edgar
... Hesketh's soul was in his work. The molten iron from the blast furnaces flows along its channel into huge "ladles" or cauldrons, and from there it is conveyed into a still larger reservoir or "mixer," where the greater part of the slag—which floats as a scum on the surface—is drawn off. Then the purified metal passes into other cauldrons, which are borne along by hydraulic machinery and their contents gently tipped into the crucibles, which lower their gaping mouths to receive the daffodil stream of molten iron. When ...
— Tales of the Ridings • F. W. Moorman
... roved to me, as if he were about to signal to me to let loose; and I half-started forward, releasing the mangled foot under my foot. I was for leaping to complete that half-formed wish of Pilate and to sweep away in blood and cleanse the court of the wretched scum that howled ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... from being manifest. The stream flows inland, and those who are here today are gone to-morrow, and their places in society filled up by others who ten years back had no prospect of ever being admitted. All is transition, the waves follow one another to the far west, the froth and scum, boiling in the advance. ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... to sleep in importance was the fortnightly bath. Sometimes we cleansed ourselves, as best we could, in muddy little duck ponds, populous with frogs and green with scum; but oh, the joy when our march ended at a military bathhouse! The Government had provided these whenever possible, and for several weeks we were within marching distance of one. There we received a fresh change of underclothing, and our uniforms ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... of the tyrannous government of the Bourbons; but the fact remains that, whatever its origin, the Mafia to-day is a criminal organization, having, like the Camorra, for its ultimate object blackmail and extortion. Its lower ranks are recruited from the scum of Palermo, who, combining extraordinary physical courage with the lowest type of viciousness, generally live by the same means that supports the East Side "cadet" in New York City, and who end either in prison or on the dissecting-table, ...
— Courts and Criminals • Arthur Train
... lightly upon many others. But the impress remained, and though I was not a priest by profession I was so in disposition. All my failings sprung from that. My first masters taught me to despise laymen, and inculcated the idea that the man who has not a mission in life is the scum of the earth. Thus it is that I have had a strong and unfair bias against the commercial classes. Upon the other hand, I am very fond of the people, and especially of the poor. I am the only man of my time who has understood ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... lords of the Marches. We toyed with politics, with simplicity, we wasted the land, we played cards as our coaches passed through famine-stricken villages. The reckoning came. Our punishment was not given into the hands of the bourgeois, who would have dealt justly, but to the scum, the canaille, the demons of the earth. Had our King, had our nobility, been men with the old fire, they would not have stood it. They were worn out with centuries of catering to themselves. Give me a man who will shape his life and live it with all his strength. I am tired ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... down the trunk in autumn, to lie there self-buried and die to live again next spring in a new and fairer shape. And if you cannot reach even there, go to the water-but in the nearest yard, and there, in one pinch of green scum, in one spoonful of water, behold a whole "Divina Commedia" of living forms, more fantastic a thousand times than those with which Dante peopled his unseen world: and then feel, as you should feel, ...
— Scientific Essays and Lectures • Charles Kingsley
... thus prepared, add two pounds of good, clean, rich low priced brown sugar, per gallon, stirring it in the tub till all the sugar be dissolved; let it remain in the tub, and in a day or two it will ferment, and the scum rise to the top, which must be carefully skimmed off—then put the wine into a clean nice barrel—do not bung it up tight. There is generally a fermentation in it the spring following, when the grape vines are in blossom, but racking it off just before that season ...
— The Practical Distiller • Samuel McHarry
... greatest ministers of state we ever had (till now) treated by a poor paper-pedlar, every Thursday, like the veriest rascals in the kingdom.... I could, if it were needful, bring a great many instances, of this licentious way of the scum of mankind's treating the greatest peers in the nation" ("A Letter to the Seven ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D. D., Volume IX; • Jonathan Swift
... top new 'uns, mixed hup with the welcher, the froth with the scum; There wos duchesses, proud as DIANNER, and she-things as sniffed of the slum; There was "champions" thick as bluebottles, and plungers as plenty as peas, With stoney-brokes, pale as a poultice, and "crocks," ...
— Punch Among the Planets • Various
... Oh, you should hear him when he moves among his people.... I envy his ability to control them with words. A little backslapping, a joke or two—most of them I was telling last year—and he talks to them man to man, very friendly." He shook his head again. "Manning is so friendly with this scum that his attitude is nothing short ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... geare drehton tha hergas on East Englum and on Northhymbrum West Seaxna lond swithe be thm suth stthe . mid stl hergum . ealra swithust mid thm scum the hie fela geara r timbredon. Tha het Alfred cyng timbran lang scipu ongen tha scas[104] . tha wron fulneah tu swa lange swa tha othru . sume hfdon lx ara . sume ma. Tha wron gther ge swiftran ge unwealtran . ge eac hieran thonne tha othru. Nron nawther ...
— Anglo-Saxon Literature • John Earle
... you are none the less, bound to treat her with humanity. Why did you come here tonight so insolently? 'Give us our rights, but don't dare to speak in our presence. Show us every mark of deepest respect, while we treat you like the scum of the earth.' The miscreants have written a tissue of calumny in their article, and these are the men who seek for truth, and do battle for the right! 'We do not beseech, we demand, you will get no thanks from us, ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... London streets ferment in full activity, While everything around was calm and still, Except the creak of wheels, which on their pivot he Heard,—and that bee-like, bubbling, busy hum Of cities, that boil over with their scum:— ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... fifty. We saw slope-shouldered, hollow-chested, pale-faced men of the academic type, wearing glasses an eighth of an inch thick. We saw scrubby looking men who seemed to "be the dirt and the dross, the dust and the scum of the earth." ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... quart of cold water, one even teaspoon of salt, and half a saltspoon of pepper. Let the meat stand till the water is slightly colored with its juice; then put upon the fire, and let it come slowly to a boil, skimming off every particle of scum as it rises. The least neglect of this point will give a broth in which bits of dark slime float about, unpleasant to sight and taste. A cup of cold water, thrown in as the kettle boils, will make the scum rise more freely. Let it boil steadily, but very slowly, allowing an hour to each ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... deny the present applicability of the note upon 'Magazines' compiled by Pope, or rather by Warburton, for the episcopal bludgeon is perceptible in the prose description. They are not at present 'the eruption of every miserable scribbler, the scum of every dirty newspaper, or fragments of fragments picked up from every dirty dunghill ... equally the disgrace of human wit, morality, decency, and common sense.' But if the translator of the 'Dunciad' into modern ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... slave-owners all their power. You say we control the Union. We do, and we do it by the votes of these people, who are as far below our niggers as the niggers are below decent white men. Who that reflects that this country has been governed for fifty years by such scum, would give a ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... To every gallon of apple juice, immediately as it comes from the press, add two pounds of lump sugar; boil it as long as any scum rises, then strain it through a sieve, and let it cool. Add some yeast, and stir it well; let it work in the tub for two or three weeks, or till the head begins to flatten; then skim off the head, draw ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... I wanted no scandal. If I had spoken, you would have been arrested. Whatever happened your chances were worse than those of any one. You can't frighten me, or my friends in there, or the Baas, or Mrs. Byng. Look after your own skin. You are the vile scum of the earth,"—he determined to take a strong line now, since he had made a powerful impression on the creature before him—"and you will do what the Baas likes, not what you like. He saved your ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... course that men, and newspapers, are equally stupid in time of peace; and I fear that fundamentally this is true. War does not change their nature, but only brings to the bubbling surface the dregs and vileness and scum. War does not change any one's nature; and that is why it is vain to expect that under its influence those crowds will love their country who never loved anything before. But if war cannot create it may at least be supposed to discover and test the existent ...
— The World in Chains - Some Aspects of War and Trade • John Mavrogordato
... "I think the scum of society should be kept in its place," observed another, scarcely less bitter than young Richmond in his jealousy of the lad who claimed so much of the attention of the little belle of ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... much struck this morning with the entire disappearance of a green mantle of Confervoid scum from the surface of a foul pool close to my quarters. Yesterday the pool was quite green, now there is no green, nor any traces of the scum except such portion as was not in the ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... green and stagnant waters lick His feet, And from their filmy, iridescent scum Clouds of mosquitoes, gauzy in the heat, Rise with His ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... lip and dreamful gaze. It was here that the larger, the holier life lay. What was necessary was to keep apart, with deliberate purpose, from all fruitless vexations, dull anxieties, sordid designs. To detach oneself, not from life, but from the scum and foam of life; to realise that the secret lay in the middle of it all, and that it was to be discerned not by fastidious abstention, not by a chilly asceticism, but by welcoming all nobler impulses, all spiritual influences; not by starving body or mind, but by selecting one's ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... Gunn," he continued. "To-morrow morning, Gunn, they will find you in your room dead, and if one of the scum you brought into my house be charged with the murder, so much the better. When I am well they will go. I am already feeling a little bit stronger, Gunn, as you see, and in a month I ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... Westward of both, and for that reason do not see the Land which trends more to the Northward. Our Course and distance sail'd since Yesterday is North-North-West, 69 Miles; Longitude in 221 degrees 27 minutes West. The Sea in many places is here cover'd with a kind of a brown scum, such as Sailors generally call spawn; upon our first seeing it it alarm'd us, thinking we were among Shoals, but we found the same depth of Water were it was as in other places; neither Mr. Banks nor Dr. Solander ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... without steady trade,[2402] scoundrels, and blackguards, who, like uprooted, decaying seaweed, drift from coast to coast around the entire circle of the Mediterranean sea; a veritable sink filled with the dregs of twenty corrupt and semi-barbarous civilizations, where the scum of crime cast forth from the prisons of Genoa, Piedmont, Sicily, indeed, of all Italy, of Spain, of the Archipelago, and of Barbary,3 accumulates and ferments.2 No wonder that, in such a time the ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 3 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 2 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... town are reading the King of Prussia's poetry, and I have done like the town; they do not seem so sick of it as I am. It is all the scum of Voltaire and Bolingbroke, the crambe recocta of our worst freethinkers tossed up in German-French rhyme." Gray, vol. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... molten pig-iron to a very great heat in a pear-shaped vessel (known technically as the "converter"). This is open at the top, and is supported on hinges, which permit of its being moved so as to pour off the scum which rises to the surface at the end of the operation, and which, we may explain, consists of "basic slag." In the original process the sides of the "converter" were lined with fire-bricks, consisting largely of silica. This ...
— Manures and the principles of manuring • Charles Morton Aikman
... Heaven," said Roland, "I had but two,—nay, but one of them with me this instant. A man like Bruce were worth the lives of a dozen such scum.—I must ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... the gypsies, now and probably then, as we may assume from his Zincali, the sordid scum on the hillside of that great city, but now more assuredly than then unutterably demoralised by the numerous but curious tourists who visit this rabble under police protection, the very policeman or gendarme not despising a peseta for his protective services. ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... really it is his fence. Even here in Rotterdam, I have noticed a filthy ditch, from four to ten feet wide, between the house and the road. It is nearly filled with water, which is covered with a vile green scum. The wonder is, that this stagnant water does ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... at the rear may be entirely empty in dry seasons; and after heavy rains may contain a depth of 2 feet. This water now has a greasy looking scum ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... rolled into the square and sought to part its way through that scum somebody in the crowd made a proposition that was promptly favored as far as the votes by voices went: "Tip ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... his next book, the Ebb-Tide (in collaboration with Osbourne) to little better than a mud-bath, for we find ourselves, as it were, unrelieved by dredging among the scum and dregs of humanity, the 'white trash' of the Pacific. Here we have Stevenson's masterly but utterly revolting incarnation of the lowest, vilest, vulgarest villainy in the cockney, Huish. Stevenson's other villains shock us by their cruel and wicked ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... Scots farmer. It was known on this occasion that he had a good bit of money to bring home; the word had gone round loosely. The laird had shown his guineas, and if anybody had but noticed it, there was an ill- looking, vagabond crew, the scum of Edinburgh, that drew out of the market long ere it was dusk and took the hill-road by Hermiston, where it was not to be believed that they had lawful business. One of the country-side, one Dickieson, they took with them to be their ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson |
