"Soiled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mott like a handful of crooked rheumatic fingers, then suddenly the Bowery again, cowering beneath Elevated trains, where men burned down to the butt end of soiled lives pass in and out and out and in of the knee-high swinging doors, a ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... feelings, until the next week, when he brought me my shirts with a look of intelligence, and the buttons carefully and totally erased. At another time, to guard against his general disposition to carry off anything as soiled clothes that he thought could hold water, I requested him to always wait until he saw me. Coming home late one evening, I found the household in great consternation over an immovable Celestial who had remained seated on the front ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... thought. Thy head may be crowned with thorny troubles now, but it shall wear a starry crown directly; thy hand may be filled with cares—it shall grasp a harp soon, a harp full of music. Thy garments may be soiled with dust now; they shall be white by-and-by. Wait a little longer. Ah! beloved, how despicable our troubles and trials will seem when we look back upon them! Looking at them here in the prospect, they seem immense; but when we get ...
— The world's great sermons, Volume 8 - Talmage to Knox Little • Grenville Kleiser
... if to trace, line by line, and feature by feature, the countenance which had been to her sweet thoughts as the sunlight to the flowers. "Changed, changed," she muttered; "but still the same,—still beautiful, still divine!" She stopped. A sudden thought struck her: his garments were worn and soiled by travel, and that princely crest, fallen and dejected, no longer towered in proud defiance above the sons of men. "You are not rich," she exclaimed eagerly,—"say you are not rich! I am rich enough for both; it is all ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book X • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... fare. As to the "table appointments," they were miserably meagre. The cloth was a piece of an old sail, so soiled and dirty that it effectually deprived Madame Pfeiffer and her fellow-passengers of any small appetite with which they might have sat down to dinner. Madame Pfeiffer began to think that it would be better to have no cloth at all. She was mistaken! ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... got the letter written and addressed, but had not closed it, as I wished to add a few more words at latest. For safety's sake, I kept it in my bag, as it might have got wetted and soiled in my pocket. Until we were off Falmouth, I did not know that we were to stand in. I was then too much engaged in shortening sail to get out my letter. When I was at last able to go below, I hurried to my bag, intending to add a postscript, ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... light on his feet, with a great reach, and Isaac was unprepared. In a moment the latter was on his back, and the soiled sheets of foolscap were in Arnold's pocket. Isaac's fingers seemed to hover upon the trigger of his pistol as he lay there, ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... woman who is nearly forty years of age. Her face is white and placid and calm; her voice gentle and self-possessed; her manners are simple. She has the noblest qualities of sorrow, the saintliness of one who has never soiled her soul by contact with the world; but she has also the rigid bearing of an old maid and the petty habits inseparable from the narrow round of provincial life. In spite of her vast wealth, she lives as the poor Eugenie ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... her husband, and it made me feel sick. And you know, it's queer, that now, when I look back, instead of being glad that I was decent, I am as sorry as if I had sinned. But with Masha it's so different; I'm filled with joy that I've never soiled the brightness of my feeling for her. (He points his finger at the floor.) I ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... theirs. You come with your families, you make a home—you stay there—waiting for the heathen to come to you; your wife is nervous, she likes not the uncouth looks and ways of your barbarians; she is neat and she does not like her white floor to be soiled by the dirty feet of your savages. Nervous, neat, and timid herself, she meets their gaze anything but smilingly—even savages are human, and know well enough how to take a hint. Her involuntary dislike is returned with interest, ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee
... not speak. She looked round his cottage, then kneeled and made the dying fire blaze up. When all the place was warm, she rose and put off her dripping cloak and shawl, the hat, the soiled gloves; she let ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... his father than my daughters Got between the lawful sheets; To it luxury, pell-mell, for I lack soldiers.— Behold yon simpering dame, Whose face between her forks presageth snow; That minceth virtue, and does shake the head To hear of pleasure's name; The fitchew, nor the soiled horse, goes to it With more riotous appetite. Down from the waist they are centaurs, Though women all above; But to the girdle do the gods inherit, Beneath ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... the space of a few seconds, and now a bundle of soiled rags seemed to be lying huddled up under the praefect's foot, and he looked like some powerful desert beast that has placed a massive paw on a ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... or less intent on replacing the bright scattered fragments in their original shape: most of us die with the bits still scattered round us—that is to say, such of the bits as have not been ground into powder, or soiled and defaced beyond recognition, in the life-process. The few very wise find and place them in a coherent form at last, but it is quite another curious, beautiful, and mystical device or pattern ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... consisted of blue flannel shirts, with coarse canvas trousers, very much soiled and very stiff; but they were made loose, with very deep pockets, for the express purpose of carrying a brace of ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... late one day at Morne, and immediately afterward the whole castle was pervaded by their presence, and signs of them appeared in the most unlikely places. A mysterious packet, rolled up in a sheet of the Times, considerably soiled, and known as "Angelica's work," which nobody had ever seen opened, was found in the oriel room on the seat of the chair sacred to the duke himself; and a cricket cap of Diavolo's was discovered on one ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... newspaper were lying across the once brilliant sofa; a powder-puff, a plate of fruit, and a play-book were on the centre table, and on the marble-topped sideboard was Mr. Hooker's second-best hat, with a soiled collar, evidently but lately exchanged for the one he had on, peeping over its brim. The whole apartment seemed to mingle the furtive disclosures of the dressing-room with the open ostentations of the stage, with even a slight suggestion of the auditorium in a few scattered programmes ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... enthusiasm, and manifestly affected by her appreciation]. Wait a bit: I got more yet! Talk abaht bee-utiful!—That bit was on'y an ash-pan! Look 'ere, ma'am, I got the loveliest little job on as ever yer soiled yer 'ands ...
— The Servant in the House • Charles Rann Kennedy
... cotton cap so soiled and so shiny with grease that it might be made of black silk. Volpatte, inside his Balaklava and his fleeces, resembles a walking tree-trunk. A square opening betrays a yellow face at the top of the thick and heavy bark of the mass he makes, which is bifurcated ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... in no hurry; he jogged along leisurely, evidently on the lookout for an opportunity to replenish his wardrobe. Truth to say, this needed replenishing—Leslie resembled a scarecrow clad in a suit of soiled pajamas. But by this time most of the shops had their shutters up. When the last one had been left behind O'Reilly spurred his horse into a gallop, relieved to know that ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... So large was the house that a pilot to guide me through its thousand galleries to bed was an indispensable necessity. I was fatigued, and cared not where I hung up. Large as was the establishment, everything looked so costly that I became cautious lest what I sat down upon might become soiled, in which event I might be compelled to pay the shot with a short locker; or, should the case go before Pierce, he might in the profundity of his wisdom exile me to some remote spot on the Mosquito coast. I walked into the establishment like one who feels himself an independent citizen, ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... had been alone in the chamber, he bent his eyes with a mingled expression of deep grief and deliberate indignation. His dark-colored riding cloak, displaced from one shoulder, hung around one side of his person in the ample folds of the Spanish mantle. The rest of his rich dress was travel-soiled, and deranged by hard riding. He had a sword by his side, and pistols in his belt. His slouched hat, which he had not yet removed at entrance, gave an additional gloom to his dark features, which, wasted by sorrow and marked by the ghastly look communicated by long illness, added ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... came in sight of the cause of the sounds. A hatless, dirty, illy-dressed youngster of perhaps ten years stood by the roadside, howling and digging his soiled fists into his eyes as he blubbered. At sight of the horse and buggy this small sample of human misery looked ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... across the terrace, shouting and singing. In their possession was a soiled and battered ball, which on the morrow would be inscribed with the figures "9 to 8," and proudly suspended behind a glass case ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... poor unhappy emperor may be permitted to shed a tear over the severed garment of German royalty—that garment which has been rent by so many little princes! Have you observed, Rosenberg, how they have soiled its majesty? Have you noticed the pretensions of these manikins whose domains we can span with our hands? Is it not pitiable that each one in his principality is equal in power to the ...
— Joseph II. and His Court • L. Muhlbach
... and on several occasions he noticed a young man that attracted his attention. There was nothing prepossessing in his appearance; on the contrary he bore the marks of dissipation in his countenance; his clothing was old and soiled, and once or twice he saw him when partially intoxicated. The agent was a middle-aged man, and was a close observer of those with whom he came in contact, and somehow or other he felt a strange interest in this ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... the royal family during a period of about four months, varied by the capricious mercy or cruelty of the different persons who were placed as guards over them. Their clothes became soiled, threadbare, and tattered; and they were deprived of all means of repairing their garments, lest they should convert needles and scissors into instruments of suicide. The king was not allowed the use of a razor ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... dreadful, and I was sorry to hear that most of the conversation was the most malicious gossip. I was received with shouts of derision, and indeed my appearance was as wretched as possible. My feathers were soiled and broken, and I was overcome with sadness. The air of the place was stifling, and although the man who had charge of me gave me enough to eat, my cage and feed dishes were so dirty that I could not taste a mouthful. Some of my companions showed sympathy ...
— Harper's Young People, November 18, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... blinds, and that it was cool and sweet to his senses. He knew that she was coming down the broad hallway—he could hear the rustle of her gown. Inconsequently he was wondering whether she would be dressed in black. Then, to his humiliation, he remembered that he was wearing uncouth, travel-soiled garments. ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... this little high society which invented at the Tuileries the refinement of speaking to the King in private as the King, in the third person, and never as Your Majesty, the designation of Your Majesty having been "soiled by the usurper." ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... that tunic frighten him? He, John a Cleeve, had not killed its wearer. He had never buttoned it about him nor slipped an arm into one of its sleeves. Menehwehna had offered to help him into it and had shown much astonishment on being refused. John's own soiled regimentals they had weighted with a stone and sunk in the river, and he had been lying all but naked, with the accursed garment over his legs, when the rescue-party found them ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Anna, while a smile twinkled in the corner of her eye, "Cousin Jehoiakim has ruined my beautiful French wreath, and has broken my Chinese pagoda, and my exquisite Chinese mandarins, and soiled my Book of Beauty, and has broken my new set of chess-men that Uncle Eb. brought from the East Indies, and has—dear mother, can you not think of some means of sending him to Uncle ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... your authority, as I conceive, offensively violates reason. There is no analogy; no conceivable bond of union between thought and inanimate things, and it is about as rational as though, in sober reasoning, you were to make the polished shoe remonstrate with its wearer, in being soiled so soon after it had received its lustre. It is the utmost stretch of human concession, to grant thought and language to living things;—birds, beasts, and fishes; rights which the old fablers have rendered inalienable, as vehicles of instruction; but here, as I should think, the liberty ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... wounds in the body, and a knife, of the sort then much used by travellers of an ordinary class, was left sticking in his back in a position to render it impossible to attribute the end of the sufferer to suicide. The clothes, too, exhibited proofs of a struggle, for they were torn and soiled, but nothing had been taken away. A little gold was found in the pockets, and though in no great plenty still enough to weaken the first impression that there had ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... secretary, Colonel Marshall, his only staff-officer present. General Lee was dressed in a new uniform and wore a handsome sword. His tall, commanding form thus set off contrasted strongly with the short figure of General Grant, clothed as he was in a soiled suit, without sword or other insignia of his position except a pair of dingy shoulder-straps. After being presented, Ord and I, and nearly all of General Grant's staff, withdrew to await the agreement as to terms, and in a little while Colonel Babcock came to the door and said, ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... then, uninvited by Mrs. McDonald, but just as she had taught me a year ago, when I helped her to do the chores about the house while convalescing from my freezing experience, I carried the soiled dishes into the kitchen. Noticing that she was still in full mourning, I made careful inquiries as to whether any trace had been found of the missing child during my absence, to which she sadly replied that nothing had ever become of ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... He was a small man—almost a tiny man—lean and sinewy and with cheeks the color of bronze and eyes the hue of the sky. His head was quite bald at the top; his face wrinkled; he had a bushy mustache and a half-grown beard. His clothing was soiled, torn and neglected; but perhaps his accident accounted for much of its condition. His age might be anywhere from thirty to forty years. ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces in the Red Cross • Edith Van Dyne
... these intelligent rogues. As they stand, solemn as noble fathers on the stage, they take in all the details of a fair customer's dress; an invisible speck of mud on a little shoe, an antiquated hat-brim, soiled or ill-judged bonnet-strings, the fashion of the dress, the age of a pair of gloves. They can tell whether the gown was cut by the intelligent scissors of a Victorine IV.; they know a modish gewgaw or a trinket from Froment-Meurice. ...
— Gaudissart II • Honore de Balzac
... a soiled glove, whereon Her silk had play'd in purple phantasies, 370 She kiss'd it with a lip more chill than stone, And put it in her bosom, where it dries And freezes utterly unto the bone Those dainties made ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... puffing up the hill to wish my mother good-day: which, indeed, all true men of the harbour never failed to do, whenever they came near. He was a short, marvellously broad, bow-legged old man—but yet straight and full of strength and fine hope—all the while dressed in tight white moleskin (much soiled by the slime of the day's work), long skin boots, tied below the knees, and a ragged cloth cap, which he kept pulled tight over his bushy grey hair. There was a mild twinkle forever lying in the depths of his blue eyes, and thence, at times, overflowing upon ...
— Doctor Luke of the Labrador • Norman Duncan
... London. During his episcopacy in that see, he was by Bishop Laud's procurement made Lord Treasurer of England. Fuller says of his administration of these duties that "No hands, having so much money passing through them, had their fingers less soiled therewith." ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Hereford, A Description - Of Its Fabric And A Brief History Of The Episcopal See • A. Hugh Fisher
... a patched and much-soiled skeleton suit; one of those straight blue cloth cases in which small boys used to be confined, before belts and tunics had come in, and old notions had gone out: an ingenious contrivance for displaying the ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... her mind was less concerned with the garden ditch than with a comparison of her two visitors; and with a sudden feeling of warmth about his neck Bryant admitted to himself that he presented no attractions. He wore laced boots, soiled khaki trousers and flannel shirt, with his hat pulled over one eye against the sun; Menocal was dressed in light gray clothes, thin and cool, low white shoes, a pale pink silk shirt (trust a Mexican for colour ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... which should be forgiven to those who suffer night and day and are as if drunk with an exalted unhappiness, I went on: "For the sake of an old cast-off glove; for I suppose a disdained love is not much more than a soiled, flabby thing that finds itself on a private rubbish heap because it has ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... an acceptance with no intention of going, those who so accept will do well to remember this duty. It is the duty of every lady who attends a ball, to make her toilet as fresh as possible. It need not be expensive, but it should at least be clean; it may be simple, but it should be neither soiled nor tumbled. The gentlemen should wear ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... you want to drop the thing out of your mind as something too disagreeable to think about, infer from this that at least sixty-two per cent of those 3,866 women deserved their fate. Some of them were too lazy to work, and the rest preferred a life of soiled luxury to one of honest toil in somebody's nice kitchen. Apparently this was the view taken by the Massachusetts Bureau of Labor Statistics, because it never carried the investigation any farther. It never tried to find out why so many girls left their homes to enter evil lives. It never ...
— What eight million women want • Rheta Childe Dorr
... beslime^, begrime, befoul; splash, stain, distain^, maculate, sully, pollute, defile, debase, contaminate, taint, leaven; corrupt &c (injure) 659; cover with dust &c n.; drabble in the mud^; roil. wallow in the mire; slobber, slabber^. Adj. dirty, filthy, grimy; unclean, impure; soiled &c v.; not to be handled with kid gloves; dusty, snuffy^, smutty, sooty, smoky; thick, turbid, dreggy; slimy; mussy [U.S.]. slovenly, untidy, messy, uncleanly. [of people] unkempt, sluttish, dowdy, draggle-tailed; uncombed. unscoured^, unswept^, unwiped^, unwashed, unstrained, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... family spent the next week collecting and sorting their cocoons into baskets, grouping together as well as they were able those that were to be kept for breeding; those that were soiled or imperfect; and those that were double. They also separated the cocoons that were of different colors, for among the lot were not only white ones but many that were yellow, and even some of a greenish tint. This varied, Josef explained, with ...
— The Story of Silk • Sara Ware Bassett
... Yankee captives, all well tied, to prevent any possibility of escape. These were the thieves, and what they had taken of Gabriel was of course restored to him. One of the Indians saying, that the Yankees, having blackened and soiled the country by theft, should receive the punishment of dogs, and as it was beneath an Apache to strike them, cords were given to them, with orders that they should chastise each other for their rascality. The blackguards ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... every ragged urchin, [15] With bare feet soiled or sore, Share God's most tender mercies,— Find ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... two napkins, soiled by the supper of the previous night, might have enlightened the purest innocence. Claparon, thinking himself very clever, pressed his invitation in ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... placed upon her patient brother constituted a state of absolute tyranny. Lest her immaculate door-step should be soiled, she would rarely allow him to enter the house by the front-door. She placed a thick mat inside his workshop, at the doorway leading into the front-room; and she exercised a lynx-eyed supervision to ensure that he always ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... I do'—she broke in passionately, her sense of opposition of absurdity reviving her, 'when I get to your hateful Manchester? Go to church and say my prayers! And you? In a week or two, I tell you, you would be sick of having soiled your hands with such mud as ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... motley throng of soldiers, in soiled uniforms, traders, voyageurs, pale-faced women, and wondering children, streamed to the narrow beach beyond the water gate, all could see the approaching boats as, in long-extended line and with flashing oars, one after another rounded the last wooded point ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... she dropped his arm, which was no longer necessary for protection. She raised her crushed and soiled skirt, and looked at ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... a humbler tenement, built of wattled logs, but showing signs of comfort and thrift all about it. The old grandsire sits in a high-backed chair, sunning himself in front of the door; on a bench, at the side of the house, stand rows of washtubs filled with soiled linen, and a woman is busy wringing out clothes; while another, with a bucket on her head, goes to the well to supply her with a fresh thimbleful of water; and still a third milks a handsome dapple-gray cow in the yard where the dairy stands. There is a well-filled ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... and spurred, as if he had dismounted from a long ride; he wore a white hat, which looked too large for him; he held his two hands behind him, and in one of them—a large, white, well-shaped fist—was crumpled a pair of soiled ...
— The Portrait of a Lady - Volume 1 (of 2) • Henry James
... last, I've seen rivers in my time," he said presently, "big and little, pretty and not, clean and soiled, decent and indecent. Yes, boy," said he, "you can take it from me that I've seen the world's darnedest in the matter of rivers, and I have liked them all from Ganges to the Sacramento and back again. There was a time when I didn't have ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... wouldn't," he replied. "You don't seem to understand the meaning of the word—faithfulness. Perhaps you can't help it—you're half a Varincourt! . . . Don't you realise what you've done? You've torn down our love and soiled it—made it nothing! I believed in you as I believed in God. . . . And then you run away with Maryon Rooke! One man or another—apparently it's all the same ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... senses. She felt as if she would like to go down on her knees to him and thank him for having loved her, for loving her. Abasement would have been a joy to her just then, was almost a necessity, and yet there was pride in her, the decent pride of a pure-natured woman who has never let herself be soiled. ...
— The Call of the Blood • Robert Smythe Hichens
... ocean and the town— Lies cursed of one and by the other blest: Her staring eyes, her long drenched hair, her gown, Sea-laved and soiled and dank above her breast. She, image of her God since life began, She, but the child of Mammon, born of clods, Her broken body spoiled and spurned of man, But ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... discoloured ribbon to mask unneeded brackets. In the reception rooms food-bestrewn parrot stands were left where they ought never to be seen; and there were gilt-wired parrot cages; baskets for the pugs lined with soiled shawls; absurd ornaments, china cats with exaggerated necks, alabaster figures of stereotyped female beauty and flowerpot stands of ornate bamboo. She loved portieres, and she would fain have mitigated the bareness of the panelled or distempered walls; only that here ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... in his full proportions. No grander figure can be found, in the entire history of the Reformation in this island, than that of Knox. Cromwell and Burghley rank beside him for the work which they effected, but, as politicians and statesmen, they had to labour with instruments which soiled their hands in touching them. In purity, in uprightness, in courage, truth and stainless honour, the Regent and Latimer were perhaps his equals; but Murray was intellectually far below him and the sphere of Latimer's influence was on a smaller scale. The time has come when ...
— The Life of Froude • Herbert Paul
... green wool, white cards of black buttons, boxes of all colours and sizes, hair nets ornamented with steel beads, spread over rounds of bluish paper, fasces of knitting needles, tapestry patterns, bobbins of ribbon, along with a heap of soiled and faded articles, which doubtless had been lying in the same place for five or six years. All the tints had turned dirty grey in this cupboard, rotting with dust ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... and Hydaspes roll, Where treeless deserts glow, Where Scythians roam beneath the pole, O'er hills of hardened snow, The great Darius rules: and now, Thou little Greece, to thee He comes: thou thin-soiled Athens, how Shalt thou dare to be free? There is a God that wields the rod Above: by him alone The Greek shall be free, when the Mede shall ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... her two sons of the day's school experiences, before they settled down to their evening of study, she returned to the dining-room, and, as Mary had a headache and had had a busy day, she assisted in washing and wiping the unusual number of soiled dishes, and in setting the breakfast table. At nine o'clock she dragged her weary self upstairs. As she passed the door of her sanctum on the way to her bed-chamber, she paused, then entered, and lighted the gas-jet over her desk. On it lay the page of foolscap, blank ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... slightest moral pretence. The revolutionary Moniteur branded her as Messalina. "Cela ne regarde que moi," she said haughtily, and the sheet circulated throughout the empire. Such is the summary of the gallons of printers' ink that have soiled paper on this account. It is the aspect of her allowed to escape no one, and therefore we say no more of it here. How easy it is to "hint and chuckle and grin" with the "chroniques scandaleuses!" easier still to be incontinent of one's ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... the sock. It was faded and soiled, yet the pattern in which the silk had been woven into the worsted was ...
— Timid Hare • Mary Hazelton Wade
... it, took it up in his hand, recognized it, smelled it, spoke of its quality in a tone of emotion, filled it with tobacco, and lighted it. Then he set Emile astride on his knee, and made him play the cavalier, while she removed the tablecloth and put the soiled plates at one end of the sideboard in order to wash them as soon as ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... it often is, it has a richness and harmony of tint which no new clothes could ever have, and for which the costumes of the shops and regular models offer a poor substitute. It is the old story again. The new and clean is not so paintable, not so picturesque, as the tarnished and soiled. The worn blue of the cloak is softened by the dull gray of the threads beneath,—patches of various colors are often let into the jacket or breeches,—the hat is lustreless from age, and rusty as an old wall,—and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... and half a dozen short forms lie in disorder about the brick floor. At one end of the apartment is a yellow map of the Antilles; at the other is hung a badly painted oil portrait of her Catholic Majesty Isabella, with a soiled coat-of-arms of Castile above her, and a faded Spanish banner half concealing her royal countenance. Beneath this trophy, on a raised platform, is seated the prison magistrate, or fiscal, as he is called. Before him is a cedar-wood table, with a bottle ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... proved also to be whole, then both of them. It first investigated the ground it had been over, next where it had been lying, and finally where it should go. After this it began to wend its way slowly along, and acted just as though it had never fallen. The birch had become most wretchedly soiled, but now rose up and made itself tidy. Then they sped onward, faster and faster, upward and on either side, in sunshine and in rain. "What in the world can this be?" said the mountain, all glittering with ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... cried, hoarsely, and brushed the sleeve where his enemy's fingers had rested, as if it had been soiled. ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... is pardonable for children to wear their Valentines on the 14th of February, or for a young ensign to strut about armed cap a pie for the first week of his appointment; but the fashion of showing off in a red jerkin, soiled smalls, mudded boots, and blooded spurs, is not imitable: there is nothing of the old manhood of sport in it; foppery and fox-hunting are not synonymous. Members of the B. H. look to it; follow no leader in this respect. Or, if you must needs persevere, ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... are so very polite," retorted mamma; and Kala silently pressed his hand, still soiled by ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... sparse white frost about his ears; and his eyes, pale blue and prominent, looked out from under beetling brows. He wore a shabby plum-colored coat and tight, drab breeches. About his fat neck was a black stock, with just a suggestion of soiled linen showing above it. His figure was corpulent ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... securely chained; but I found, after a time, what I might indeed have guessed, that the Road, also led irresistibly to the lair of the Old Monster himself, the He-one of the species, where he lies upon the plain, lolling under his soiled gray blanket ...
— The Friendly Road - New Adventures in Contentment • (AKA David Grayson) Ray Stannard Baker
... spinning upon his own heel, landed squarely beneath the jaw of Silas. That gentleman, with a puffed eye and a bleeding lip and two teeth gone, rose from his feet with the impact of the blow, and landed with a grunt in a huge basket of soiled bath-towels. ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... took in the ugly house-front with its soiled "Kensington" curtains—its door ajar showing worn oilcloth in ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... for seven years, often for six months not going farther than three miles from home. He studied, worked and wrote, and his writings were sent out to his few friends who circulated them among friends of theirs, and in time the manuscripts came back soiled and dog-eared, proof that some one had read them. Persecution binds human hearts, and at this time there was a brotherhood of thinkers throughout the capitals and University towns of Europe. Spinoza's name became known gradually ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... of the gloomy hall was not pleasant. The red wall-paper was soiled and torn, and weird shadows flickered from the small gas taper that blinked from the ceiling. There were suggestions of old dinners, stale fried potatoes and pork in all the corners, and one moving toward the stairs seemed to stir ...
— Exit Betty • Grace Livingston Hill
... as the notice board was no longer the actual work of Mr. Whistler, it would manifestly have been improper to have left the butterfly (his well-known signature) attached to it, even if it had not appeared in so crushed a state. The soiled butterfly ...
— The Gentle Art of Making Enemies • James McNeill Whistler
... chairs, and two narrow beds. On the top of the chest are a looking-glass, some toilet articles, and bottles of medicine. The cracked walls are bare and not clean. In one of the beds are two children, sleeping soundly, and on the foot of it is a middle-aged woman, in a soiled woolen gown with a thin figured shawl drawn about her shoulders, a dirty cap half concealing her frowzy hair; she looks tired and worn and sleepy. On the other bed lies a girl of twenty years, a woman in ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of grace, coming to Christ, have been pawed and fingered by unctuous hands for now two hundred years. The bloom is gone from the flower. The plumage, once shining with hues direct from heaven, is soiled and bedraggled. The most solemn of all realities have been degraded into the passwords of technical theology. In Bunyan's day, in camp and council chamber, in High Courts of Parliament, and among the poor drudges in English villages, they ...
— Bunyan • James Anthony Froude
... life he had experienced the feeling—that in this juncture of his affairs he had been too delicate and too scrupulous. Why should a fellow in want refuse a kind offer kindly made? Why should a thirsty man decline a pitcher of water from a friendly hand, because it was a little soiled? Strong's conscience smote him for refusing what the other had fairly come by, and generously proffered: and he thought ruefully, now it was too late, that Altamont's cash would have been as well in his pocket as in that of the gambling-house proprietor at Baden or Ems, with whom ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... rest, Perrine got together their soiled clothing and decided to do some washing. Adding her own waist to a bundle consisting of three handkerchiefs, two pairs of stockings and two combinations, she put them all into a basin, and with her washboard and a piece ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... Completely worsted, soiled, defiled, and debased in my own estimation, I rose mechanically and commenced to turn my steps homewards. On the way I passed a door, upon which the following was to be read on a plate—"Winding-sheets to be had at Miss Andersen's, door to the right." Old ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... a man emerged from the brushwood, his habiliments dripping with water and soiled with ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... playthings like other children. My first memories of life were pinched by poverty. The pinch of poverty had been chronic. I was eight years old when I wore my first little undershirt actually sold in a store across the counter. And then it had been only one little undershirt. When it was soiled I had to return to the awful home-made things until it was washed. I had been so proud of it that I insisted on wearing it without any outer garment. For the first time I mutinied against my mother—mutinied myself into ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... and dried From the Devout Inquirer's Guide, For the wise spirits to decide— As, for example, is it True that the damned are fried or boiled? Was the Earth's axis greased or oiled? Who cleaned the moon when it was soiled? How baldness might be cured or foiled? How heal diseased potatoes? Did spirits have the sense of smell? 490 Where would departed spinsters dwell? If the late Zenas Smith were well? If Earth were solid or a shell? Were spirits fond of Doctor Fell? Did the bull toll Cock-Robin's ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... fly sitting upon the bald spot on his head, a wart on his nose, his collar pulled up behind. But the trained and artistic observer sees the peculiarly perfect outline of the old man's features and form, and in the tottering, gait bent shoulders, and soiled senility a straight, handsome youth, fastidious in his dress and perfect in his form. Such the old man was once, and all the elements of his broken youth are clearly visible under the hapless veneer of time for the one who has an eye to see. This is but one illustration of many that might ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... Versailles or the Ice Cabbage. Head large, regular, a little oblong, of a dull, pale-green color, and not compactly formed; the outside leaves are large, rounded, undulated or waved on the borders, thin in texture, and of a soiled or tarnished light-green color; diameter fourteen inches; weight twelve ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... fine sentiments in my archives. Here's an original. It's tolerable old, you see, stained and worn." This he said displaying a soiled paper, which he drew carefully from a large leathern pocket-book. "Let's see. Yes, this is the original of a fine letter, a copy of which I delivered ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... societies formed for the promotion of temperance? A still greater marvel is that so kind-hearted a man as Mr. Dickens, who sought honestly the amelioration of the condition of his fellow-men, could utterly ignore the transforming power of Christianity. He did not cast contempt on the Bible, and never soiled his pages with infidelity, neither did he ever enlighten, and warm and vivify them with evangelical uplifting truth. Only a few feet of earth separate the grave of Charles Dickens from the grave of William Wilberforce. Both loved their fellow-men; ...
— Recollections of a Long Life - An Autobiography • Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
... had enough. Let her at least live," begged the younger woman, actually fanning Cora's white face with her own soiled handkerchief. ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... the members of alma mater Kasi, Pandits[FN120] as well as students, look with awe upon Vishnu Swami's livid cheeks, and lack-lustre eyes, grimed hands and soiled cottons. ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... size, sit squarely on the seats and do not clownishly cross their legs, one may ride in an omnibus with comfort. Nay, with these conditions, he may generally escape having his toes crushed, his shins kicked, his shoes soiled, or his trowsers daubed with mud by his neighbor. But alas! how often is this paradisiacal state disturbed by the intrusion of "the thirteenth ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 6, May 7, 1870 • Various
... minutes they stood by the tree to which the rope had been tied discussing the situation, they saw the proof that the creek was subsiding. There was a perceptible lowering of the surface, as was shown by the soiled line against the trunk of the tree. Even Terry, when he looked down, observed that he was not standing in quite as deep water as he was a few minutes before. No danger, however, of ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... whose deep dejection, and countenance and manners, deeply interested me. Though his dress was soiled and bloody, I at once perceived that ...
— Manco, the Peruvian Chief - An Englishman's Adventures in the Country of the Incas • W.H.G. Kingston
... Tattered and soiled, an exile and an alien, Somehow you touched the Cockney nymphs with awe; You lit the cold clay statue, like Pygmalion, To blood-red raptures; you were sib to SHAW; Others might hale the town in cushioned chariots To see them dance or daub, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, July 15, 1914 • Various
... wet them thoroughly; you take a little soap to make the adhesion better, and you find your hand remains wet. This is by that kind of attraction of which I am about to speak. And, what is more, if your hands are not soiled (as they almost always are by the usages of life), if you put your finger into a little warm water, the water will creep a little way up the finger, though you may not stop to examine it. I have here a ...
— The Chemical History Of A Candle • Michael Faraday
... remnants and deep, mysterious gulfs of a crumbling and devastated civilization. And then, impatient of their intoxicating and tantalizing search, suddenly grown desperate, they clutched and stored away everything, and returned home tattered, soiled, bedecked with gold and with tinsel, laden with an immense uncouth burden of jewels, and broken wealth, and refuse and ordure, with pseudo-antique philosophy, with half-mediaeval Dantesque and Petrarchesque poetry, with ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... liberty. Bones lay thick around the shattered vehicles; a trail of skeletons dotted the descending bank, and stretched far into a neighbouring field; and from amid the green rankness that shot up around them, I could see soiled and tattered patches of the British scarlet. A little farther on there was another wide gap in the rails. I marked beside the ruins of a neighbouring hovel a huge pile of rusty bars, and there lay inside the fragment of an uncouth cannon marred in ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... (is) my washing-basin; to Edom will I fling my shoe; because of me, Philistia, cry out" (in fear). The three ancestral foes that hung on Israel's southern border from east to west are subdued. He will make of one "a vessel of dishonour" to wash his feet, soiled with battle; he will throw his shoes to another the while, as one would to a slave to take care of; and the third, expecting a like fate, shrieks out in fear of the impending vengeance. He pants for new victories, "Who will bring me into (the) strong city?" probably ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... soldiers and a surgeon, all non-immunes, lived for twenty-one days. From time to time they were supplied with soiled articles of bedding, clothing, etc., direct from the yellow fever hospital in the city. These articles had been soiled by the urine, fecal matter and black vomit obtained from fatal and other cases of yellow ...
— Insects and Diseases - A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread - or Cause some of our Common Diseases • Rennie W. Doane
... to the wooden gate, cast our grappling-iron attached to the rope over the gate, made it fast, ascended the rope to the top of the gate, drew up the rope, and made our way by the wing wall to the outside wall, where we entered a sentry-box and divested ourselves of our soiled outer garments. In the daytime sentinels were placed on this wall, but at night they were on the inside of the walls and at the main entrance to the prison. On the top of the wall we found a cord running along the outer edge and connecting with a bell in the office ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... her property, especially with the slaves. But how was he to escape a derivative gain? So Abigail asked. I knew that he disliked the institution; but here it was touching him again in a peculiarly intimate way. Texas soiled him with its influence and now his marriage identified him with it. He might regard it, if he would, as a domestic matter like the liquor business, which Maine had just now laid low by a prohibition law. As he would not be a liquor dealer, so he would not be a slave owner. But he was the next ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... down into the camp. All was silence. All was lifeless. He looked unhappily about him. There would be no point, of course, in looking into the dormitories, but he made his way to the mess shed. Some heavy earthenware plates and coffee cups, soiled, remained on the table. There were a few flies. Not many. In the mess kitchen there was grayish smoke and the reek of scorched and ruined food. The stoves still burned. Lockley saw the blue flame of bottled gas. ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... aunts. They were foolish in their talk of men and little feet; they knew, for all their worldliness, nothing about life. They had never known what it was to be insufficiently fed or clothed; they had never battled with black beetles and mutton bones, their white hands had never been soiled by greasy water and potato skins and she felt a bitterness against them all. 'Nonsense, Rose, what do you know about it?' Caroline asked. 'You're a ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... papers were clipped together, and as Tom looked at the one on top he saw that it was soiled and creased and written in German. The other was evidently a translation of it. It seemed to be a letter the first part of which was missing, and this is what ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... repulsive old man, and said repulsive things such as she had never heard put thus plainly into words before. She felt soiled by even this brief association with him. She wanted to hear no more of his ugly high-coloured talk, although of his skill as a waterman she entertained no doubt. Stepping lightly and quickly up on to the square stern of the ferry-boat, she went forward and kept her back ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... leave, treating his engagement as settled, without some more conventional glance in that direction than he could find an opening for in the manner of the large affable lady who sat there drawing a pair of soiled gants de Suede through a fat jewelled hand and, at once pressing and gliding, repeated over and over everything but the thing he would have liked to hear. He would have liked to hear the figure of his salary; but just as he ...
— The Pupil • Henry James
... unrefreshed, I should want to inquire into your habits of life. Was there opportunity for fresh air to enter your room? Was there in it no uncovered vessel, no old shoes in the closet, no soiled underclothing, nothing that could contaminate the atmosphere? Did you eat a hearty supper late in the evening? Is your system oppressed with a superabundance of sweets? Are you living on simple, wholesome food, or eating irregularly of all sorts of trash? There may be many ...
— What a Young Woman Ought to Know • Mary Wood-Allen
... 1865,—the only daily paper published in Klamath County,—had just gone to press; and at three, A.M., I was putting aside my proofs and manuscripts, preparatory to going home, when I discovered a letter lying under some sheets of paper, which I must have overlooked. The envelope was considerably soiled: it had no post-mark; but I had no difficulty in recognizing the hand of my friend Hop Sing. I opened it hurriedly, and ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... It was not the soiled pack of Spanish cards, or the few bundles of saturated paper cigars floating about, which caused this excitement. No, it was several canvas bags lying there in the stern-sheets, strapped with strands of a woman's red petticoat to the empty water-cask ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... there are in the great sin-soiled city, As might compel an angel into pity; But none more sad in all the world of care, Than a young child driven to ...
— White Slaves • Louis A Banks
... might prevent the final misery of a marriage. Then, if the Marquis would be generous, some young Earl, or at least a Baron, might be induced to forget the "postman," and to take the noble lily, soiled, indeed, but made gracious by gilding. Her darlings must suffer. Any excess of money given would be at their cost. But anything would be better than a Post Office clerk for ...
— Marion Fay • Anthony Trollope
... body, which no activeness did lack, Now 's laid aside like an old almanack;— But for the present 's only out of date, 'Twill have at length a far more active state. Yea, though with dust thy body soiled be, Yet at the resurrection we shall see A fair EDITION, and of matchless worth, Free from ERRATAS, new in Heaven set forth; 'Tis but a word from God, the Great Creator, It shall be done, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... ingredients together; then lay each breadth of silk upon a clean kitchen table or dresser, and scrub it well on the soiled side with the mixture. Have ready three vessels of cold water; take each piece of silk at two corners, and dip it up and down in each vessel, but do not wring it; and take care that each breadth has one vessel of quite clean water for the last dip. Hang it up dripping for ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... few minutes the Admiral was unconscious. The Captain now brought a suit of soiled mechanic's clothes and a clipper and razor, and in a half hour the prim Admiral in his fancy uniform had been reduced to the likeness of an oiler. His face roughly shaved, but pale and sallow, gave a very good simulation of illness ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... human nature in order to cleanse it of corruption. But human nature did not need to be cleansed save in as far as it was soiled in its tainted origin whereby it was descended from Adam. Therefore it was becoming that He should assume flesh of matter derived from Adam, that the nature itself might ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas
... all business except the saloons was dull. Fronting on Portsmouth Square was the Hall of Corruption. Inside was a magnificently furnished bar, more than one keeper and various gambling tables, most of them with soiled doves in attendance. The room was thronged with players and spectators, and coin and dust were plenty. The dealers drew off their cards carefully, and seemed to have the largest pile of ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... room were soiled and bare, except for blue-prints of drawings from which the projectile was being built in neighbouring foundries. There were but two plain, hard chairs in the room. The doctor sat on one with a pillow doubled up under him for a cushion. ...
— Pharaoh's Broker - Being the Very Remarkable Experiences in Another World of Isidor Werner • Ellsworth Douglass
... saddles; and it was not a pleasant conclusion to such a delightful visit to have to trudge through the mud four or five miles of a dark night, or to ride home barebacked, as the best pants were likely to get somewhat soiled in the seat. However, these little affairs seldom proved very serious, and it would get whispered around that Tildy Smith was going to ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... his mother, having seen Miss Riddle in the parlor, entered it in order to have a preliminary chat with her—her son found a person inside dressed in a pair of red plush breeches, white stockings a good deal soiled, a yellow long-flapped waistcoat, and a wig, with a cue to it which extended down the whole length of his back,—evidently a servant in dirty lively. There was something degagee and rather impudent in his manner and ...
— The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector - The Works of William Carleton, Volume One • William Carleton
... into the rushing river, Washed the war-paint from their faces. Clear above them flowed the water, Clear and limpid from the footprints Of the Master of Life descending; Dark below them flowed the water, Soiled and stained with streaks of crimson, As if blood were ...
— The Song Of Hiawatha • Henry W. Longfellow
... inventions are attributed to him. The soldier has a crimson-coloured uniform and a heavy shield of bronze; his theory being that such an equipment has no sort of feminine association, and is altogether most warrior-like. (4) It is most quickly burnished; it is least readily soiled. (5) ...
— The Polity of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians • Xenophon
... other, extended to the distant horizon, folding in their wintry embrace the beauties of Middle Park. Pike's Peak, more than one hundred miles off, lifted that vast but shapeless summit which is the landmark of southern Colorado. There were snow patches, snow slashes, snow abysses, snow forlorn and soiled looking, snow pure and dazzling, snow glistening above the purple robe of pine worn by all the mountains; while away to the east, in limitless breadth, stretched the green-grey of the endless Plains. Giants everywhere reared their ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... For there is the famous author of "The Buccaneer's Bride," rigged out complete in a more or less soiled jester's costume, includin' the turkey red headpiece with the bells on it. He's standing on a heap of shells and waving this rusty boat-hook around. Course, I expects when he sees Mr. Robert and realizes ...
— Torchy and Vee • Sewell Ford
... common stuff, chastely made with a chemisette body and a pleated collar, was fated to appear, even to her own eyes, horrible in comparison with the fresh toilets of Beatrix and Camille. She was painfully aware of the stockings soiled among the rocks as she had jumped from the boat, of shabby leather shoes, chosen for the purpose of not spoiling better ones on the journey,—a fixed principle in the ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... walking in pairs according to their fetters. They were gaunt and bony creatures. Hunger had wasted their sallow cheeks, and the air of noisome dungeons had sunken their rheumy eyes. Their clothes were soiled rags, and over them, and concealing them down to their waists and yet lower, hung the deep, rich, velvet pall, with its long silk fringes. In front walked the two remaining prisoners, each bearing a great plume in his left hand—the right arm, as well as the right leg, being ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... Sir, heere's my drift, And I belieue it is a fetch of warrant:[7] [Sidenote: of wit,] You laying these slight sulleyes[8] on my Sonne, [Sidenote: sallies[8]] As 'twere a thing a little soil'd i'th'working: [Sidenote: soiled with working,] Marke you your party in conuerse; him you would sound, Hauing euer seene. In the prenominate crimes, [Sidenote: seene in the] The youth you breath of guilty, be assur'd He closes with you in this consequence: Good sir, or so, or friend, or Gentleman. According to the ...
— The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark - A Study with the Text of the Folio of 1623 • George MacDonald
... boys wrapped in careless rags to keep out the cold, their unwashed skins showing where the coverings had slipped, begged abjectly for the privilege of carrying my bags. The carpet in the lobby was wrinkled and soiled and in the great chandeliers half the bulbs were blackened. Though the building was served by its own powerstation, the elevators no longer ran, and the hot water was rationed, as in a fifthrate French pension. The coverlet on the bed was far from fresh, the window was dusty and there was but ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... railroad, she found two poor fellows who had been discharged from some of the hospitals with their wounds not yet fully healed, and their exertions in traveling had caused them to break out afresh. Here they were, in a miserable shanty, sick, bleeding, hungry, penniless, and with only their soiled clothing. Mrs. Bickerdyke at once took them in hand. Washing their wounds and staunching the blood, she tore off the lower portions of the night dresses for bandages, and as the men had no shirts, she arrayed them in the remainder of these dresses, ruffles, lace, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... civilization into the wilderness by the advent of the foreign white — fluttered in airy play over the dead man, drifting away into the woodland at times, yet always returning to wage a fairy combat above the heap of soiled clothing which once had ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... not spoken I might not have turned; but having turned I could not but notice two things. Louis jerked back from me, as if I might try to read the soiled note in his hand, and in raising the paper displayed on the back the stamp of the commissariat department ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... drinkers at the bar strolled over to watch the faro game, and Garvey, taking off his soiled apron, joined them, lighting a black cigar. The ruler of Lost Springs moved lightly on his feet for so heavy a man. Around his waist was a gun belt from which swung a silver-mounted .44 revolver ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... undergrowth about them. And the soil is very nice, so beautifully clean and crunchy to walk on, for it's made of the pricks that fall off the firs, in great part. It's perfectly splendid to lie on—springy and yielding and not a bit dirty—your things don't get soiled in the least. ...
— The Girls and I - A Veracious History • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... "It's quite too soiled to wear, but really, it's not dirty enough to go to the laundry. I can't make up my mind just what I ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... Dudley's mother could not conceal her pleasure. "Franklin's hands had printers' ink on them," he said, "but they were shaken by princes and savans—the lightning did not despise them. Garibaldi's fingers were soiled with candle-grease, but they have moulded a free nation. Stephenson's fingers were black with coal, and soiled with machine oil of a fireman's work, but they pointed out highways to commerce and revolutionized civilization. There are those" (Whittaker ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... proprietary right in the villa and was not just then in a hospitable mood. Beside her walked a little elderly man, tightly buttoned in a shabby black coat, but with a flower in his lappet, and a pair of soiled light gloves. He was a grotesque-looking personage, and might have passed for a gentleman of the old school, reduced by adversity to playing cicerone to foreigners of distinction. He had a little black eye which glittered like a diamond and rolled about like a ball of quicksilver, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... in the centre of the table, and gathered together the soiled plates with a wooden stolidity. To all appearances she might not have heard a word that had been said. Margot seized the hot-water-jug, and shivered ostentatiously, trusting to pity to prevail where guile had failed; and sure enough the pale ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... all the troubles of the stormy and barbarous country, and, though crippled by a fall and racked with rheumatism, was the chief comfort of the young children. She crouched at the hearth with her spinning and her beads, and exclaimed at the tossed hair and soiled hands and faces of ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... centre of the band and conveyed to this place, where we have been detained close prisoners ever since. The scattered contents of the camp must afterwards, I fancy, have been collected and brought to this village, for a few days later our boxes— broken open and the contents in a dreadfully soiled and disordered condition—were brought to us, and upon our replying in the affirmative to the questions put to us by signs as to whether they were our property, were left in our possession. I have only to add that the wreck, and the horrors ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... said to himself, "I have been deceived," and that very hour God waked him. He wanted to get friends to pray for him; but as he was not able to buy a piece of paper, or pay for a postage stamp, he got an old piece of soiled paper, stood up in the street, and wrote a request to be read in the Tabernacle, that if God would save a poor, lost man like him, he wanted to be saved. That prayer was answered. As in the case ...
— Sowing and Reaping • Dwight Moody
... started into the dining-room with her own supper between two plates when she saw the old man sitting there despondent in looks and attitude, his head resting on one clawlike hand, his elbow on the soiled table cloth. ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... clear complexion, his clear eyes; the delicately pencilled eyebrow that was so exactly like his mother's. And this thing of brightness and bravery talked as gravely and as wisely as any weather-worn, shop-soiled, ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... brought in. His hands were bound, His dress was soiled and torn. His countenance very sad. The crowd had already had proof of His courage. He stood there quietly. Terror He no longer felt, sadness alone lay in His eyes. They turned over the scrolls and spoke together in whispers. It was ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... game with Count Jagodziuski, the cards for which (a pack soiled by much usage and many dirty fingers) the Count at once produced from the back-pocket of his coat. What did it matter to Mr. Tiralla if he lost three or four pounds? It amused him when the Count won them, for that was the only harvest the poor devil ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... artist was at the Elysee Montmartre until two in the morning, then she went to the ratmort and had a soupe aux choux; she lives in the Rue Fontaine, or perhaps the Rue Breda; she did not get up till half-past eleven; then she tied a few soiled petticoats round her, slipped on that peignoir, thrust her feet into those loose morning shoes, and came down to the cafe to have an absinthe before breakfast. Heavens! what a slut! A life of idleness and low vice is upon her face; ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... same moment the lighthouse-keeper issued from the door of the building. Running towards the old man, he and his wife quickly raised him and loosened his neckcloth. His face had been slightly cut by the fall. Blood and dust besmeared it and soiled his ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne
... he retaliates by approaching the sex somewhat gingerly. His women, in the main, are no more than soiled and tattered cards in a game played by the gods. The effort to erect them into the customary "sympathetic" heroines of fiction always breaks down under the drum fire of the plain facts. He sees quite accurately, it seems to me, how vastly the role of women has been exaggerated, ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken
... passed himself on her as an unmarried man, and said his name was M'Gowan. On that evening he came about dusk, but went out again, and she did not see him till far in the night, when he returned, and appeared to be fatigued and agitated—his clothes, too, were soiled and crumpled, especially the collar of his shirt, which was nearly torn off, as in a struggle of some kind. She asked him what was the matter with him, and said he looked as if he had been ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... the wounds of the forgiving and the forgiven! And then Hannah knew that, although guilty before God, her guilt was not such as her fellow-creatures deemed it—for there were dreadful secrets which should never pass her lips against the father of her child. So she bowed down her young head, and soiled it with the ashes of repentance—walking with her eyes on the ground as she again entered the kirk—yet not fearing to lift them up to heaven during the prayer. Her sadness inspired a general pity—she was excluded from no house she had heart to visit—no coarse comment, no ribald jest ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... was still twisted round his belt, and held within its folds his armament of pistols. His fair, long hair was uncombed, and even entangled with his exertions. His large boots were covered with dust, and all his clothes were stained and soiled with the grass and weeds through which he had that night dragged himself more than once, in order to place himself within pistol-shot of his enemies; and yet, soiled and hot as he was, fatigued with one battle, ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... head porter received their inquiry for a Bradshaw with a dull stare and a shake of the head. No such thing had ever been asked for at Bursley Station before, and the man's imagination could not go beyond the soiled time-tables loosely pinned and pasted up on the walls of the booking-office. Hilda suggested that the ticket-clerk should be interrogated, but the aperture of communication with him was shut. She saw ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... of the fruits of the earth. The fern-embowered stream gave them to drink. No sign of the white man, with his interfering and desolating ways, assailed the sight. It was as if the mist of centuries had lifted, and for once time-soiled mortals were permitted to gaze on a Garden of Eden free from danger and innocent of sin. There was none here to make the ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield |
