"Blotch" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Slowly a dark blotch began to grow in the landscape. Slowly it assumed definite form. It puzzled the reporter. It looked familiar. He could have sworn he had seen it somewhere before. It was alive, for it ...
— Hellhounds of the Cosmos • Clifford Donald Simak
... to the Palazzo Vecchio: this time he had not betrayed himself by look or movement, and he said inwardly that he should not be taken by surprise again; he should be prepared to see this face rise up continually like the intermittent blotch that comes in diseased vision. But this reappearance of Baldassarre so much more in his own likeness tightened the pressure of dread the idea of his madness lost its likelihood now he was shaven and clad ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... The disease is common among the indians of the town, and, while both the red and white forms are found, purple seems to be the common type. Sometimes the face looks as if powder-burned, the purple blotch appearing as if in scattered specks; at other times, the purple spots are continuous, and the skin seems ...
— In Indian Mexico (1908) • Frederick Starr
... right fore-hoof," he whispered again presently; "nothing but that," pointing to another dark red blotch, which the boys would have ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... a pleasant countenance, for it was foul without with dirt and more foul within from disease, being covered with ruddy fiery blotch and pimple, and the eyes were of that unnatural hue worn by one who has for years been ...
— Quicksilver - The Boy With No Skid To His Wheel • George Manville Fenn
... glance showed the horseman to be Irish, Weary drove in his spurs and galloped forward. Ten leaps perhaps he made, when a rifle shot came sharply ahead. He glanced down and saw horse and rider lying, a blotch of indefinable shape, in the trail. Weary drew his own gun and went on, his teeth set tight together. Now, when it was too late, ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... batter-sellers. At these the tiny purchaser enjoys the evidently much appreciated privilege of himself arranging his little measure of batter in fantastic forms, and drying them upon a hot metal plate. A turtle is a favorite design, as the first blotch of batter makes its body, and six judiciously arranged smaller dabs soon suggest its ...
— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton
... now turned toward the easel, smudged a blotch of paint with a slender finger tip in awkward pretense at being interested in her study, and without looking at him said, "It's not money. It's because the man to whom I am engaged to be married disapproves of my little hobby and has asserted so ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... simile, the former blank, utterly fearsome space, was filled—filled with clear writing, without blotch or blemish. And on the space was not recorded one deed he had dreaded to see. There were mistakes, weaknesses—but not dishonor. For a moment he could not grasp the full meaning of the blessing. He could only sense that ...
— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson
... into the trap? Had some keen eye seen those shadowy forms dropping through the mist? Each instant the ghostly pall that shut out vision seaward seemed drifting away. Nathaniel's staring eyes saw a vague shape appear in it, an indistinct dirt-gray blotch, and he knew that it was a boat. Another followed, and then another; he heard the sound of oars, the grinding of keels upon the sand, and where the Mormons had been a few moments before the beach was now alive with mainlanders. In the growing light he could make out ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... tea was ready. Imagine a cabin, not much larger than a good-sized omnibus, and far less steady in its motion, choked up with trunks, and a table about the size of a wash-stand; imagine two stools and a locker to sit on: a canvas table-cloth in full blotch; three chipped yellow mugs by way of cups; as many plates, but of great variety of gap, crack, and pattern; pewter spoons; a blacking-bottle of milk; an earthen piggin of brown sugar, embroidered with a lively gang of great, fat, black pismires; hard bread, old as ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... stifling atmosphere began to freshen: presently to feel quite windy: presently it blew so strong, that he could hardly keep his legs. But, he got to an arched window in the tower, breast high, and holding tight, looked down upon the house-tops, on the smoking chimneys, on the blur and blotch of lights (towards the place where Meg was wondering where he was and calling to him perhaps), all kneaded up together in a leaven ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... were at his head which rolled from side to side as if he were trying to quiet some agony. Dane stripped down the Medic's under tunic. There was no need to make a careful examination, in the hollow of Craig Tau's throat was the tell-tale red blotch. ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... yell. It rose over a sudden thunderous rush of hoof beats. And next, as a puff of air, a herd of horsemen, a wild mud-spattering streak, surged past the house. On across the open, and straight upon the fray, they merged everywhere, and made bigger and livelier the blotch of mad swarming. Some wore slouch hats, others straw sombreros, and all were ruddily burned. They fought with revolvers, and often one would pause between shots to spit tobacco. They brought to the battle one thing above all else, and that ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... it opposite to my post of observation. Here it halted as though it seemed to see me. At any rate it sat up in the alert fashion that hares have, its forepaws hanging absurdly in front of it, with one ear, on which there was a grey blotch, cocked and one dragging, and sniffed with its funny little nostrils. Then it began to talk to me. I do not mean that it really talked, but the thoughts which were in its mind were flashed on to my mind so that I understood perfectly, yes, and could answer ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... of icicles hung from the roof of the corner store, irregular and stained from the shingles above, like an ugly set of ill-kept teeth, dripping disconsolately on the sidewalk below, and making there a bumpy blotch of unsightly ice! ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... manuscript to me, suggesting that I should correct it, without asking any other permission for the publication. I never had seen so wretched an attempt at translation. Interverted, abridged, mutilated, and often reversing the sense of the original, I found it a blotch of errors from beginning to end. I corrected some of the most material, and, in that form, it was printed in French. A London bookseller, on seeing the translation, requested me to permit him to print the English ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... clothing was rent into tatters from cuts and slashes apart from the wash of the water, which had, of course, swept away most of the blood that had probably flowed from the wounds, although there was a large dark blotch on the deck close to the after hatch, testifying that some ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the top of the low, rolling hill, and ahead in the darkness there gleamed a tiny, wizened light set in a blotch of blackness. Under the great white stars it burned a sickly red and seemed out of harmony with ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... bells ceased, and the bakers' were shut up; and yet there was a genial shadowing forth of all these dinners and the progress of their cooking, in the thawed blotch of wet above each baker's oven; where the pavements smoked as if its stones ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... thence climbed the steep path in the sward toward that rolling table-land where I had built with many a groan; and half-way up, I saw the tip of the crane-arm, then the blazing top of the south pillar, then the shed-roof, then the platform, a blinking blotch of glory to the watery eyes under the setting sun. But the tent, and nearly all ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... directly in front of him was more impish than it had been at all. Donaldson rose. The pup rolled to the floor. Donaldson crossed the room, picked out the bottle, drew back his arm, and hurled it against the wall, where it broke into a thousand pieces. It left a gory-looking blotch where it struck. He went back to the sofa. The dog crept to his side again. Before him a devil danced in a purple bottle. ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... broke. Where it ran past tall crags and between the trees, the snow was dry and loose as dust. They made something over two miles in the first hour and soon afterwards came to the mouth of a snowshed. The opening made a dark blotch on the glittering slope, for the roof was pitched at a very small angle to the declivity and the snow passed down hill over it with ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... like silver, and over those waters poised the osprey, his rapidly moving wings and fan-spread tail suspending him almost stationary in one spot, while, with eager and far-seeing eyes, he peered into the depths below. The bird was a dark blotch against the perfect blue sky for several seconds, and then, suddenly folding his pinions and closing his tail, he darted downward like a bomb dropped from ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... Miss Mallory venture to take her eyes from the cabin interior.... Madame Sorenson was fighting windmills of hysteria. Far back there was a blotch in the darkness, and a curious blend of sea-water, Russian and Chinese, as Sorenson was dragged into the boat; back farther still the lights of Jaffier's gunboat.... And now she found the Glow-worm staring at her, ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... meaning was not entirely lost. His words meant nothing to them, but his tone must have carried its own message. There were sharp exclamations from the seated circle. The one who had brought them sprang forward with outstretched, clutching hands; his face was a blood-red blotch. McGuire was waiting in crouching tenseness that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... just as her fingers loosened their grasp. He saw nothing save the dull flash of swirling waters and the amorphous blotch of hull. Slowly her hand tightened again; and then, as he looked he caught above the deck an impression of something moving. It seemed to be something that was revealing itself to the instinct rather than ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... opened his eyes. "I have come to wash the stain!" said she, tapping her fingers in a theatrical manner on the table, and, as it happened, she pointed to a large blotch of ink on the table- cover. Furlong opened his eyes wider than ever, and thought this the queerest bit of madness he ever heard of; however, thinking it best to humour her, he answered, "Yes, it was a little awkwa'dness of mine—I upset the inkstand ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... destiny or heredity permeates all the works of this portentously ambitious series. Details may be repellant. One should not "smell" a picture, as the artists say. If one does, he gets an impression merely of a small blotch of paint. The vast canvas should be studied as a whole. Frailties are certainly not the whole of human nature. But they cannot be excluded from a comprehensive view of it. The "Rougon-Macquart series" did not carry Zola into the Academy. But the reputation of Moliere has managed to survive ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... the beach. He saw through the rain and mist a crowd of yellow-suited figures approaching, dragging something along the sand. He looked out to sea and beheld the blotch that represented the doomed vessel. All thought of the man at the hut was, for the time, ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... gradually the change could hardly be observed, the inner grating of the window became visible; the chinks between the edges of the stones assumed distinctness. A ghostly blotch grew into a fact upon the floor. A leaden hue, less black than the pulsing sea of ink about it, spread and spread, lighter and lighter, until it invaded the dim recesses where I stood. My hand ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... space tug waited until the blotch was centered in the crosshairs of his peeper and then punched the timer. When it came around again, he would be able to compute the angular ...
— Thin Edge • Gordon Randall Garrett
... of 24 hours 4 minutes. The first determination of the kind rewarded twenty years of unceasing vigilance. It received ostensible confirmation from the successive appearances of a dusky streak and blotch in May and June, 1801.[814] These, however, were inferred to be no permanent markings on the body of the planet, but atmospheric formations, the streak at times drifting forwards (it was thought) under the fluctuating influence of Mercurian breezes. From a rediscussion of ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... sir;" and he reached the Major a folded paper, sealed with a blotch of wax as red as blood. He ...
— Harper's Young People, April 13, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... about as warily as a cat. Decoud heard no sound; and it was only by the disappearance of the square blotch of darkness that he knew the yard had come down, lowered as carefully as if it had been made of glass. Next moment he heard Nostromo's quiet breathing by ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... of you. I saw her once smack a fathom of able- bodied youth on both sides of the head with a lusty vigor that constrained the sufferer to howl. And I have seen her come to meet a man—well, me, with the readiest lips and the friendliest hand in the world. Oh, Katje was like a blotch of color in one's life; something vivid, to ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... revenge for what has been done to me, and it seems as if I cannot remain quiet, but, closing my eyes and ears to everything, as I have no redress, I am compelled to warn thousands who may come after me, of their fate, should they take up convent life, which is a hell upon earth and a blotch as black as the shadows of hell to ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg
... stain in one corner of his mouth did not increase his attractions to Edith, and she positively shrank from the expression of his small, cunning black eyes. He was dressed both showily and shabbily, and a great breastpin was like a blotch upon ...
— What Can She Do? • Edward Payson Roe
... task. The undertaking proved even more troublesome than he had thought it would be. The pen persisted in sputtering at almost every word; and when, at crucial points, he took special pains to make the writing legible, the too frequent result was an indecipherable blotch of ink. When the valiant scribe had wrestled with his uncongenial task for half an hour or more, his sister came upon the scene. Quietly she stepped ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... almost white, below, giving out a slight iridescence in the sunshine; his wings are blackish, with white trimmings; his flanks are stained with salmon-red, and when his wings are spread, there appears a large blotch of scarlet at the inner angle of the intersection with the body. One individual that I afterwards saw wore a scarlet epaulet, which was almost concealed by the other plumes when the wing was closed, but was clearly seen ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... hunters are often deceived." Even such a huge animal as the giraffe is said to be perfectly concealed by its colour and form when standing among the dead and broken trees that so often occur on the outskirts of the thickets where it feeds. The large blotch-like spots on the skin and the strange shape of the head and horns, like broken branches, so tend to its concealment that even the keen-eyed natives have been known to mistake trees for giraffes ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... wreck!" His eye bleared with frequent carousals. His cheek bruised in the grog-shop fight. His lip swollen with evil indulgences. Look out what you say to him. For a trifle he will take your life. Lower down and lower down, until, outcast of God and man, he lies in the alms-house, a blotch of loathsomeness and pain. Sometimes he calls out for God; and then for more drink. Now he prays; now curses. Now laughs as fiends laugh. Then bites his nails to the quick. Then runs both hands through the shock of hair that hangs ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... of our camping ground. It was a little blurry, but some of the objects were quite clear. Our tent was a white blotch except for the outlines; the wagons showed plainly. I didn't think much of it as a picture, so I paid scant attention. Mrs. O'Shaughnessy gave it close scrutiny; presently she said, "Oh, yis, I see what it is. It's a puzzle picture and ye find the man. Here he is, hidin' ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... Dick surmised—the lights of the boats had been sighted by the eager look-outs aboard her. Then her mast-head light came into view, followed, a little later, by her port and starboard side lights; and at length the dark, scarcely discernible blotch that represented her hull lengthened out suddenly, revealing a long triple tier of brightly gleaming ports; and a few seconds later the roar of steam escaping as her engines stopped, reached the two ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... depths of a high-walled coulee where the evening shadows were mustering for their stealthy raid on the gilded uplands, we circled a grove of rustling poplars and jerked our horses up short at sight of a scarlet blotch among ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... people who will reach this condition of affairs in a generation or so, and to under estimate the conflicting tendencies that will make its attainment difficult to all, and impossible to many, and that will for many years tint and blotch the achievement of those who succeed with patches of unsympathetic colour. To understand just how modifications may come in, it is necessary to consider the probable line of development of another of the four main elements in the social ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... behind her, clumsy as a playful bear. His eyes followed the direction of hers to where a cloud shadow lay across the slope, heavy, palpable, untransparent, like a blotch of ink. ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... still glowed dimly and we could watch our green dot trying to make progress. The viewport was dead black at first, then there came the faintest sort of bronze blotch that very slowly shifted forward and down. The Old Moon, of course, going west ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... down and began to rub her injured ankle. The rowboat was now merely a dark blotch out on the bay. The blotch neared the sailboat and was lost in the shadow that surrounded the larger craft. A few moments later Harriet heard the anchor being hauled in, then the creak of the rings on the mast as the sail was ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... and his face glimmered like a pallid blotch under the shadow of the aspen. When the turkeys stirred on an overhanging bough above him he started nervously and sucked in his breath with a hissing sound. He was run to death; this Christopher saw at the ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... from its position, which, by this time, was broadside against the sailboat. The "Red Rover" was rising and falling, each time rubbing off some red paint onto the white sides of the yacht. With each blotch of paint, so acquired, the anger of the owner of the yacht increased. It was fortunate for the Meadow-Brook Girls that they succeeded in getting away promptly. Jane was getting more and more angry, and Harriet had all she could do ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Afloat • Janet Aldridge
... actual figures are nearer Twenty-five Thousand, and we appeal to the mothers and fathers of America, in the name of God and the heart-broken mothers and fathers of other lands, to use their personal influence and the money with which God has entrusted them, to wipe from our flag the leprous blotch of shame which permits the importing into our Republic every year of thousands of helpless girls to be ground up in the murder mills of the segregated harlotry of such districts as the 22nd Street ...
— Chicago's Black Traffic in White Girls • Jean Turner-Zimmermann
... no man's executioner for his sentence on himself. I could not fight you now." His eye fell by chance upon the blotch in Law's bloodstained tunic. "And here," he said; "see! You are ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... rather tender shrub, growing in favourable situations to about 4 feet in height. It has lanceolate leaves that are glutinous above, and thickly covered with a whitish tomentum on the under sides, and large and showy vhite flowers with a conspicuous purple blotch at the base of each petal. Unless in southern and western England, but particularly on the sea-coast, this handsome Portuguese shrub is not to be depended on, in so ...
— Hardy Ornamental Flowering Trees and Shrubs • A. D. Webster
... in name, not in fact; but that the good are in the Church both in fact and in name. And to this effect there are many passages in the Fathers. For Jerome says: The sinner, therefore, who Has been soiled with any blotch cannot be called a member of the Church of Christ, neither can he be said to be ...
— The Apology of the Augsburg Confession • Philip Melanchthon
... heart beat bravely when it rose to the surface, and, before its young master came up, it had regained the bank. But, alas! what a change! It went into the stream a fat, round, comfortable ball of eider-down. It came out a scraggy blotch of white paint, with its black eyes glaring like two great glass beads! No sooner did it crawl out of the water than Bob Croaker seized it, and whirled it round his head, amid suppressed cries of "Shame!" intending to throw it in again; but at that instant Martin Rattler ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... unusually hot, to start with; and about noon the sky, which had been clear during the earlier part of the day, had gradually become veiled by a thick haze through which the sun revealed himself with ever-increasing difficulty merely as a shapeless blotch of whiteness in the midst of the haze before vanishing altogether. Then the wind fell, the atmosphere became so oppressively close that the mere act of breathing became difficult, and a great silence fell upon the scene, for the insects and birds, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... extent of the parietal bones, and considerably elevated the skin, giving it a puffy or tumid appearance, like that caused by a blow from a large or blunt instrument. The parts soon became hot and tender to the touch; and this tenderness extended over the greater part of the scalp. A blotch, similar to those upon the exterior surface, was likewise observed within the mouth, covering the whole extent of the palate bones. The child experienced great difficulty in swallowing after the third day; and the nurse thought the spasms were often excited ...
— North American Medical and Surgical Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, July, 1826 • Various
... palliating every dishonest measure, of want of decency in defaming every honest man; that should prejudge every question, traduce every opponent; that should give no quarter to fair inquiry or liberal sentiment; that should be "ugly all over with hypocrisy", and present one foul blotch of servility, intolerance, falsehood, spite, and ill-manners. The Quarterly Review was accordingly ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... wise provision of Rule 10, defied by the late jailer for an obvious reason. Thus in an hour after the body of Hawes had passed through that gate a firm and adroit hand was wiping his gloomy soul out of the cells as we wipe a blotch of ink ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... eyes were glancing, To the south her head was turning, To the mouth of Suomi's river, Where the stream of Vainola opens. 60 On the sea a blotch she sighted, Something blue among ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... the cross. Giorgio arose and ascended to the loggia, to observe the spot designated. Upon the sand, below the promontory, in close vicinity to the chain of rocks and the tunnel, he perceived a blotch of white, presumably the sheet which hid the little body. A group of people ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner
... now!" she gasped. "I remember now! I saw it—a blotch of red—lying on the floor beside my father's chair! How did it get there, Mr. Lester? Had he been there? Did he follow us?" She stopped again, as she saw the look in Goldberger's eyes, and then the look in mine. With a long, indrawn breath of horror, ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... sign of uneasiness; one stepped outside to cough, another suddenly attacked the fire and poked it savagely, Buffle impolitely turned his back to the company, while the fourth man lost himself in the contemplation of the king of spades, which card ever afterward showed in its centre a blotch which seemed the result of a drop of water. Finally Buffle broke the silence ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... middle of the night, David became aware that Hamoud had entered the room without a sound, to watch him from the deepest mass of shadows. One could make out only the pale blotch that was his white skullcap, and the long pale streak that was the uncovered portion of his white under robe. The eyes, the expression of the face, were lost ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... sprawling, as falls a lifeless body, lay the long Ichabod. On his forehead, almost geometrically near the centre, was a tiny, black spot, around it a lighter red blotch; his face otherwise very white; his hair, on the side toward which he leaned, a little matted; that ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... glance Stern gave at it, as she held it up. A long reed stem he saw wrapped at its base with cotton fibers—a fish-bone point, firm-lashed—and on that point a dull red stain, a blotch of something dry ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... wide-awake enough all through to profit by suggestions. I let her see a blotch of ink on my finger, and she said that I was a writer.... Except the guess about my sister Helen, who is alive, there was not a single guess which was nearly right. Mrs. Piper is not anaesthetic during the so-called trance, and if you ask my private opinion, it is that the whole thing is an ...
— The Making of Religion • Andrew Lang
... more he thought of it the more ridiculous such a conclusion appeared, for it did not in the least explain the pony tethered without, which he plainly could see from where he stood within the shop, nor did it satisfactorily account for the blotch of blood upon his shoulder from a wound so fresh that the stain still was damp; nor for the sword which Joseph had buckled about his waist within Blentz's forbidding walls; nor for the arms and ammunition he had taken from the dead brigands—all of which he had before him ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... see what he was doing, until it gave a sudden sharp yelp of pain, and there was a rending sound like the tearing of canvas. The man staggered up with his hands dripping, and the tawny mass with the blotch of crimson ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... than the sun. Still another variation is that the sun and moon came out equally bright, but this not seeming good to the gods, one of them took a rabbit by the heels and slung it into the face of the moon, dimming its luster with a blotch whose mark may be ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... effect of the whole more immediately depends; or he may give the latter, viz. the proportions and arrangement of the larger parts and the general masses of light and shade, and leave all the minuter parts of which those parts are composed a mere blotch, one general smear, like the first crude and hasty getting in of the groundwork of a picture: he may do either of these, or he may combine both, that is, finish the parts, but put them in their right places, and keep them ...
— Table-Talk - Essays on Men and Manners • William Hazlitt
... a canyon where alders, cottonwoods and quaking aspens may not be found. In 1913 either the lack of water, some adverse climatic condition, or some fungus blight caused the aspen leaves to blotch and fall from the trees as early as the beginning of September. As a rule they remain until late in October, changing to autumnal tints of every richness and hue and reminding one of the glorious hues of the eastern maples when touched by ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... cracks and crevices of that fine edifice, and proved the power of the soul over the body; for the fair and dainty man, the cavalier, the young blood, died when hope deserted him. Until then the nose of the chevalier was ever delicate and nice; never had a damp black blotch, nor an amber drop fall from it; but now that nose, smeared with tobacco around the nostrils, degraded by the driblets which took advantage of the natural gutter placed between itself and the upper lip,—that nose, which no longer cared to ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... jockeyed the little spacecraft around until he was reasonably stationary with respect to the great hunk of whirling rock and had the silver-white blotch centered on the crosshairs of the peeper in front of him. Then he punched the button that started the timer and waited for the silver spot ...
— Anchorite • Randall Garrett
... is gone already. Oh look,—yon grove upon the mountain,—white In the sweet moon as with a lovelier snow! But what a blotch of blackness underneath! Sinnatus, you remember—yea, you must, That there three years ago—the vast vine-bowers Ran to the summit of the trees, and dropt Their streamers earthward, which a breeze of May Took ever and anon, and open'd ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... the vanished wagonette. Mina made no sign. He laid his finger on his lips, and nodded slightly toward Cecily. The clouds covered the moon again, and there was no more on the Fillingford road than a black blotch on the deep gray of the night; even this vanished a moment after. And still Cecily gazed ...
— Tristram of Blent - An Episode in the Story of an Ancient House • Anthony Hope
... in the hall, one knocked at the door, and when Stephen went thereto, who should follow him in save Surly John, and with him a stranger, a big tall man, dark-haired and red-bearded, wide-visaged, brown-eyed and red-cheeked, blotch-faced and insolent of bearing. He was girt with a sword, had a shield at his back and bore a spear in his hand, and was clad in a long byrny down to his knees. He spake at once in a loud voice, ere Surly John got out the word: "May Hardcastle be here ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... table a small leather pouch stained with a blotch of reddish brown. His big, clumsy fingers could ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... raised slightly in the centre, is being worked out. Many of the squares are finished, but the fabric is rugged at the edges, where, with miraculous precision, the design is being followed, each tiny stitch the counterpart of its fellow. Unless this gross and formless blotch of sage green interferes or this disc of royal blue expands, the whole under surface of the stone may be covered with an orange coloured quilt as dainty as if wrought ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... knowledge of it. In Fig. 14 you have a photograph, taken in one of our largest telescopes, of part of its surface. In a sense such a telescope brings the moon to within about fifty miles of us. We should see a city like London as a dark, sprawling blotch on the globe. We could just detect a Zeppelin or a Diplodocus as a moving speck against the surface. But we find none of these things. It is true that a few astronomers believe that they see signs of some sort of feeble life or movement on the moon. ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... and misty, and by the time breakfast was over a north wind was raging—a furnace-like blast that bore off the sandy deserts of the interior. The sun was a yellow blotch in a copper sky; the thermometer had leapt to a hundred and ten in the shade. Blinding clouds of coarse, gritty dust swept house-high through the streets: half-suffocated, Mahony fought his way along, his veil lowered, ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... almost immediately saw a tremendous disturbance of the water just below the spot where Roger had disappeared; and presently a broad blotch of red stained the blue water of the inlet, while a deep groan went up from the assembled crowd on deck. But the groan quickly changed to a mighty cheer as they saw Roger's form appear again at some considerable distance ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Rick took a deep breath to quiet his taut and shaky nerves, then sank to the bottom and began the last leg of the trip. It was only a few dozen yards to the sapling he had chosen. He reached it and glanced upward. The mass of debris made a black blotch on the bright surface of the water. Moving with infinite caution and using the sapling as a guide, he swung his legs under him and rose to a sitting position. The debris was still above the level of his eyes, so he swung his legs back again and knelt. The kneeling position brought his head ...
— The Flying Stingaree • Harold Leland Goodwin
... light, and in the instant stunning report of the pistol shot, Barnaby saw, as stamped upon the blackness, a broad, flat face with fishy eyes, a lean, bony forehead with what appeared to be a great blotch of blood upon the side, a cocked hat trimmed with gold lace, a red scarf across the breast, and the gleam of brass buttons. Then the darkness, very thick and ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... darkie, Ethiop, black; buck, nigger [U. S.]; coon [U. S.], sambo. [Pigments] lampblack, ivory black, blueblack; writing ink, printing ink, printer's ink, Indian ink, India ink. V. be black &c. adj.; render -black &c. adj. blacken, infuscate[obs3], denigrate; blot, blotch; smutch[obs3]; smirch; darken &c. 421. black, sable, swarthy, somber, dark, inky, ebony, ebon, atramentous[obs3], jetty; coal-black, jet-black; fuliginous[obs3], pitchy, sooty, swart, dusky, dingy, murky, Ethiopic; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... trying to get a peep at her through my night-glass," exclaimed Ryan, with a wave of his hand toward the dark blotch in the midst of the white foam, "but there is no holding it in such a breeze as this; you have to keep a tight grip on the thing or the wind will take it away from you altogether. But I'm pretty certain that it is the barque; and if so I'll stick to her as long as this schooner ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... approached, Paul was seated on the lower step, touching his guitar, and facing Ida, who sat on the step above leaning back against a pillar. A blotch of moonlight fell upon her dreamy, upturned face. One hand lay in her lap, and the fingers of the other were idly playing with a tress of hair that had fallen over her bosom. How well Miss Ludington remembered that attitude, and even the habit of playing with her ...
— Miss Ludington's Sister • Edward Bellamy
... came from the D'Estang's lookout. Anne and Sara leaned forward and saw that a blundering sailing vessel—her dark sails a blotch against the sky, her hull invisible—was careening just ahead. She had no lights, and curses on the heads of coastwise skippers who take risks and place other vessels in jeopardy merely to save oil, swept through the flotilla ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... to debate it, but took up the light and hurried to the place where he stood. A man lay at his feet, his long hair tossed in disorder, his long coat spread out like a black blotch upon the ground. Boyle took the lantern and bent over the victim of his steady arm, growled in his throat, and bent lower. The man's face was partly hidden by the rank grass in which he lay. Boyle turned it up to the light with his foot and straightened ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... detesting strong expressions, and remarkably self-controlled; while his eager impetuous boy, careless of his dress, always forgetting to wash his hands and brush his hair, writing an execrable hand, and folding his letters with a great blotch for a seal, was a constant care and irritation. Many letters to your uncle have I read on these subjects. Sometimes a specimen of the proper way of folding a letter is sent him, (those were the sad days before ...
— Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay • George Otto Trevelyan
... The "limpet on the rock" and the "green boots" refer to a wonderful piece by Turner in the previous year's Academy, exhibiting a rock overhanging a magnificent sea, a booted figure appearing on the rock, and at its feet a blotch to represent a limpet: the subject being Napoleon ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... position but directs the eye to its infirmities. There is something pathetic about a tall, cold, barn-like house set high upon a brae; it cannot hide its naked shame; it thrusts its ugliness dumbly on your notice, a manifest blotch upon the world, a place for the winds to whistle round. But Gourlay's house was worthy its commanding station. A little dour and blunt in the outlines like Gourlay himself, it drew and satisfied ...
— The House with the Green Shutters • George Douglas Brown
... coat and vest, And then a final handful threw that stuck upon his breast. The Brook-bird's mother did her best to wash the stains away; But there they stuck, and, as it seems, are very like to stay. And so he wears the splashes and the mud blotch, as you see; But his songs are bubbling over still with ...
— Woodland Tales • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... to his fall from above. He had on neither coat nor hat, and the position of his body and limbs suggested broken bones. As Ellen hurried to his side she saw that the front of his shirt, low down, was a bloody blotch. But he could lift his head; his eyes were open; he was perfectly conscious. Ellen did not recognize the dusty, skinned face, yet the mold of features, the look of the eyes, ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... the recent phrenzy for the investigation of digestive and reproductive operations in plants may by this time have furnished the microscopic malice of botanists with providentially disgusting reasons, or demoniacally nasty necessities, for every possible spur, spike, jag, sting, rent, blotch, flaw, freckle, filth, or venom, which can be detected in the construction, or distilled from the dissolution, of vegetable organism. But with these obscene processes and prurient apparitions the gentle and happy scholar ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... of coals, the chimney-place yawned black before him, the hearth was all strewn with pots and kettles, and the shelf above it was piled high with a vague household litter. It had leaked around the chimney, and there was a great discolored blotch on the wall above the shelf, and the ceiling. Two or three hens came pecking around the kettles ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... In the squares, the fountains spurted in pools surrounded by rusted railings, or flowed down triple layers with a ceaseless murmur. Water everywhere,—in the air, in the ground, whispering, icy, adding to the cold impression of the landscape, where the sun seemed a red blotch of color devoid ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... ominously rapid decline of the mercury, which was quickly succeeded by a subtle veiling of the sky, the clear, rich blue of which gradually changed to a uniform tint of dirty white, in the midst of which the sun hung a mere shapeless blotch. The light breeze that during the earlier part of the day had been fanning us along at a scant three knots, died away, leaving the surface of the sea oil-smooth and colourless, while the stagnant ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... she said. She waited, wishing he would go. At last he kissed her quickly and climbed the fence. Looking round he saw the pale blotch of her face down in the darkness under the hanging tree. There was no more of her but this ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... fellow, with a red waistcoat, knee-breeches, and a round jacket of green cloth. His face was covered with carbuncles, some of them so large that his small pug-nose was nothing more in appearance than a larger blotch than the others. His eyes were small and keen, and his whiskers of a deep red. As soon as he entered the cabin, he very deliberately locked the ...
— Snarley-yow - or The Dog Fiend • Frederick Marryat
... these were clerks, Men of great learning and no less renown, By one same sin polluted in the world. With them is Priscian, and Accorso's son Francesco herds among that wretched throng: And, if the wish of so impure a blotch Possess'd thee, him thou also might'st have seen, Who by the servants' servant was transferr'd From Arno's seat to Bacchiglione, where His ill-strain'd nerves he left. I more would add, But must from farther speech and onward way Alike desist, ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... therefore, in less than forty minutes Willett's team was reported being hurriedly harnessed in the post trader's corral and that gentleman himself came bustling in with a pale, scared face that intensified the blue blotch under his eye, Langston was astonished. He was listlessly turning over the leaves of a magazine at the moment and seeking solace in a cigar. Willett looked nervously about him, bade the attendant bring him some brandy and soda, and threw ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... side there, where there's a kind of blotch, is the twins; they must be fighting. Don, the dog, 's ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... becomes the accredited historical fact of the next. Give it what billiard-players call "legs" enough and it will mature into a tradition, a proverb, a spontaneous instinct. There is a whole department of research concerned with the growth of myths, stage by stage, from a little nebulous blotch into a peopled world of illusion. The strange evolution there set forth finds an exact parallel in the development of English opinion on Ireland. And, indeed, the more you study "the Irish Question," as it is envisaged by the ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... have escaped the police, may even have escaped you. To that I would now call your attention since through it I have been enabled, after a little necessary groping, to reach the open. You remember the one large blotch on the upper floor where the man dropped the wallet? That blotch, more or less commingled with a fainter one, possessed great significance for me from the first moment I saw it. How came his foot to bleed so much more profusely at that one spot than at any other? ...
— The Golden Slipper • Anna Katharine Green
... than the common Dwarf variety of Tropaeolum majus; the stem rarely measuring more than two feet in length, or rising above a foot in height. The flowers are yellow; the lower petals with a blotch of scarlet at their base, and the upper ones delicately ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... to the porch, prepared to undress for the night. A few stray white bread crumbs lay on the cleanly washed floor by the table; putting the lamp upon a low stool he began to pick up the crumbs, carrying them to his mouth one by one with unbelievable rapidity. In the dense blotch of light beneath the table, the kneeling figure looked like a priest engaged in some service of his church. The nervous expressive fingers, flashing in and out of the light, might well have been mistaken for ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... the Almanack[17] in a horrid Condition before I left Paris, the Signs of the Zodiack wore like a Blotch, notwithstanding the utmost Care and Diligence the Printer used to take up very little Ink to keep them clean. I have chosen to make mention of these two Frenchmen as the only Persons in my time keeping up to the ...
— John Baptist Jackson - 18th-Century Master of the Color Woodcut • Jacob Kainen
... was scalding to death, and instead of taking care of himself, turned about to save her. But before he could reach her, she had darted through the bar-room door and disappeared—without so much as a blotch of tallow on ...
— Little Grandmother • Sophie May
... a ghostly figure, somewhat aloof from its companions, showed a dim, pallid blotch where its face would have been. With one accord we halted ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... passion, and he sprang violently upon Durend and struck fiercely at him. The two boys nearest grasped him and dragged him back, though not before he had left his mark in an angry-looking blotch upon the left cheek of his former chief. Through it all Durend said no word. He merely defended himself, looking, indeed, as though only half his mind were present, his interest in the matter being far out-weighed by concern for the threatened ...
— Two Daring Young Patriots - or, Outwitting the Huns • W. P. Shervill
... the dogs, save a blotch or two of blood upon the rough bark of the log, and that was not visible from the shore. Unless there were other dogs to guide them to the spot, the men might not in the darkness so easily discover these marks. We might ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... some emotion. "I thought I had left for ever the place of hope, and here's Paradise with open doors." Then he looked upon the nearer country, upon the wooded hills, the strenuous shoulders of the bens upholding all that glory of sinking sunshine, and on one he saw upstanding, a vulgar blotch upon the landscape, a gaunt long ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... there was a sure reward for you. Presently, a quarter of a mile away you would see a blinding splash or explosion of light on the water—a flash so sudden and so astonishingly brilliant that it would make you catch your breath; then that blotch of light would instantly extend itself and take the corkscrew shape and imposing length of the fabled sea-serpent, with every curve of its body and the "break" spreading away from its head, and the wake following behind its tail clothed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... been watching groped their way through the powdery cloud, as it swirled and eddied, towards the dark blotch at the foot of the stairs which was all that could be distinguished of Trent ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... slowly because of his bruises, and many times he made small detours, thinking that a blotch of shadow off to one side might be his pack train. But always a greasewood mocked him, waving stiff arms at him derisively. In the sage-land distances deceive. A man may walk unseen before your eyes, and a bush afar off may trick you with its semblance to man or beast. Casey finally gave ...
— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower
... the trigger for his first shot. He had seen the effect of Olaf's shot, and following the Swede's instructions aimed for his man in the nearest group behind the main line. He did not instantly see the result, as a puff of smoke shut out his vision, but a moment later, aiming again, he saw a dark blotch left in the snow. From his end of the crevice Olaf had seen the man go down, and he grunted his approbation. There were five of the groups bearing tree trunks for battering-rams, and on one of these Philip concentrated the six shots in his rifle. Four of the tree-bearers went down, ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... was no ordinary animal. Its little heart beat bravely when it rose to the surface, and, before its young master came up, it had regained the bank. But, alas! what a change! It went into the stream a fat, round, comfortable ball of eider-down. It came out—a scraggy blotch of white paint, with its black eyes glaring like two great glass beads! No sooner did it crawl out of the water than Bob Croaker seized it, and whirled it round his head, amid suppressed cries of "Shame!" intending to throw it in again; but at that instant ...
— Martin Rattler • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... ceiling. But it was neither the sight of the man lying there, apparently dead, nor the agonized expression of his face, which caused both the Ambassador and Duvall to start back with exclamations of surprise. Across the man's lips was a great, dull-red blotch, which at first appeared to be a clot of blood, but which seemed, from its circular form and regular contour, more like a huge seal. And seal it was. Duvall, dropping on one knee beside the body, felt for the man's heart, at the ...
— The Ivory Snuff Box • Arnold Fredericks
... round and tried to catch sight of her, but the lamp was too far off, and she did not dare bring it nearer. On the bed lay stretched a gray mass, but only the ruddy chignon was distinguishable and a pale blotch which might be ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... said. "A blotch on a body's name spreads fast and far. Mine was black enough before, God knows, but they've blackened ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... that Janice saw the little girl upon the old wharf. At first she seemed just a blotch of color upon the old burned timbers. Then the startled visitor realized that the gaily-hued frock, and sash, and bonnet, garbed a little girl of perhaps ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... to the telescope, and saw the glowing surface of the disc resolved into a marvellous web of shining patches on a dimmer background, and in the midst a large blotch which reminded me of a quarry hole as delineated on the plan ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... capability of putting in these last vital touches is acquired only by the labour of a life; and the probability is, that the artist who has not carefully trained himself beforehand, in attempting to produce a brilliant effect at a dash, will only produce a blotch. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... hurried off up the street, Freedom and his wife walked to the front gate and watched him go. From a street corner, where he stopped in the shadow of a tree, Sam could see them there, the wind swinging the lantern in Freedom's hand and the slender little old wife making a white blotch against ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... own mind, and for some of the Errors, I am confident that Note of Admiration in the middle of two words did not stand so when I had it, it must have dropt out and been replaced wrong, so odious a blotch could not have escaped me. Gifford (whom God curse) has persuaded squinting Murray (whom may God not bless) not to accede to an offer Field made for me to print 2 vols. of Essays, to include the one on Hog'rth and 1 or 2 more, but most of the matter ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... over their shoulders into the dense blackness of the forest. At one point a single broad shaft of light slid down between two pines and cast a golden blotch upon their track. Save for this one vivid spot all ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... those born and bred on the frontier learn to do early in life, Dick saw his father's rifle twenty feet or more away, and between it and him a trail of blood through the sage-brush, then a sinister, crimson blotch ...
— Dick in the Desert • James Otis
... squat, hump-backed blotch, that was sprawling blackly beside a misshapen block, was either wriggling on the floor as if trying to stand upright . . . or else there was something ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... this occasion refused to be "taken" as resolutely as the bashful gentleman in the Graphic who resisted the operations of the prison officials to obtain a sun-picture of his interesting physiognomy. There was indeed a blotch on one of the negatives, which I was assured was a spirit. I could not see ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies
... the prostrate body—the horrid red blotch like a gay ribbon in the white hair—he thought the small, insistent sound which seemed to fill the room was the beating of her heart. Then, as he listened, his ears attuned with fear, he knew it was the ticking of the watch in the hand of ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... cried, pointing to a spot in the icy wall which was nearest to the vessel. Instantly every eye was turned that way. They saw a very distinct, irregular blotch, surrounded ...
— The Great Stone of Sardis • Frank R. Stockton
... out of the end of a jar by throwing in pebbles. Like a little man in a cloak he is with tiny hands. Weeny bones. Almost see them shimmering, kind of a bluey white. Colours depend on the light you see. Stare the sun for example like the eagle then look at a shoe see a blotch blob yellowish. Wants to stamp his trademark on everything. Instance, that cat this morning on the staircase. Colour of brown turf. Say you never see them with three colours. Not true. That half tabbywhite tortoiseshell in the City Arms with the letter em on her ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce |
