"Reek" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... "I was keeking out of the window when you came up the road, and I said to masel', 'There's Miss Melville, and she'll be wanting her tea,' so I awa' and popped the kettle on. Bring your gentleman in. He's a new face, but he's welcome. Ye'll pardon the parlour being a' of a reek wi' tobaccy, but Mr. Laidlaw and Mr. Borthwick cam' in and had a cup o' tea and a bit of a crack. They were both bidding at the roup and some business thegither. I think Mr. Laidlaw means to buy Cornhaven off Mr. Borthwick and give it to his son John, wha's ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... the wagons as they neared the emplacements. Peter swung off and led his pony. Infantry was already engaged down in the hollows; the reek of powder began to cut the air at intervals, but the strong wind as often cleansed it away, and the scent of woods came up startlingly, with the warmth of the sun upon the ground—the sweet healing breath ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... of Pall Mall, the reek of the "old clothes" shop was more offensive than usual. The six pounds ten, however, was worth fighting for. Then some cheap hosiery had to be purchased—more collars of the bearing-rein type, some stiff shirts, made-up white ties, pinchbeck studs and cufflinks. As he emerged from the shop, Anthony ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... suddenly a far-off, muffled, crashing sound. Just once it came, then once again the stillness of the wilderness night, the stillness of vast, untraversed solitude. The Boy lifted his eyes and glanced across the thin reek of the camp-fire at Jabe Smith, who sat smoking contemplatively. Answering the glance, the woodsman muttered "old tree fallin'," and resumed his passive contemplation of the sticks glowing keenly in the fire. The Boy, upon whom, as soon as he entered ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... scuttling like rabbits to hidden lairs and dens. She remembered the dogs; the bright gun-barrel above the chimney-piece; the steam of clothes hung to dry after many a soaking in "soft" weather; the reek of the peat; the brown eyes and steaming nostrils of the bullocks, that sometimes looked through the kitchen window in icy winter twilights, as though they would willingly change their byres for ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... reached, and talked to Peter M'Crawney, the agent, an eager-faced Scot with an insatiable desire for information on all sorts of subjects. Mrs. M'Crawney was an Irishwoman who was always sighing for the mild, moist climate and the peat reek of her childhood's home. But Peter knew when he was well off, and meant to stick to his post until he had saved enough money to live ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... essay to push by; three times at the critical moment did the tractor lurch drunkenly across our bows; and three times did Pong fall back discomfited. The dust, the reek, the vibration, the pandemonium, were combining to create an atmosphere worthy of a place in the Litany. One's senses were cuffed and buffeted almost to a standstill. I remember vaguely that Daphne was clinging to my arm, wailing that "it ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... protest against the wickedness of the bishops and the extortions of the clergy he quotes with so much enjoyment of their rough humour, in the beginning of his history; or even might have witnessed the lighted pile and felt across his face the breath of that "reek" which carried spiritual contagion with it, as it flew upon the keen breeze from the sea over that little centre of life, full of scholars and wits, and keen cynical spectators little likely to be convinced by any such means. It is curious ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... you have looked on felon blows, On butcher's work of which the waste lands reek! Now in God's name, from Whom your greatness flows, Sister, will ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... human lips before. But, Sandie, my man, Lord's sake, rise: what fearful light is this?—barn and byre and stable maun be in a blaze; and Hawkie and Hurley,—Doddie, and Cherrie, and Damson-plum, will be smoored with reek and scorched with flame.' ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... recently, there must be hundreds who remember him, and thousands who have still ungarnered stories. Dear man, to the breach! Up, soldier of the iron dook, up, Slades, and at 'em! (which, conclusively, he did not say: the at 'em-ic theory is to be dismissed). You know piles of fellows who must reek with matter; ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... other. I could see the disgust rising in their eyes, the reek of rotten blubber expanding their nostrils. With one accord they ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Cross on her heart—the idol of her long desire, the star to which her longing eyes had looked up ever since her childhood through the reek of carnage and the smoke of battle; and she would have flung it away like dross, to have had his lips touch ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... reek of blue smoke was issuing from the crook of pipe above the roof, and wood was crackling in the stove. Old Man Haley, mindful of his guest's dignities and claims upon himself, set about the preparation of a goodly meal, part drawn from his own ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... which opens into the loft, reek up puffs of a rank, sour, penetrating odor. From time to time are heard sonorous growls and deep breathings, followed by a dull sound, as of great bodies stretching themselves heavily along ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... are right," said Stuart—who had good reason to know it. "My God! what a foul den! The reek is suffocating. Look at that yellow lifeless face yonder, and see that other fellow whose hand hangs limply down upon the floor. Those bunks might be occupied by corpses for all the evidence of life that ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... about the very bad ghost seen about the mansion for more than "three weeks of nights." He has got two sarpents' heads; Maum Nancy declares the statement true, for uncle Enoch "seen him,"-he is a grey ghost-and might a' knocked him over with his wattle, only he darn't lest he should reek his vengeance at some unexpected moment. And then he was the very worst kind of a ghost, for he stole all the chickens, not even leaving the feathers. They said he had a tail like the thing Mas'r Sluck whipped ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... hopelessness began to grow upon her. Now this way, now that, she urged her horse. How far could Barney hear her calling? How far could he wander? How far would she ride? There were forty miles in length and fifteen in width of this reek of wind-driven alkali. God keep them if ever they got more than two ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... when the wind howled a whole gale, we slapped our oilskin-clad thighs and lied cheerfully to each other of greater gales we had been in. Even Wee Laughlin and M'Innes were turned to some account and talked of sail and spars as if they had never known the reek of steamer smoke. In the half-deck we had little comfort during watch below. At every lurch of the staggering barque, a flood of water poured through the crazy planking, and often we were washed out by an untimely opening of the door. Though ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... springy turf of Lashmar Common, Eric stood gazing at the stars and drinking in the thousand mingled scents and sounds of the night. Somewhere hard by, a bonfire was pungently smouldering; there was a sour smell where a flock of geese had been feeding all day; flaring acridly across was a transitory reek of burnt lubricating oil, and the hint of a cigar so faint that it was gone before he could be sure of it. . . . The lumbering creak of the mill-wheel rose assertively above the drone and plash of the stream; a shiver of rain and a gentle sigh of wind in the top branches of the ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... last, the description of June for orange-flowers, pray read roses: the east winds have starved all the former; but the latter, having been settled here before the wars of York and Lancaster, are naturalized to the climate, and reek not whether June arrives in summer or winter. They blow by their own old-style almanacks. Madame d'Albany might have found plenty of white ones on her own tenth of June; but, on that very day, she chose to go to see the King in the House of Lords, with the crown ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... well dressed in his cheap sport way as to be out of keeping with the dilapidation of the room, in which there was hardly a table or a chair which stood firmly on its legs, or a curtain or a covering which didn't reek with dust and germs. A worn, thin carpet gaped in holes; what had once been a sofa stood against a wall, shockingly disemboweled. Through a door ajar one glimpsed a toy kitchen where the stove had lost a leg and was now supported by a brick. It was plain that the master of the house was one ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... like many of this earth's most profitable and desirable yieldings it has its unpretty aspects. For one thing it stinks most abominably while it is being cured, and after it has been cured it continues to stink, with a lessened intensity. For another thing, the all-pervading reek of the stuff gets into food that is being prepared ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... wish you could have a turn at it, my bonny boy! Your hair'd go grey, like mine! And look here—what are the plays to-day? They're either so chock-full of intellect that they send you to sleep—or they reek of sentiment till you yearn for the ...
— Five Little Plays • Alfred Sutro
... on the text of Rotrou as much, or nearly as much, as he has placed himself under unacknowledged obligation to his elder countryman: but in Dryden's version there is a taint of greasy vulgarity, a reek of obtrusive ruffianism, from which Heywood's version is as clean as Shakespeare's could have been, had he bestowed on the "Amphitruo" the honor he conferred on the "Menaechmi." The power of condensation into a few compact scenes of material sufficient for five full ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... sloping roof, which contained Alef's family, treasures, fighting tail, horses, cattle, and pigs. They entered at one end between the pigsties, passed on through the cow-stalls, then through the stables, and saw before them, dim through the reek of thick peat-smoke, a long oaken table, at which sat huge dark-haired Cornishmen, with here and there among them the yellow head of a Norseman, who were Alef's following or fighting men. Boiled meat was there in plenty, barley cakes, and ale. At the head of the table, on a ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... peaceable old man! What next? An Oration, on the Horrid Massacre of 1770. When that blood was shed,—the first that the British soldier ever drew from the bosoms of our countrymen,—we turned sick at heart, and do so still, as often as they make it reek anew from among the stones in King Street. The pool that we saw that night has swelled into a lake,—English blood and American,—no! all British, all blood of my brethren. And here come down tears. Shame on me, ...
— Old News - (From: "The Snow Image and Other Twice-Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... make her a handier load, I looked round me at the cold bare trees, asleep till the spring would waken them with sap. The hills were bleak and barren, the rocks harsh and cold with no warm crotal on them, and just the reek from the houses rising ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... his companion's acquiescence he turned and walked into the hut. After a moment's hesitation Bradby followed. The place smelt a trifle musty, and all the air was full of the subtle reek of decay. It was rather dim in the hut, and at first Mr. Bradby could see nothing but some indefinite shapes that might be anything at all. Gradually his eyes accustomed themselves to the gloom, and in the farthest corner he spied ...
— The Lost Valley • J. M. Walsh
... and seldom wash the face and hands. To protect themselves from the biting cold they smear their faces with rancid butter, which, catching the smoke and dust, adds to the effectiveness as well as the strength of the odor. Their homes and places of worship reek with dirt and filth; small-pox, ailments of the eyes, and other contagious diseases are prevalent. Harelip, in a great measure due to lack of proper nutrition, is a very ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... pleasantly to my undoing. Now it happens that there is in this city, down by the river where it flows black with city stain as though the toes of commerce had been washed therein, a certain ship chandlery. It is filthy coming on the place, for there is reek from the river and staleness from the shops—ancient whiffs no wise enfeebled by their longevity, Nestors of their race with span of seventy lusty summers. But these smells do not prevail within the chandlery. At first you see nothing but rope. Besides clothesline and other such familiar and domestic ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks
... along pleasantly enough the next day, within sight of the bold headlands of Maine; the sky and sea clear of vapor, except the long reek from the steamer's pipe. And then came nightfall and the northern stars; and, later at night, a new luminary on the edge of the horizon—Sambro' light; and then a sudden quenching of stars, and horizon, lighthouse, ropes, spars, and smoke stack; the ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... moreover, is engendered an unpleasant perspiration, which the patient must perforce endure until he shall bathe him in a bath. It is not sweet to reek, and your picnicker must reek. Should he chance to break a leg, or she a limb, the inevitable exposure of the pedal condition is alarming ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... worth, wae worth ye, Jock my man, I paid ye weel your fee: Why pu' ye out the ground-wa' stane, Lets in the reek to me? ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... Fleet Street set about explaining why the defeat was sustained and why it should never have happened. In due course these carpet tacticians proved to their own satisfaction that Colonel Stevenor was incompetent for the service on which he had been dispatched. But the reek of printing-ink never was good ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... about half-a-mile across the top, and its rocky sides glowed everywhere with the glare of the subterranean fires. A reek of sulphurous fumes filled the air and made the adventurers feel dizzy. They, therefore, worked round on the windward side of the crater, and after that ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... stopped short, angered over this impertinence. Suddenly he became conscious that a reek of burning cloth filled the room. He whirled round and saw nothing. Then he clapped his hands to his coat-tails and brought them around in front of him. There was already quite a hole in one of them—and this was his new suit. Faith shook with helpless laughter ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... day the gale swept down from the northeast unabated. The fo'c's'le was thick with tobacco smoke and the wet reek of the crew, for only the steersman and the lookout would stay on deck. Bob, somewhat recovered from his seasickness, lay wide-eyed in his bunk and heard such tales of plunder and savagery on the high seas as ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... the rush of smoke, and the glare of ruddy fire. A stifled cry, like one immense groan rose from below—above in the reek and blaze all was silent. But from out that fire I saw—yes, and another saw it too (an English soldier, rushing to add a faggot to the pyre, a token of his hate to the Maid), and it so wrought upon him that he dropped his burden, fell upon his knees and was like to die of the fear—I ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... you explain your gold and bracelets and pins, all the marks of your worldly rank? Lao-tze taught, 'Rich and high but proud brings about its own misfortune.'" He was so close to her now that she caught a faint sickly reek from his body. It seemed to her that she could see his identity, his reason, vanish, replaced by ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... he must fly from it—fly at all costs, before he betrayed M. le Marquis still further to these drink-sodden brutes. Another moment, and he feared that he might faint. The din of a bibulous song rang in his ears, the reek of alcohol turned him giddy and sick. He had only just enough strength to turn and totter back into the open. There his senses reeled, the lights in the houses opposite began to dance wildly before his eyes, after ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... are a Barbey d'Aurevilly-an. I am. I have a great delight in his Norman stories. Do you know the Chevalier des Touches and L'Ensorcelee? They are admirable, they reek of the soil and the past. But I was rather thinking just now of Le Rideau Cramoisi, and its adorable setting of the stopped coach, the dark street, the home-going in the inn yard, and the red blind illuminated. Without doubt, there was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... himself in the midst of a confused melee where friends and foes were almost indistinguishable. The thundering of horses' hoofs, the raucous shouting of the Arabs, the rattle of musketry, combined in deafening uproar. The air was dense with clouds of sand and smoke, heavy with the reek of powder. He had lost sight of Omar, he tried to keep near to Said, but in the throng of struggling men he was carried away, cut off from his own party, hemmed in on every side, fighting alone. He had forgotten his desire for death, his ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... wind blew over the world, first pure breath of the coming day, driving before it the reek of smoke and blood and death which hovered over Thorney as a pall. A tinge of gray light diffused itself like mist through the darkness; in this mist the forms of people wandered like dim restless ghosts seeking the graves from which the night ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... first glance it seemed as if the wheelwright was amusing himself by making a round bonfire of scraps, whose blue reek rose in the country air, and was driven every now and then by the wind over the boys, who coughed and sneezed and grumbled, but did not attempt to move, for there was, to them, an interesting feat about to be performed by the wheelwright—to wit, the fitting ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... every nerve behind his eyes taut with pain and strain, awakening unrefreshed to consciousness of that nimbus of unrelieved false glare which encircled him, and the stench of melted tallow and the stale reek of burned kerosene foul in his nose. That, now, had been the hardest of all to endure. Endured unceasingly, it had been because of his dread of a thing infinitely worse—the agonized, twisted, dying face of Jess Tatum leaping ...
— Sundry Accounts • Irvin S. Cobb
... torches, and giving the servant one, proceeded to fumigate the room and his own person until not even a bloodhound could have tracked him back to Yasmini's, and the reek of musk had been temporarily, at ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... on this great hill, Feeding his sheep for aye; I look'd in his hut, but all was still, My love was gone away. I went to gaze in the forest creek, And the dove mourn'd on apace; No flame did flash, nor fair blue reek Rose up to show me his place. O last love! O first love! My love with the true, true heart, To think I have come to this your home, And yet—we ...
— Standard Selections • Various
... interest of that Earldome. Sir John, hearing of their coming to his house of Killin, he caused his servants put on a great fyre of ffresh arn wood newly cutt, which when they came in (sitting on great jests of wood which he caused sett there a purpose) made such a reek that they were almost blinded, and were it not the night was so ill they would rather goe than byde it. They had not long sitten when his servants came in with a great bull, which presently they brained on the floor, and or they well could look about, this fellow with ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... canal and one catches a glimpse of long lines of house boats, with dim lights, nestling under overhanging balconies. Overall is that penetrating odor of the Far East, mingled with the smell of bilge water and the reek of thousands of sweating human beings. These smells are of the earth earthy and they led one to dream that night of weird and terrible creatures such as De Quincey paints in his Confessions of an ...
— The Critic in the Orient • George Hamlin Fitch
... country—ane of my chaises is gane for them, and will be back forthwith—they're no sae weel in the warld as they have been; but we're a' subject to ups and downs in this life, as your honour must needs ken—but is not the tobacco-reek disagreeable to ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... of iniquity, literal and unmitigated— though not unadulterated—spirits of evil rose like horrid fumes from the pit, and maddened the human spirits overhead. These, descending to the foundation-den, soaked themselves in the material spirit and carried it up, until the whole tenement seemed to reek and reel ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... cookery of the Petit Chastelet, before the cookshop of one of the roastmeat sellers of that lane, a certain hungry porter was eating his bread, after he had by parcels kept it a while above the reek and steam of a fat goose on the spit, turning at a great fire, and found it, so besmoked with the vapour, to be savoury; which the cook observing, took no notice, till after having ravined his penny loaf, whereof no morsel had been unsmokified, he was about decamping and going ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... forms—especially in the evening—a background suitable for any of the stirring scenes that took place in such grand old towns as Lisieux in medieval days. This street is however, only one of several that reek of history. In the Rue des Boucheries and in the Grande Rue there are lovely overhanging gables and curious timber-framing that is now at any angle but what was originally intended. There is really so much individual quaintness in these houses that ...
— Normandy, Complete - The Scenery & Romance Of Its Ancient Towns • Gordon Home
... door she paused upon the threshold with a little "Oh!" of surprise. There was a reek of cigar smoke; its origin between the lips of a burly young man who stood drumming a tune upon ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... were on His brow, His grief was deeper than before. From ravaged field and city now Arose the screams and reek of war. The black smoke parted. Through the rift God's sun fell on the b1oody lands. Christ wept, for still His priceless gift He ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... And the Persian pussy-cats, brought for sale, Spat at the dogs from the camel-bale; And the tribesmen bellowed to hasten the food; And the camp-fires twinkled by Fort Jumrood; And there fled on the wings of the gathering dusk A savour of camels and carpets and musk, A murmur of voices, a reek of smoke, To tell us the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... there, In scorn of Nature, Art gave lifeless life: Many a dry drop seem'd a weeping tear, Shed for the slaughter'd husband by the wife: The red blood reek'd, to show the painter's strife; The dying eyes gleam'd forth their ashy lights, Like dying coals ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... it, certainly," replied Enderby dryly. "A convenient view. But there are other details. Banneker is an ardent advocate of abstinence, 'Down with the Demon Rum!' The columns of The Patriot reek with whiskey ads. The same ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... initiation. In this peculiarity Rabelais is completely alone among the writers of the earth. Others have, for various reasons, dabbled in this sort of thing—but none have ever piled it up—manure-heap upon manure-heap, until the animal refuse of the whole earth seems to reek to the stars! There is not the slightest reason to regret this thing or to expurgate it. Rabelais is not Rabelais, just as life ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... muscles gone slack and soft with easy living, upland winds cleansed the man of the reek of cities and made his appetite a thing appalling. A keen sun darkened his face and hands, brushed up in his cheeks a warmer glow than they had shown in many a year, and faded out the heavier lines with which Time had marked his countenance. ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... rashness, more at home; For there the Carthaginian's warlike wiles Come back before me, as his skill beguiles The host between the mountains and the shore, Where Courage falls in her despairing files, And torrents, swoll'n to rivers with their gore, Reek through the sultry plain, ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... the tallest-grown: nor did it relieve my astonishment to note that they wore bonnets and shawls, as if for a journey, and that two or three were smoking long clay pipes. The room, in fact, was thick with tobacco-smoke, through the reek of which my eyes travelled to a disorderly table crowded with glasses and bottles of strong waters, in the midst of which two tallow dips illuminated the fog; and beyond the table to the figure of a ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... rush elate to stern debate, the battle call has never Found tardy cheer or craven fear, or grudge the prey to sever. Ah, fell their wrath! The dance[123] of death sends legs and arms a flying, And thick the life blood's reek ascends of the downfallen and the dying. Clandonuil, still my darling theme, is the prime of every clan, How oft the heady war in, has it chased where thousands ran. O ready, bold, and venom full, these ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... that sound? 'Tis the stertorous breath Of a slumbering man,—and it smacks of death! Full sixteen hours of continuous toil Midst the fume of sulphur, the reek of oil, Have told their tale on the man's tired brain, And Death is in charge ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 4, 1890 • Various
... it wad maybe be worth their while to tak tent what kind o' angels they are. It wadna wonder me vera muckle an ye had entertained your friend the Deil the night, for aw thought aw fand a saur o' reek an' brimstane about him. He's nane o' the best o' angels, an focks winna hae muckle credit by ...
— The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner • James Hogg
... nine-tenths-naked natives squatting at their work of hammering, pounding, brazing, soldering, sewing, designing, cooking, measuring out grain, grinding it, repairing idols—and then the swarm of ragged and noisy humanity under the horses' feet and everywhere, and the pervading reek and fume and smell! It ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... nor I! It has the reek of stable straw. We are of one mind on that subject. The thing slouches, it sprawls. It—to quote Jorian once more—is like a dirty, idle, little stupid boy who cannot learn his lesson and plays the fool ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the words have now the clauber of the roads upon them, and even the muck, and now the reek of the shebeen or of the tinker's fire in a roadside ditch; they have, too, the bog smell, and the smell of the whin, the smell of ploughed land and of the sea, and they fall into cadences that are cadences of the wind and of the ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... before Lucian's eyes; he felt as though the soft floating hair touched his forehead and his lips and his hands. The fume of burning bricks, the reek of cabbage water, never reached his nostrils that were filled with the perfume of rare unguents, with the breath of the violet sea in Italy. His pleasure was an inebriation, an ecstasy of joy that destroyed all the vile Hottentot ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... perhaps a foot with their heads to the wall on three sides of me, I was wondering why the vulture had stopped at six. On each mattress a crude imitation of humanity, wrapped ear-high in its blanket, lay and drank from a cup like mine and spat long and high into the room. The ponderous reek of sleepy bodies undulated toward me from three directions. I had lost sight of the vulture in a kind of insane confusion which arose from the further end of the room. It was as if he had touched off six high explosives. Occasional pauses in the minutely crazy din were accurately punctuated by ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... of the Minnow was a cabin full of dead and dying men, the sweetish stink of burned flesh and the choking reek of scorching insulation, the boat jolting and shuddering and beginning to break up, and in the middle of the flames, still unhurt, was Charley. He was ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily
... builds! A few straws and there's a nest and squawking fledglings, all complete. Is that why—is that why that good, practical wife of yours and all your faithful household have absconded? Does it'—he threw up his head as if towards the house above them—'does it REEK with him?' ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare
... well begun, and sin will flee your precinct. Shog, vile care! The smoke is cool and blue and tasty on the tongue; the arch of the palate is receptive to the fume; the curling vapour ascends the chimneys of the nose. Fill your cheeks with the excellent cloudy reek, blow it forth in twists and twirls. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... fire of the crossing swords played round her, the glitter of the lances dazzled her eyes, the reek of smoke and of carnage was round her; but she dashed down into the heart of the conflict as gayly as though she rode at a review—laughing, shouting, waving the torn colors that she grasped, with her ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... Forces in the great caverns of evil beneath society; in the hideous degradation, squalor, wretchedness and destitution, vices and crimes that reek and simmer in the darkness in that populace below the people, of great cities. There disinterestedness vanishes, every one howls, searches, gropes, and gnaws for himself. Ideas are ignored, and of progress there is no ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... pipe, sorr. Shmoke her tinderly wid honey-dew, afther letting the reek av the Canteen plug die away. But 'tis no good, thanks to you all the same, fillin' my pouch wid your chopped hay. Canteen baccy's like the Army. It shpoils a ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... reinforced the night before by the welcome addition of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, which made up for the losses of the week. It was a cloudless morning, and a dazzling sun rose in a deep blue sky. The men, though hungry, marched cheerily, the reek of their tobacco-pipes floating up from their ranks. It cheered them to see that the murderous kopjes had, for the time, been left behind, and that the great plain inclined slightly downwards to where a line of green showed the course of the river. On the ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... become ashes in the heat of fire. Let the people in hordes burn and drown with wife and child. May their seed be trampled under our feet; May we kill great and small in the lust of joy. May we plunge our daggers into their bodies, May Poland reek in the glow of ...
— A Straight Deal - or The Ancient Grudge • Owen Wister
... the Guelph in his town beleaguered, Past the fortressed Ghibelline, Through lands that reek with slaughter, Treason, and shame, ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... to reek of Cervantean memories. Ten miles from the station of Argamasilla is the village where he imagined, and the inhabitants believe, Don Quixote to have been born. Somewhere among these little towns Cervantes himself was thrown into prison for presuming to attempt collecting their rents when the people ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... simply my luck to have got the first blow home. Yet a fellow-feeling touched me with remorse, as I stood over the senseless body, sprawling prone, and perceived that I had struck an unarmed man. The lantern only had fallen from his hands; it lay on one side, smoking horribly; and a something in the reek caused me to set it up in haste and turn the body over ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... dropped my wet clothing in the middle of the floor, and knew no more until the trumpet called for breakfast. The rush of green waters was pounding at my porthole; the experience of the night came back to me with horror; the reek of my wet clothes sickened my heart, and I rang ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... begins; the murmur grows louder and more confused as time passes, and by ten o'clock our company are in full cry, and all the pipes are in full blast. When I stole quietly in, I thought the scene was hideous enough in its dull way. The gas flared with drowsy refulgence through the reek, and the low masks of the roaring crew somehow left on me an impression that I was gazing on one bestial, distorted face. A man who is a racecourse thief and "ramper" hailed me affably. A beast of prey he is, if ever there was one. His hatchet face with its piggish eyes, his thin, cruel lips, ...
— The Chequers - Being the Natural History of a Public-House, Set Forth in - a Loafer's Diary • James Runciman
... men were registered they were hurried out of their uniforms and into the bathroom. At the door two nurses in white—so calm and clean and strong that they must have seemed like goddesses, in that reek of steam and disinfectants and festering wounds—received them, asked each man how he was wounded, and quickly, as if he were a child, snipped off his bandages, unless the leg or arm were in a cast, and ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... which could have been the finish of the land. At the end of a creaking hawser was a steamer canting as she backed to head downstream—now she was exposed to a great adventure—the tide rapid and noisy on her plates, the reek from her funnel sinking over the water. And from the dockhead, in the fuddle of a rain-squall, we were waving a handkerchief, probably to the wrong man, till the vessel went out where all was one—rain, river, mud, and ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... which I was obliged to procure an elevated plank- floor for the orchestra, and the whole concern so disgusted me that my first impulse was to dismiss the seedy-looking musicians on the spot. My friend Damrosch, who was very much upset, had to promise me that at least he would have the horrible reek of tobacco in the place neutralised. As he could offer no guarantee as to the amount of the receipts, I was only induced in the end to go on with the enterprise by my desire not to compromise him too severely. To my amazement I ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... Haymond—but the list is long Of names to point the moral of my song. Rogues, fools, impostors, sycophants, they rise, They foul the earth and horrify the skies— With Mr. Huntington (sole honest man In all the reek of that rapscallion clan) Denouncing Theft as hard as ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... reek, like chimneys, with foul smoke, Their neighbors and themselves to nearly choke? Avoid it, ye John Bulls, and eke ye Paddies! Avoid it, sons of Cambria, and Scottish laddies! Let reason convince you that it very sad is, And far too bad ...
— Tobacco; Its History, Varieties, Culture, Manufacture and Commerce • E. R. Billings
... good. But, as the Parson told himself, the time would come when he would demand more, and then, for lack of knowing other possibilities, he might slake himself with whatever was near at hand and slowly sink into the things of the soil till he was smothered with their reek. Up till now he had spiritualised the land by his wrestling with it, but now that some measure of success, enough to make the struggle less a thing that must not be relaxed for a day, had come, now was the time when the reverse process ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... desert air And the bite of the desert sand, I feel the hunger, the thirst and despair— And the joy of the still border land! For the ways of the city are blocked to the end With the grim procession of death— The treacherous love and the shifting friend And the reek of a multitude's breath. But the arms of the Desert are lean and slim And his gaunt breast is cactus-haired, His ways are as rude as the mountain rim— But the heart of ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... away from camp while supper was being prepared, and returned to the dugout which he had left in the big ditch near the river. Precious time had been lost through the arrival of Davis. Garman, for the nonce a jungle beast running wild with the reek of rage and lust about him, had had hours of opportunity to wreak ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... over towards Dudley Town, appeared spots of lurid glow. But on the scarred and barren plain which extends to Birmingham there had settled so thick an obscurity, vapours from above blending with earthly reek, that all tile beacons of fiery toil were wrapped ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... few feet of it the horse swerved before a brandished rammer, and striking the cheeks of the gun-carriage pitched his inanimate rider across the gun. The hot blood of the dead man smoked on the hotter brass with the reek of the shambles, and be-spattered the hand of the gunner who still mechanically served the vent. As they lifted the dead body down the order came to "cease firing." For the yells from below had ceased too; the rattling and grinding were receding with the smoke farther to the left. The ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... moon, and then at the Gaul's dwelling-house, which, veiled in darkness, stood up as a vague silhouette, and threw a broad dark shadow on the granite flags of the pavement, which was trodden to shining smoothness. There was not a soul to be seen, and the reek of the roast sheep told him that Petrus and his household ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... grand man is Geordie Murray," said Ogilvie, as he led me to another room across the landing. "Just a wee bit birsy, maybe, but these damned Irish have got his kail through the reek. They're o'ermuch on his spirits ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... fires and astir with dusky figures. There were trains for California and Oregon and men from the waste lands to the eastward and the south, flotsam and jetsam thrown up on the desert's shore. Inside, where the air was thick with smoke and the reek of raw liquors, they heard again the great news from California. The old man, determined to get all the information he could, moved from group to group, an observant listener in the hubbub. Presently his ear was caught by a man who declared he had been on the gold river and ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... few moments of jostling in the dark, with the reek and press of the crowd about her; and Isabel found herself on the brink of the black pond, with Lady Maxwell on one side, and Piers on the other keeping the crowd back, and a dripping figure moaning and sobbing in the trampled ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... garlic!" he said, panting. "No wonder they smoked so much in Leipsic. Even so they couldn't keep the reek out of the staircases. Still, it's a great country is Germany. Our house does a tremendous business in ...
— Merely Mary Ann • Israel Zangwill
... the perspiration in a reek from every pore; but the icy revulsion came quickly. As I drew up my knees to get a better purchase on the sill, heaven's torch was suddenly lit up, the closet became a pit of dazzling whiteness amid which ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... shebeen or in public houses, where they drank, sang, or fought, according to their natural dispositions, or the quantity of liquor they had taken. The festivity of the day might be known by the unusual reek of smoke that danced from each chimney, by the number of persons who crowded the roads, by their bran-new dresses,—for if a young man or country girl can afford a dress at all, they provide it for Christmas,—and by the striking appearance ...
— The Hedge School; The Midnight Mass; The Donagh • William Carleton
... with champing jaws, and all the shipmen stood armed on their defence. They came up alongside, two females (the smaller) on the flank of the ship, the giant male by himself on the other. Their great heads swooped about, as high as the yards that held the sails, and the reek from them gave one ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... banged at a door, a woman had cried out; he remembered, as though it were now, the sound of the scuffle, the slam of the door, the dead silence that followed. And then the early water-cart, cleansing the reek of the streets, had approached through the strange-seeming, useless lamp-light; he seemed to hear again its rumble, nearer and nearer, till it passed and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... could only trust him. But Simon Fraser and James More are my ain kind of cattle, and I'll give them the name that they deserve. The muckle black deil was father to the Frasers, a'body kens that; and as for the Gregara, I never could abye the reek o' them since I could stotter on two feet. I bloodied the nose of one, I mind, when I was still so wambly on my legs that I cowped upon the top of him. A proud man was my father that day, God rest him! and I think he had the cause. I'll never can deny ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... support of the nation, could afford to disregard such natural ebullitions of bad temper. The charter of the Bank lapsed and was not renewed, and a few years later it wound up its affairs amid a reek of scandal, which sufficed to show what manner of men they were who had once captured Congress and attempted to dictate to the President. The Whigs were at last compelled to drink the cup of humiliation to the dregs. Another election gave Jackson a majority even in the Senate, and in spite ...
— A History of the United States • Cecil Chesterton
... migrating tribe of Aryans driven to new hunting grounds by hunger or over-population," said Miss Greeby, for even her unromantic nature was stirred by the unusual picturesqueness of the scene. "The sight of these people and the reek of their fires make me feel like a cave-woman. There is something ...
— Red Money • Fergus Hume
... one day the presence would be exercised, and the room swept and garnished.... Some day she would marry him, and he would bring her home to Ulster.... And who better than she could understand the springy heather and the blue smoke-reek, the crickets of the evening and the curlew's call? And in the house where his mother was cold and arrogant, would be a warm and ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... many a year To wait longer, and go as a sprite From the tomb at the mid of some night Was the right, radiant way to appear; Not as one wanzing weak From life's roar and reek, ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... by his happy conceptions. Like the cicada, the Cigale of his fable (See "Social Life in the Insect World," by Jean-Henri Fabre (T. Fisher Unwin, 1912).), which makes a "honeyed reek" flow from— ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... final fit of irritation he had flung his work aside, and risen from his desk. The insufferable heat of the room, and the reek of his own pipe disgusted him. So he had moved over to the window where the cold air of early spring drifted in through the open ventilating slot in ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... curates and teachers, awaited the party from the vicarage. The thick and darkened sunshine of Bludston flooded the asphalt of the yard, which sent up a reek of heat, causing curates to fan themselves with their black straw hats, and little boys in clean collars to wriggle in sticky discomfort, while in the still air above the ignoble town hung the heavy pall of smoke. Presently there was the sound of wheels and ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... to the Shed on the tailboard of the truck that carried the crates. The sun set as he rode. He was smudged and disheveled. The reek of charred wood and burnt insulation and scorched wrappings was strong in his nostrils. But he felt very much inclined ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... and Turiddu presents with the double murder to the piquant accompaniment of comedy in "Pagliacci," the opera which followed so hard upon its heels. Since then piquancy has been the cry; the piquant contemplation of adultery, seduction, and murder amid the reek and stench of the Italian barnyard. Think of Cila's "Tilda," Giordano's "Mala Vita," Spinelli's "A Basso Porto," and Tasca's "A ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... little congregation of four. The country of Guy Mannering spread about us, even though we could scarce see a hundred yards of it. The children flattened their noses against the blurred window-panes to look. Their eyes watered with the keen tang of the peat reek, till, tired with watching the squattering of ducks in farm puddles, they turned as usual upon the family sagaman, and demanded, with that militant assurance of youth which succeeds so often, that he should forthwith and immediately ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... (to avow the truth) in jealous mood Alone I came, alone with thee to fight; Because I grudged that king so puissant shou'd Exist on earth, save he observed my rite. Hence reek they ravaged fields with Christian blood; And yet with greater rancour and despite, Like cruel foe, I purposed to offend, But that it chanced, one ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... deservedly fallen on him. He groaned in anguish, seeming to see how she had perished through the blight of his passion. Not by fire, O God! Not by fire! How long would it be possible to breathe in this stifling reek, heavy with unspeakable odors? It was his crime that had brought her to this death. He, a man set apart and consecrated to the work of God, had turned from heaven to earth, and heaven had smitten ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... end of the alley, where it makes an abrupt bend around the hinder premises of the "Ship" Inn before giving egress upon the street, the Vicar lifted his head and sniffed the morning air. Surely his nose detected a trace of smoke in it—not the reek of chimneys, but a smoke at once more fragrant and more pungent. ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... has become a heroic figure in the world to-day and has saved lives by hundreds of thousands in every quarter of the globe; she has labored under fire on the battlefield and in the reek of pestilence in the rear; her form is as familiar in war as that of the soldier, and her name betokens every charity and kindness—but of all the heroic women who ever bore their healing art into the dark places and black hours of history, ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... Olaf; fails to bear iron; goes east to Tunsberg to Thorstein Dromund. Slaying of Atli of Biarg. Grettir outlawed at the Thing for the burning of the sons of Thorir; his return to Iceland. Slaying of Thorbiorn Oxmain and his son Arnor. 1017. Grettir at Reek-knolls. Lawsuit for the slaying of Thorbiorn Oxmain. Grettir taken by the Icefirth churls. 1018. Grettir at Liarskogar with Thorstein Kuggson; his travels to the East to Skapti the lawman and Thorhall of Tongue, and thence to the Keel-mountain, ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris |
