"Blacking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... one's way across the muddy yard; in the outer room, behind a canvas screen, with its covering peeling off it, would lie stretched the snoring orderly; on the floor rotten straw; on the stove, boots and a broken jam-pot full of blacking; in the room itself a warped card-table, marked with chalk; on the table, glasses, half-full of cold, dark-brown tea; against the wall, a wide, rickety, greasy sofa; on the window-sills, tobacco-ash.... In a podgy, clumsy arm-chair one would find the master of the place ...
— The Jew And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... United States, television reception was blacking out for hours at a time, with no explanation available. The Civil Aeronautics Administration and the Air Force banned all plane movements under instrument flight conditions, because radar navigational equipment had become so unreliable as to ...
— Warning from the Stars • Ron Cocking
... last. Rather! The "Umbrella-tree" magnificent! Spreads out in wet weather, and folds up when it's fine. Splendid specimen of the "Boot-tree" (Arbor tegumenpedis), and the quaint "Blacking-Brush Plant," which is its invariable companion. No time to spare, however—off again to the Grantully Castle, with pockets full of fruits of all kinds. Must take care not to sit on them in boat. Lemon squash all very well, but a mixed fruit squash in your tail-coat ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. July 4, 1891 • Various
... temperament and which always continued to be the second moving force of his life. When he was ten years old his father was imprisoned for debt (like Micawber, in the Marshalsea prison), and he was put to work in the cellar of a London shoe-blacking factory. On his proud and sensitive disposition this humiliation, though it lasted only a few months, inflicted a wound which never thoroughly healed; years after he was famous he would cross the street ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... Fred, "stick to the Queen Eleanor scene. We will have no more blacking of faces. Yesterday I was too late down stairs because I could not get the abominable stuff out of ...
— Henrietta's Wish • Charlotte M. Yonge
... was nine years old his family moved to London. There the father fell into debt, and by the brutal laws of the period was thrown into prison. The boy went to work in the cellar of a blacking factory, and there began that intimate acquaintance with lowly characters which he used later to such advantage. He has described his bitter experience so often (in David Copperfield for instance) that the biographer may well pass over it. We note ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... "Surveillance? Give us a monitor on—" he spoke a string of incomprehensible numbers, while I lounged at ease on the couch. Forth waited for an answer, then touched another button and steel louvers closed noiselessly over the windows, blacking them out. I rose in sudden panic, then relaxed as the room went dark. The darkness felt oddly more normal than the light, and I leaned back and watched the flickers clear as one wall of the office became a large visionscreen. Forth came and sat beside me on the leather couch, but in the ...
— The Planet Savers • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... such an extent that nothing can be more unmeaning than references of this kind—in regard as well to schools, and "institutes," and "seminaries," as to the publication of books by subscription, and the superior merits of patent blacking and razor-straps; as to which, by the way, it has always been a subject of speculation to the writer, why a reverend divine or an eminent physician should be supposed better qualified to give an opinion than a boot-black or a barber. Here, therefore, "let us breathe," as ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... feathers, and other elements of ornament or trimmings may be regarded as subsidiary. In the same way the manufacture of wall-papers or house paint may be considered subsidiary to the building trades, that of blacking to the shoe manufacture. These subsidiary trades are related to the primary one more or less closely, and are affected by the condition of the latter more or less powerfully in proportion as the subsidiary elements they furnish are more or less indispensable in character. The fur and feather trades ...
— The Evolution of Modern Capitalism - A Study of Machine Production • John Atkinson Hobson
... degree like officers of the Royal Navy. They were dressed in Flushing coats; the lieutenant in a battered old sou'-wester, with a red woollen comforter round his throat; Nettleship had on an equally ancient-looking tarpaulin, and both wore high-boots, long unacquainted with blacking. They carried stout cudgels in their hands, their hangers and pistols being concealed under their coats. In about an hour and a half we reached Passage, when Nettleship and Larry and ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... think," echoed Ethel Danielson; "we must, as you say, take some definite position in the matter. If we stand out I am sure others will. The Christys are simply dying to get in, and they have loads of money to back them. What was it—blacking? Something disagreeable, I remember." ...
— Mrs. Christy's Bridge Party • Sara Ware Bassett
... contributed, like some obsolete Literary Miscellany, 'by several hands;' their few chairs never match; old patchwork coverlets linger among them; and they have an untidy habit of keeping their wardrobes in hat-boxes. When I recall one old gentleman who is rather choice in his shoe-brushes and blacking-bottle, I have summed up the domestic elegances of that side ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... conceive," said he, sitting down and sulkily drawing on his foot-gear, "why this piece of punctiliousness should have made any more difficulty about bringing me my boots than about blacking them." ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... it hand over fist, and in a few moments the blacking and whiting process was so complete that both were pronounced perfect transformations ...
— Ptomaine Street • Carolyn Wells
... everything with great thoroughness, injured himself so badly that he had to be removed to his home. He was taken away at ten in the morning, and at a quarter-past eleven Selina Vickers, in a large apron and her sleeves rolled up over her elbows, was blacking the kitchen stove and throwing occasional replies to the ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... night these two weeks and can't get work. I've got the strength, though I shan't have it long at this rate. I only want a job. This is the third night running that I've walked the streets all night; the only money I get is by minding blacking-boys' boxes while they go into Lockhart's for their dinner. I got a penny yesterday at it, and twopence for carrying a parcel, and to-day I've had a penny. Bought a ha'porth of bread and ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... nor the other for a moment foresaw what a terrible weapon reform was to become in the hands of the excitable French people. If, in the city where the tragedy was being enacted, the customary baking and brewing, the promenading under the trees, and the dog-dancing and the shoe-blacking on the Pont-Neuf could still continue, it is not strange that those who watched it from ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... our banner and started out. It was a big piece of cardboard fixed onto a scout staff and on it was printed with shoe-blacking: ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... on this ridge that the three children gathered at ten o'clock that morning. An earlier flight had been impossible on account of Wan Lee being obliged to perform his regular duty of blacking the shoes of Polly and Hickory before breakfast,—a menial act which in the pure Republic of childhood was never thought inconsistent with the loftiest piratical ambition. On the ridge they met one "Patsey," the son of a neighbour, sun burned, broad-brimmed hatted, red handed, ...
— The Queen of the Pirate Isle • Bret Harte
... to throw it up. It is hardly the work for a gentleman born, and the grandson of a rear-admiral. Tinkers' and tailors' sons get the luck now; and a man of good blood is put on the back shelf, behind the blacking-bottles. A man who has battled for ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... nobleman vood turn shoeblack? Captain Stobbs, here is your former flame, my dear niece, Miss Grotty. How could you, Magdalen, ever leaf such a lof of a man? Shake hands vid her, Gaptain;—dere, never mind de blacking!" But Miss drew back. ...
— The Fatal Boots • William Makepeace Thackeray
... systematically meted out to the Shannon's crew is more than the heart "can Cleaverly Bear"—enough, in short, to make them "rise and Steer the Ship into an Enemies Port." The seamen of the Glory are made wretched by "beating, blacking, tarring, putting our heads in Bags," and by being forced to "drink half a Gallon of Salt Water" for the most trivial breaches of discipline or decorum. On the Blanch, if they get wet and hang or spread their clothes to dry, the captain "thros them ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... Advertisers, as a novel enterprise, timidly beginning to spring up. It bashfully, almost apologetically, gives the traveller to understand that it does not expect him, on the good old constitutional hotel plan, to order a pint of sweet blacking for his drinking, and throw it away; but insinuates that he may have his boots blacked instead of his stomach, and maybe also have bed, breakfast, attendance, and a porter up all night, for a certain fixed charge. From these and similar premises, many true ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... wrath almost fiery enough to boil them alive. Pay!—pay for that wild plunge into watery depths—the doubt, the fear, the icy terror of hungry monsters around him! Dud Fielding was offering him pay for this, very much as he might fling pay to him for blacking his boots. Ah, it was a fierce, bad moment for Dan! His beacon light vanished; murky clouds of passion were blackening dream and vision; he felt he could cheerfully pitch Dud back to the sharks again. And then, as still hot and furious, he strode back with his lobsters to old Ned, ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... parted last night, to look for a piece of mine that had not been taken to my room, and I found the porter there, with his wrist bound up. He said he had strained it in handling a lady's Saratoga—he said a Saratoga was a large trunk—and I begged him to let me relieve him at the boots he was blacking. He refused at first, but I insisted upon trying my hand at a pair, and then he let me go on with the men's boots; he said he could varnish the ladies' without hurting his wrist. It needed less skill than I supposed, and after I ...
— A Traveler from Altruria: Romance • W. D. Howells
... man's foot. Rollo wondered what it was for. Just before he reached the place, however, he saw a gentleman, who then happened to come along, stop before the box and put his foot on the projection. Immediately the man took out some brushes and some blacking from the inside of the box, which was open on the side where the man was standing, and began to brush ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... struggles we poor girls have to undergo beforehand give a peculiar relish to our fun when we get it. This fact will account for the rapturous mood in which Polly found herself when, after making her bonnet, washing and ironing her best set, blacking her boots and mending her fan, she at last, like Consuelo, "put on a little dress of black silk" and, with the smaller adornments pinned up in a paper, started for the Shaws', finding it difficult to walk decorously when her heart was dancing in ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... The visitor advanced a little, drew from a recess a shoe-blacking outfit, pulled over it one of the stiff blankets from a neighboring bunk, and sat down rather cautiously. Little by little James made out more of the look of the man. He was large and rather blond, ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... a cabinet de decrotteur, where the art of blacking shoes is carried to a pitch of perfection hitherto ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... soda-water, ink, blacking, &c. are principally manufactured near Codnor Castle, in Derbyshire. About fifty women and children finish one hundred gross ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 401, November 28, 1829 • Various
... of things, and a pretty place to bring a lady," he muttered, glancing ruefully around the room and enumerating the different articles he knew were out of place. "Fish worms, fishhooks, fishlines, bootjack, boot-blacking, and rifle, to say nothing ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... have elements in their writings quite notable in themselves at all times, but more notable now when letters everywhere else seem to run to waste and ruin,—elements without which all writing must become in due course of time so much blacking of paper, and all speech only so much empty sound; elements without which all writing is sent off, not weighted in one corner, that it may, like unto the toy, after never so much swaying to and fro, still find its upright equilibrium, but rather like unto the sky-rocket, ...
— Lectures on Russian Literature - Pushkin, Gogol, Turgenef, Tolstoy • Ivan Panin
... Prex used to get the students together and advise them on keeping their faces clean, and blacking their boots, &c.—Amherst Indicator, Vol. ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... paint-boxes of the little boys'; a box of fish-hooks for Solomon John; an ink-bottle, carefully done up in a great deal of newspaper, which was fortunate, as the ink was oozing out; some old magazines, and a blacking-bottle; and at the bottom, a sun-dial. It was all very entertaining, and there seemed to be something for every occasion but the present. Old Mr. Bromwick did not wonder the basket was so heavy. It was all so interesting that nobody but ...
— The Peterkin Papers • Lucretia P Hale
... began tapping at the door, which was bolted, and crying, "Will whoever owns this house give me and my people some water to drink, for the sake of kind charity?" But nobody answered, for the Princess, who heard him, was busy up in her room, blacking her face with charcoal and covering her rich dress with rags. Then the Prince got impatient and shook the door angrily, saying, "Let me in, whoever you are! If you don't, I'll force the door open." At this the poor little Princess got dreadfully frightened; ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... cried the Count, giving the man a thousand-franc note. "Take this, but, remember, I give it to you on condition of your spending it at the wineshop, of your getting drunk, fighting, beating your wife, blacking your friends' eyes. That will give work to the watch, the surgeon, the druggist—perhaps to the police, the public prosecutor, the judge, and the prison warders. Do not try to do anything else, or the devil will be revenged on ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... said, 'I wasn't to blame. I know what you have heard, but if I can't whiten myself without blacking a woman ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... borrowed things returned, and lent things sent after, and every tool and article belonging to the farm was returned to its own place at exactly such an hour every Saturday afternoon, and an hour before sundown every item of preparation, even to the blacking of his Sunday shoes and the brushing of his Sunday coat, was entirely concluded; and at the going down of the sun, the stillness of the Sabbath seemed to settle down ...
— The May Flower, and Miscellaneous Writings • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... with the rigours of 'the Horn' sent them to their preparations when we had scarce crossed the Line. Old Martin was the fore hand. Now, his oilskins hung out over the head, stretched on hoops and broomsticks, glistening in a brave new coat of oil and blacking. Then Vootgert and Dutch John took the notion, and set to work by turns at a canvas wheel-coat that was to defy the worst gale that ever blew. Young Houston—canny Shetlander—put aside his melodeon, ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... England, was born in 1812. By hard, persistent work he raised himself from obscurity and poverty to fame and fortune. After only two years of schooling he was obliged to go to work. His first job was pasting labels on blacking-pots, for which he received twenty-five cents a day! He next became office boy in a lawyer's office, and then reporter for a London daily paper. He learned shorthand by himself from a book he found in a public ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... Christophe, "what do they give you? A miserable five-franc piece. There is Father Goriot, who has cleaned his shoes himself these two years past. There is that old beggar Poiret, who goes without blacking altogether; he would sooner drink it than put it on his boots. Then there is that whipper-snapper of a student, who gives me a couple of francs. Two francs will not pay for my brushes, and he sells his old clothes, and ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... that he would speak to Little Dorrit again before he went away. She would have recovered her first surprise, and might feel easier with him. He asked this member of the fraternity (who had two red herrings in his hand, and a loaf and a blacking brush under his arm), where was the nearest place to get a cup of coffee at. The nondescript replied in encouraging terms, and brought him to a coffee-shop in the ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... butcher and one baker at each of the villages, privileged dispensers of their respective commodities. There is a scarcity of poultry, of fresh butter, and vegetables; but there is abundance of maccaroni. There are two grocers, who both supply amateurs with English pickles, Harvey's sauce, Warren's blacking, Henry's magnesia, James's powder, and the other necessaries of life. The houses are generally let for the season, and the rent of the best is as high as L4 a-week. The furniture is old and bad, but tolerably clean. Ascend any of the hills, and you look down on roofs that have scarcely ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... not know, sir," Dodge replied distinctly. "I am of the opinion, sir, that it must have come from the blacking on one of my shoes as I put it ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... up the Forge to repair the Iron Work; the People employed in Heeling and Boot Topping the Larboard side, Blacking ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... scarcely reaching to his waist, but it abounded with pockets, as did the vest which it partly inclosed. His trousers were coarse, thick, and comfortable, and his large boots were never touched by blacking, Nick's father having no belief in such nonsense, but sticking to ...
— Through Forest and Fire - Wild-Woods Series No. 1 • Edward Ellis
... difficult servants are. Mrs. Twiss makes a grievance of it. They won't drink the tea in the kitchen; the currants are not so good. She always gets the matches there, and the blacking. Everything else Mrs. Twiss finds so ...
— Mrs. Day's Daughters • Mary E. Mann
... has some little municipal office; well acquainted with the Crooks, Mrs. Marsden, and others. Had tea with the Masons, and had a good deal of talk about old matters in England. Servetus, a very respectable young man carrying on an extensive blacking trade; the sister a very steady girl had lived some time with Mr. Furness. The old man as eccentric as ever, his wife looking old ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... ornament were obliged to put on a false one, fastened with pitch, which was liable to cause abcesses on the lip. Sometimes a fine, uniform color was produced in the moustaches of a whole regiment by means of boot-blacking. Broad white belts were crossed upon the breast. The linen gaiters, white on parade, black for the march, came well above the knee, and a superfluous number of garters impeded the step. It was a tedious matter to put these things on; and ...
— The Eve of the French Revolution • Edward J. Lowell
... longest-sleeved gingham apron, got a hearth brush, a dust-pan, the little dish which held the stove blacking, brush and polisher, rolled up her ...
— A Little Housekeeping Book for a Little Girl - Margaret's Saturday Mornings • Caroline French Benton
... Blacking.—Use a half bar of laundry soap, and one cake of blacking. Put in an old kettle with three quarts of water. Boil down until thick. ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... short time had a new supply of clear rain water, in which we had a grand rinsing. It was surprising to see how much soap and fresh water did for the complexions of many of us; how much of what we supposed to be tan and sea-blacking we got rid of. The next day, the sun rising clear, the ship was covered, fore and aft, with clothes of all sorts, hanging out ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... the masts to cut away a couple of the hempen shrouds and bring them to the camp, and they, appearing about this time, I set to work to unlay the shrouds, so that they might get out the fine white yarns which lay beneath the outer covering of tar and blacking. These, when they had come at them, we found to be very good and sound, and this being so, I bid them make three-yarn sennit; meaning it for the strings of the bows. Now, it will be observed that I have said bows, and ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... in contemptuous amusement. "Excellent young men who make innocent love in rose-gardens, never say 'damn.' And in those days, dear boy, we did not use shoe-blacking. Pray calm yourself, and sit down. You are upsetting the internal arrangements of your Infant. If you swing a baby violently about, it makes it sick. Any old Gamp ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... and go like blazes. Tell 'em to rush answer. This guy here thinks a colored boy is only an animated shoe-blacking outfit; it's up to us to remedy that defect in his education, see!" Thus sang the wires as Durmont paced ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... of ballads, and crying of news, With whitening of buckles, and blacking of shoes, Did Hartley set out, both shoeless and shirtless, And moneyless too, but not very dirtless; Two pence he had gotten by begging, that's all; One bought him a brush, and one a black ball; For clouts at a loss he could not be much, The clothes on his back as being ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... So royally free from all troublesome feelings, So little encumbered by faith in my dealings (And that I'm consistent the world will allow, What I was at Newmarket the same I am now). When such are my merits (you know I hate cracking), I hope, like the Vender of Best Patent Blacking, "To meet with the generous and kind approbation "Of a candid, enlightened, and ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... intelligent efforts. John Jacob Astor was a poor butcher's son. Cornelius Vanderbilt was a boatman. Daniel Drew was a drover. The Harpers and Appletons were printers' apprentices. A. T. Stewart was an humble, struggling shopkeeper. A well-known financier began by blacking a pair of boots. Opportunities as good as these men ever had are occurring every day. Those who are competent to seize them may do so, and rise ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... the soap in the bath-room or chew a newly-blacked boot. He chews and chuckles until, by and by, he finds out that blacking and Old Brown Windsor make him very sick; so he argues that soap and boots are not wholesome. Any old dog about the house will soon show him the unwisdom of biting big dogs' ears. Being young, he remembers and goes abroad, at six months, a well-mannered ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... which I have inserted in a note,[29-*] to give the reader a notion of the barbarous manners of the 16th century, with the addition of the arts of the confectioner, the brewer, the baker, the distiller, the gardener, the clear-starcher, and the perfumer, and how to make pickles, puff paste, butter, blacking, &c. together with my Lady Bountiful's sovereign remedy for an inward bruise, and other ever-failing nostrums,—Dr. Killemquick's wonder-working essence, and fallible elixir, which cures all manner ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... cheap. They are now enameled, or the top of them is made of celluloid in a color to match the shoe. The tags on lacings and the hooks for holding lacings are also enameled. A "box-toe gum" is used to support the box-toe stiffening. Cement covers the stitches; and many sorts of blacking are used in finishing the work. It is by no means a simple operation to make ...
— Makers of Many Things • Eva March Tappan
... of these being applicable to his present case, she sits gazing in resigned imbecility, till finally she desperately resolves to improvise him some gruel, and, after a laborious turn in the kitchen,—after burning her dress and blacking her fingers,—succeeds only in bringing him ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 101, March, 1866 • Various
... said Penrod. "I found your shoes where you'd taken 'em off in your room, to put on your slippers, and they were all dusty. So I took 'em out on the back porch and gave 'em a good blacking. They ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... of course, tastes differ," Miss Grace Mainwaring said. "I don't think a woman should have blacking-brushes instead of eyebrows. But ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... he whispered, "there's a Boston man down below, blacking my other pair of boots, who'd feel hurt if I should let anybody else take ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 2., No. 32, November 5, 1870 • Various
... "that pill-tenders and blacking manufacturers are most liberal to the editorial profession. I only wish jewellers and piano manufacturers were as free with their manufactures. I would like a good gold watch, and I shall soon want a ...
— Risen from the Ranks - Harry Walton's Success • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... chair and candlestick are fairies in disguise, meteors and constellations." The baseball, revolving as it flies, may suggest the orbs, or your girdle suggest the equator, or the wiping of your face on a towel suggest the absorption of the rain by the soil; but does the blacking of your shoes suggest anything celestial? Hinges and levers and fulcrums are significant, but one's old hat, or old boots, have not much poetic significance. An elm tree may suggest a cathedral, or a shell suggest ...
— The Last Harvest • John Burroughs
... moment how far the Anglomania, which began to prevail some seven years ago in Paris, had spread since we left the French capital. There it began, we remember, with certain members of the medical profession, who had learned to give calomel in English doses. The public next lauded Warren's blacking—Cirage national de Warren—and then proceeded to eat raw crumpets as an English article of luncheon. But things had gone farther since that time than we were prepared to expect. At the table d'hote of to-day, we found every body had something ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... and in summer by the gallantries of the Militia training; for, like many of his class, he was a captain in the Militia. He was always neatly dressed; his large moustache looked as if it shared with his boots the attention of the blacking brush. No cavalry sergeant in Ballincollig had a more delicately bowed leg, nor any creature, except, perhaps, a fox-terrier interviewing a rival, a more consummate swagger. He knew every horse and groom in all the leading livery stables, ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... flowers of the cortile on one side and over the sea on the other—very fresh and healthy. Some of his comrades, who had been on duty all night, were sleeping in their beds, other beds were empty, and their owners were blacking their boots and polishing their buttons. He told them to entertain me, which they did while he finished his dressing. He then returned and ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... Fashion." Lord John Russell's "Don Carlos." Montgomery's "Satan" (very good as a devil). "Journal of Civilization." Any of F. Chorley's writings, Robins' advertisements, or poetry relating to Warren's Jet Blacking. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, September 25, 1841 • Various
... not have been in better trim: it needed but one nod from Atropus,—I was busied about a boot at the time, but down I flung knife and leather with a will, jumped up, and never waited to get my shoes, or wash the blacking from my hands, but joined the procession there and then, ay, and headed it, looking ever forward; I had left nothing behind me that called for a backward glance. And, on my word, things begin to look well already. Equal rights for all, and no man better than his neighbour; that is hugely ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... found his father, as he knew he would, already started on the business of the evening. He had drawn the chest, the only seat in the room, to the side of the bed, against which he leaned his back. A penny candle was burning in a stone blacking bottle on the chimney piece, and on the floor beside the chest stood the bottle of whisky, a jug of water, a stoneware ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... so those that were in its way stood off, and threw themselves down upon the ground; by which means, and by their thus guarding themselves, the stone fell down and did them no harm. But the Romans contrived how to prevent that, by blacking the stone, who then could aim at them with success when the stone was not discerned beforehand as it had been till then; and so they destroyed many of them at one blow. Yet did not the Jews, under all this distress, permit the Romans to raise their banks in quiet, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... of the stove apply oil rather than "blacking." Light paraffin oil may be used for this purpose. Apply the oil with cotton waste, or a soft cloth. (Care should be taken not to apply an excess of oil.) Polish with soft cotton or woolen cloth. One should ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer
... to-night, and have been busy all day getting ready. All the good things are cooked, waiting till night, when Mac will be home. We have three splendid baked apples, and three eggs roasted in the ashes, but we have only two pies. We could only find two blacking-box lids, and as these are our pie-pans, we have only two pies. We washed and scoured the black all off, and they looked as nice as Sophia's tins, which she will never let us touch at home. Our biscuits ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... Rosemary had found the tie, Shirley had managed to upset the shoe blacking on her white shoes and had to be hastily refitted with tan socks and oxfords. Rosemary, flying down the hall with a new pair of shoelaces for her sister, brushed past Doctor Hugh on his ...
— Rosemary • Josephine Lawrence
... jealous concupiscences, its petty tyrannies, its false social pretences, its endless grudges and squabbles, its sacrifice of the boy's future by setting him to earn money to help the family when he should be in training for his adult life (remember the boy Dickens and the blacking factory), and of the girl's chances by making her a slave to sick or selfish parents, its unnatural packing into little brick boxes of little parcels of humanity of ill-assorted ages, with the old scolding or beating the young for behaving like young people, and the young hating and thwarting ...
— Getting Married • George Bernard Shaw
... some of which, however, were blown into champagne bottles, others into ale bottles; and that made a difference, since out in the world an ale bottle may contain the costly LACRYMAE CHRISTI, and a champagne bottle may be filled with blacking; but what they were born to every one can see by their shape, so that noble remains noble even with ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... of the same furnace; some of them had certainly been blown into champagne bottles, and others into beer bottles, which made a little difference between them. In the world it often happens that a beer bottle may contain the most precious wine, and a champagne bottle be filled with blacking, but even in decay it may always be seen whether a man has been well born. Nobility remains noble, as a champagne bottle remains the same, even with blacking in its interior. When the bottles were packed our bottle was packed amongst them; it little expected then to finish ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... dirt-obscured glass. The floor was filthy. Behind the bar, on the shelves designed for a display of liquors, was a confused mingling of empty or half-filled decanters, cigar-boxes, lemons and lemon-peel, old newspapers, glasses, a broken pitcher, a hat, a soiled vest, and a pair of blacking brushes, with other incongruous things, not now remembered. The air of the room was ...
— Ten Nights in a Bar Room • T. S. Arthur
... Quincey, Don Quixote and Rasselas (those four for some reason stand out in my mind from their fellows in the row), all bought for the modest ten-cent piece per volume—the price of two daily newspapers (for all newspapers in America then cost five cents) or one blacking of one's shoes. Much has, of course, been done of late years in England in popularising the "Classics" in the form of cheap libraries; but the facilities for buying the books—or rather the temptations to do so—are incomparably less, while the ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... overmastering preoccupation. He observed the most trivial details; he made an inventory of the things which he could see lying on the dirty bed of the river underneath the dirty water. There was a tin bucket with a hole in the bottom; there was a brown teapot without a spout; there was an earthenware blacking-bottle too strong to be broken; there were other shattered glass bottles and shards of crockery; there was a rim of a silk hat, and more than one toeless boot. He turned away, and looked down the road towards the ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... it is; come and find it for me. Everything here is in the vilest mess," cried Carne, growing reckless with wrath and hurry. "I want the despatch of this morning, and I find tailors' bills, way to make water-proof blacking, a list of old women, and a stump of old pipe! Come here, this instant, and show ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... naturally, so to speak, an artificial product of conventional ideas; Beth, on the contrary, was altogether a little human being, but one of those who answer to expectation with fatal versatility. She liked blacking grates, and did them well, because Harriet told her she could; she hated writing copies, and did them disgracefully, because her mother beat her for a blot, and said she would never improve. For the same reason, long before she could read aloud to her ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... desired effect, and he waited patiently until his turn came to be shaved. He was a dark-complexioned seafaring man, and had evidently just returned from a long sea voyage, as the beard on his chin was more like the bristles on a blacking-brush, and the operation of removing them more like mowing than shaving. When completed, the barber held out his hand for payment. The usual charge must have been a penny, for that was the coin he placed ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... having no regular occupation. He had had a blacking-box and brush, but it had been stolen, and he had not replaced it. He had asked Jack to lend him the money requisite to set him up in the business again, but the latter had put him off, intimating that he should have something else for him to do. ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... called, "Tom the Bootblack"; the other, "Dan the Newsboy." My chief objection to these stories was the fact that neither of the heroes rejoiced in his work for the work's sake. Had Tom even invented a new kind of blacking, or if Dan had started a newspaper, it might have been encouraging for those among the listeners who were thinking of engaging in similar professions. It is true, both gentlemen amassed large fortunes, but surely the school age is not to be limited ...
— The Art of the Story-Teller • Marie L. Shedlock
... evening", to mean, "Don't run against me, Sir." From the wonders of the deep we go below to get deeper sleep. And then the absurdity of being waked up in the night by a man who wants the job of blacking your boots! It is more inevitable than seasickness, and may have something to do with it. It is like the ducking you get on crossing the line the first time. I trusted that these old customs were abolished. They might with the ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... skin flaking away much as a snake's skin sheds in August. Otherwise he was dressed, like a countless multitude of other men who walk the streets of every city in North America, in a conventional sack suit, and shoes that still bore traces of blacking. The paddlers were stripped to thin cotton shirts and worn overalls. The only concession their passenger had made to the heat was the removal of his laundered collar. Apparently his dignity did not permit him to lay aside his coat ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a physician whose consulting room was crowded with patients needing help which he alone, of all men living, could give, spending the precious morning hours in the minutiae of household arrangements, blacking his boots, or preparing his food! Let these things be left to those who cannot do the higher work to which ...
— John the Baptist • F. B. Meyer
... gentlemen's shoes or clothes for brushing, etc. Well, sir, that young urchin is a protege of mine; I took him, sir, from the lowest obscurity and made him what he is; I taught him my profession, I endowed him with all the benefit of my experience, and with respect to blacking shoes, I have initiated him into all the little mysteries of the art, and can declare that there is not one in the business throughout all Paris that can surpass him, when he chooses to exert his talents; and therefore it renders it ...
— How to Enjoy Paris in 1842 • F. Herve
... has in the world, is a sort of Jackall, in a dull, mangy, black hide, of such small pieces that it looks as if it were made of blacking bottles turned inside out and cobbled together. The dearest friend in the world (inconceivably drunk too) advances at the Gong-donkey, with a hand on each thigh, in a series of humorous springs and stops, wagging his head as he comes. The Gong-donkey regarding him with attention ...
— The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices • Charles Dickens
... was not above his business, that he accepted the bitter with the sweet, Dennis went upstairs to his room, got blacking and brush, and taking his station in a corner where Mr. Ludolph could plainly see him through the glass doors of his office, he polished away as vigorously as if that were his only calling. Mr. Ludolph looked and smiled. ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... shoe blacking!" cried the eccentric man as he heard the beating of drums, and the shouts ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... was visible of his shirt was indecently dirty. His polished shoes had been deprived of their pristine lustre by means of a damp rag, vigorously applied, and then rubbed with dust. An artistic stain had been added to one of his sleeves by the simple device of smudging it with the blacking from his shoes. As for his hat, with the brim pulled down in front, it was nothing more nor ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... Chief's study on Pack Monday night just before twelve. In stockinged feet he had crept downstairs, opened the creaking door without making any appreciable noise, and then waited in the boot-room, which was filled with the odour of blacking and damp decay. There was a small window at the end of it, through which it was just possible to squeeze out on to the Chief's front lawn. After that all was easy; anyone could clamber over the wall by the V. ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... a concertina: I've a tongue like a button-stick: I've a mouth like an old potato, and I'm more than a little sick, But I've had my fun o' the Corp'ral's Guard: I've made the cinders fly, And I'm here in the Clink for a thundering drink and blacking the Corporal's eye. With a second-hand overcoat under my head, And a beautiful view of the yard, O it's pack-drill for me and a fortnight's C.B. For "drunk and resisting the Guard!" Mad drunk and resisting the Guard— 'Strewth, but I socked it them hard! So it's ...
— Barrack-Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... their pay nor with their knowledge. I determined to let other persons know what a convenience I had found the "Star Razor" of Messrs. Kampf, of New York, without fear of reproach for so doing. I know my danger,—does not Lord Byron say, "I have even been accused of writing puffs for Warren's blacking"? I was once offered pay for a poem in praise of a certain stove polish, but I declined. It is pure good-will to my race which leads me to commend the Star Razor to all who travel by land or by sea, as well as to ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... that followed." Which is not so certain. The cake was cut and "passed through the ring," also an exploded custom, whatever its meaning was. In what novel now-a-days would there be an allusion to "Warren's blacking," or to "Rowland's oil," which was, of course, their famous "Macassar." These articles, however, may still be procured, and to that oil we owe the familiar interposing towel or piece of embroidery the "antimacassar," devised to ...
— Pickwickian Manners and Customs • Percy Fitzgerald
... afflicted with pretension to fashion, of which we shall give abundant examples when we come to treat of gentility-mongers. But the heavy swell, who is of all classes, from the son and heir of an opulent blacking-maker down to the lieutenant of a marching regiment on half-pay, is utterly destitute of brains, deplorably illiterate, and therefore incapable, by nature and bringing-up, of respecting himself by a modest contented demeanour. He is never so unhappy as when he appears the thing he ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... blacking-box and hurried down stairs. He had delayed longer than he intended, and was resolved to make up ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... blacking Ham's boots, and he put them on. He was going to a party at Crofton's, and had already dressed himself as sprucely as the resources of Torrentville would permit. He was seventeen years old, and somewhat inclined to be "fast." ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... strip about fifty feet long, separated from the other little strips by iron hurdles. Mardon had tried to keep his garden in order, and had succeeded, but his neighbour was disorderly, and had allowed weeds to grow, blacking bottles and old tin cans to accumulate, so that whatever pleasure Mardon's labours might have ...
— The Autobiography of Mark Rutherford • Mark Rutherford
... of this sort of thing, taking the smooth with the rough of it, (Blacking her own boots and peeling her own potatoes was not her notion of connubial bliss), MRS. BLAKE began to find that she had pretty nearly had enough of it, And came, in course of time, to think that BLAKE'S own original line of conduct wasn't so ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... a big "block" given over to miscellaneous business purposes. It was little to the advantage of the Grindstone that it shared its entrance-way with a steamship company and a fire-insurance concern, and was roofed over by a dubious herd of lightweight loan brokers, and undermined by boot-blacking parlours, and barnacled with peanut and banana stands. Such a ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... younger men. His assumed activity is only put on till he turns the first corner, for he tries to conceal his lameness and decrepitude, especially from his wife, who strains her gaze after him. Just before starting off he takes the superfluous precaution to put some shoe-blacking on his hair which shows white about the temples. He comes back after a six hours' search, about noon, his neglected dinner still in his pocket. He has tramped ten or twelve miles with no open shop for him. He does ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... a velveteen jacket, and pantaloons which atoned, by their extra length, for the holes resulting from hard usage and antiquity. His shoes, which appeared to be wholly unacquainted with blacking, were, like his pantaloons, two or three sizes too large for him, making it necessary for ...
— Phil the Fiddler • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... motor-cycle, and approached Andy's stalled car, for Tom was some distance in advance of it, up the slope by this time. As he approached the auto, containing the three disconcerted cronies, something bounded out of Tom's pocket. It was the bottle of stove blacking he had purchased for Mrs. Baggert. The bottle fell in the soft dirt in front of his forward wheel, and a curious thing happened. Perhaps you have seen a bicycle or auto tire strike a stone at an angle, and throw it into the air with great force. That ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton
... dollar he bought a box, three brushes, and some blacking. He then went to the corner of the street, and said to every one whose boots did not look nice, "Black ...
— McGuffey's Second Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... you get your things ready, mark your name on them: mark every thing. You can easily cut a stencil-plate out of an old postal card, and mark with a common shoe-blacking brush such articles as tents, poles, boxes, firkins, ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... kettles boil quicker under it, and it makes the room a great deal cooler in summer by carrying the extra heat off up the chimney. She has a place for the bread to rise, and a cupboard close by for all the ironmongery belonging to the stove, zinc-cloth and blacking-brush included. ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... turned accusingly on Lloyd. "Didn't you know better than to put stove-blacking on that stove? When it gets het up, it will smoke to fare-ye-well, and start my asthma to going again full tilt. Some folks are mighty thoughtless, never have no ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... seated, "That is Hamilton's grandson." The man who was seated did not impress me very much. He was younger than the others. He wore a black suit and a black tie, and the three upper buttons of his waistcoat were unfastened. His beard was close-cropped, like a blacking-brush, and he was chewing on a cigar that had burned so far down that I remember wondering why it did not scorch his mustache. And then, as I stood staring up at him and he down at me, it came over me who he was, and I can recall even now how my heart seemed ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... bread blinded me so long to the mysteries of sun and sky and wind in the trees? We passed a white farmhouse close to the road. By the gate sat the farmer on a log, whittling a stick and smoking his pipe. Through the kitchen window I could see a woman blacking the stove. I wanted to cry out: "Oh, silly woman! Leave your stove, your pots and pans and chores, even if only for one day! Come out and see the sun in the sky and the river in the distance!" The farmer looked blankly at Parnassus as we ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... that he puts on after he takes off his hunting ones and I've 'shined' 'em for him like any street bootblack that ever did my own. Fact! Fancy what my mother would say! Master Montmorency Vavasour-Stark blacking shoes in order to get a bit of pocket-money! But I tell you what, Molly Breckenridge, I like it. I'm going to have one of these dimes made into a watch-charm and wear it always, just to remind me how fine ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond |
