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First blush   /fərst bləʃ/   Listen
First blush

noun
1.
At the first glimpse or impression.



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"First blush" Quotes from Famous Books



... to say; the thing, at the first blush, was undiscoverable. I was overwhelmed with miserable, womanish pity for my broken friend; his outcries grieved my spirit; I saw him then and now—then, so invincible; now, brought so low—and knew neither how to refuse nor how ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 13 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... chose n'a pas une valeur, parcequ'elle coute, mais elle coute (du travail ou de l'argent), parcequ'elle a une valeur. (Commerce et Gouvernement, 16.) Ricardo's doctrine is more tenable than appears at first blush. We need only to interline his theory of rent, admit that capital is accumulated labor, subtract all objects constituting a natural monopoly, and not forget that the intrinsic value of labor is one ...
— Principles Of Political Economy • William Roscher

... Most people prefer to live in luxury, and to think with the majority. However, there is really nothing in the essays and addresses of the Wordsworth Society that need cause the public any unnecessary alarm; and it is gratifying to note that, although the society is still in the first blush of enthusiasm, it has not yet insisted upon our admiring Wordsworth's inferior work. It praises what is worthy of praise, reverences what should be reverenced, and explains what does not require explanation. One paper is ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde

... speak of the now obsolete sentiment of friendship, and he can find much to justify his cynicism. Indeed, on the first blush, if we look at the relative place the subject holds in ancient as compared with modern literature, we might say that friendship is a sentiment that is rapidly becoming obsolete. In Pagan writers friendship takes a much larger place than it now receives. The subject bulks largely in ...
— Friendship • Hugh Black

... but, in the covenant of circumcision made with Abraham, expressly mentions it, and confirms the patriarch in it, speaking of those 'bought with his money,' and requiring him to circumcise them. Why, at the very first blush, every Christian will cry out against this statement. To this, however, you must come, or yield your position; and this is only the first utterly incredible and monstrous corollary involved in the assertion that slavery is essentially and always 'a ...
— Cotton is King and The Pro-Slavery Arguments • Various

... By the first blush of dawn Nigel Roy hastened on deck, eager to see the place in regard to which his father's narrative had awakened ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne

... reach real working power. To all perversion iron limits are, indeed, set; but obscure falsehood works in the largest spaces and with the longest tether.—Thus the expressive intensity which appertains to this organization is serviceable every way, even in what might, at first blush, seem wholly evil effects. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various

... in silence. She stole a look at him, and saw that, after the first blush at meeting her, he was pale and haggard. On this she dashed into singularly easy and cheerful conversation with him; told him that this morning walk was her custom—"My substitute for rouge, you know. I am always the first up in this languid ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade

... I've remarked, are fine; but the qualities of your heart, my dear, are finer still. I've been making love to you, with the choicest store of loving arts, for eight long months; and the first blush I've been enabled to raise on your lovely countenance is when I tell you you've more money than you looked for! ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... up with a shy, sweet smile that was very pleasant to see, and the first blush he had been able to call forth that day glowed on her cheeks. Was it true? she questioned within herself. Was she being selfish in this, her new joy? Ought she to try to tell him about it? Would he understand? and could she speak about ...
— Four Girls at Chautauqua • Pansy

... ye skies!... Be my Colin but there, Not the dew-spangled bents on the wide level Dale, Nor Morning's first blush can more lovely appear Than his looks, since my wishes ...
— The Farmer's Boy - A Rural Poem • Robert Bloomfield

... hurriedly. "I'll go as I am, before my mother is disturbed and frightened out of her life. I owe you something, too, not only for what you've done for me, but for what I was fool enough to think about you at the first blush. It's entirely through you that I feel as fit as I do for the moment. So I'll take your tip, and go just as I am, before my poor old pipes strike up ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung

... expectantly, the pen poised in her hand. There was rather an awkward pause. The question seemed at first blush a little indelicate. Sinclair ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various

... altered to make them fit into the scheme. Each was originally the expression of a moment; and the peculiarity of Heine as a lyric poet is his disposition to fix a moment, however fleeting, and to utter a feeling, of however slight consequence to humanity it might at first blush seem to be. In the Journey to the Hartz he never lost an opportunity to make a point; in his lyrical confessions he suppressed no impulse to self-revelation; and seldom did his mastery of form fail to ennoble even the ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... familiar with the manner in which it is necessary "to hound nature in her wanderings" before her feints can be eluded, and her prevarications brought to book. A deep distrust of the over-obvious is wanted, before men can be brought to turn aside from objections which at the first blush appear to be very serious, and to take refuge in solutions which seem harder than the problems which they are intended to solve. What a shock must the discovery of the rotation of the earth have given to the moral sense of the age in which it was made. How it contradicted all ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... that he had descried a shippe vpon the coast, and that he thought it was one of our nation. (M475) Hereupon the brigantine oppressed with famine, came to an anker at the mouth of the Riuer of May, when at the first blush we thought they had bene shippes come from France; which gaue vs occasion of great ioy: but after I had caused her to be better viewed, I was aduertised that they were our seditious companions that were returned. Therefore I sent them word by Captaine Vasseur and my Seargeant, that they ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of - the English Nation. Vol. XIII. America. Part II. • Richard Hakluyt

... he watched and waited until the first blush of morn; then after a hasty meal prepared on his camp fire, he started off, and in due time reached his home in the distant village in the wilderness, and in the depressing mood in which we here first met him he lived for ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young

... always been to govern, within limits precise and perfectly regular, if it be possible, the flow of the motive force; that means the procession of the wheel-work and, as a consequence, of the hands thereto attached. At first blush it seems as if a continually-moving governor, such as is in use on steam engines, for example, ought to fulfil the conditions, and attempts have accordingly been made upon this line with results which have ...
— Watch and Clock Escapements • Anonymous

... I know Miss Ballister fairly well, and I have met Madame Ybanca twice—once here in New York, once at Washington. And let me say now, that at first blush I do not find it in my heart to suspect either of them of deliberate wrongdoing. I don't think they are ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb

... soft dreamy May sort. I was walking slowly across the Austernheim-hellmsberger Platz—local color, you observe!—when my eyes suddenly collided with a queer apparition. At first blush it looked like a little old woman, in visage a veritable witch; but horrors! a witch with whiskers. This old woman, as I mistook her to be, was attired in an Empire gown, with crinoline under-attachments. Around the neck was an Elizabethan ...
— Old Fogy - His Musical Opinions and Grotesques • James Huneker

... "It is not, my lord, so much the fault of Mr Rattlin as it would, at the first blush, appear to be. He himself pressed a wicked, mischievous young blackguard, who was appointed the young gentleman's servant. Incredible as the fact may appear, my lord, he contrived, in a manner that Dr Thompson can best explain to you, to destroy all the clothes ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard

... At first blush the latter would appear to be higher game and a more dangerous amusement. Not at all. For the men thus run down by Monsieur Podvin and his faithful dog, Tartar, were little above the beasts from self-indulgence at ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... line at muskrat and am not ashamed to say so. Compelling is the association of ideas, and the thought grips one that muskrat must taste as domestic rats (are rats domestic?) look. Raw fish at the first blush does not sound palatable, yet raw oysters appeal. The truth is that meat or fish frozen is eaten raw without any distaste, the freezing exerting on the tissues a metabolic change similar to that effected by cooking; and it is convincingly ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... there is to be presented what at first blush seems a very important piece of evidence. In the Northamptonshire Historical Collections, 1st series (Northampton, 1896), there is a chapter on witchcraft in Northamptonshire, copied from the Northamptonshire Handbook for 1867. That chapter goes into the trials of 1705 in detail, making ...
— A History of Witchcraft in England from 1558 to 1718 • Wallace Notestein

... gigantic sweep the banks of cloud asunder, now displayed his magnificence in a gorgeous immensity of flaming crimson. The sea, in response, turned to liquid fire beneath the glow, whilst the whole sky was irradiated with the first blush of morning. ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... tangible fact there. And years afterwards, in the light of further knowledge of Mr. Scales, Sophia came to regard his being on the doorstep as the most natural and characteristic thing in the world. Real miracles never seem to be miracles, and that which at the first blush resembles one usually proves to be an ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett

... polygamy is not permitted in these countries—Both! no, try again for a better answer; though that was no bad one at the first blush." ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth

... southward issuing orders that were shot through with bad rhetoric, mixing up army routine and such irrelevant matters as "the first blush ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... At first blush it would seem that fluency consists in a ready, easy use of words. Not so—the flowing quality of speech is much more, for it is a composite effect, with each of its prior conditions ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein

... referred to the "organs of speech," and it would seem at first blush that this is tantamount to an admission that speech itself is an instinctive, biologically predetermined activity. We must not be misled by the mere term. There are, properly speaking, no organs of ...
— Language - An Introduction to the Study of Speech • Edward Sapir

... great summary of gifts; and again, "Might and Right," the identity of these two, if a man will understand this God's-Universe, and that only he who conforms to the law of it can in the long-run have any "might:" all this, at the first blush, often awakened Sterling's musketry upon me, and many volleys I have had to stand,—the thing not being decidable by that kind ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle

... as to the power of contracting debts, and develope it with that cogent logic which is so peculiarly yours. Your station in the councils of our country gives you an opportunity of producing it to public consideration, of forcing it into discussion. At first blush it may be laughed at, as the dream of a theorist; but examination will prove it to be solid and salutary. It would furnish matter for a fine preamble to our first law for appropriating the public revenue: and it will exclude, at the threshold of our new government, the ruinous ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson

... rose growing upon a thorny bramble. There is jealousy in the very first blush of a passion. No sooner has a fair face made its impress on the heart than hopes and fears spring up in alternation. Every action, every word, every look is noted and examined with a jealous scrutiny; and the heart of the lover, changing like ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... make out head or tail of what he was driving at; but he had no alternative than to deliver his message word for word. At the first blush of morning of the day appointed, he actually got ready two horses and remained in waiting at the back gate. When daylight set in, he perceived Pao-yue make his appearance from the side door; got up, from head to foot, in a plain suit of clothes. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... cassock, I imagine, you would have divined him for a clergyman—he bore the clerical impress, that odd indefinable air of clericism which everyone recognises, though it might not be altogether easy to tell just where or from what it takes its origin. In the garb of an Anglican—there being nothing, at first blush, necessarily Italian, necessarily un-English, in his face—he would have struck you, I think, as a pleasant, shrewd old parson of the scholarly—earnest type, mildly donnish, with a fondness for gentle mirth. What, however, you would scarcely have divined—unless ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland

... accustomed to deal with curious scientific phenomena. The character drawing is admirable, the episodes are striking and original, and the scenery, carefully elaborated, is managed with fine judgment. Despite the idea, which to some may at first blush appear revolting and startling, there is nothing sensational in the book. The reader observes only the growth and movement of the poison in the girl's system, its effect on her way of life, and its remarkable ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various

... women, and altogether so-gentle and gallant, that it was a widowhood for women to have known him: and at his death the hearts of two women who had loved him in rivalry became bound by a sacred tie of friendship. He, though not of distinguished birth, had the choice of an almost royal alliance in the first blush of his manhood. He refused his chance, pleading in excuse to Count Serabiglione, that he was in love with that nobleman's daughter, Laura; which it flattered the count to hear, but he had ever after a contempt for the young man's discretion, and was observed to shrug, with the smooth ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... Lyapinsky house. And I could not rid myself of the thought that these two things were bound up together, that the one arose from the other. I remember, that, as this feeling of my own guilt presented itself to me at the first blush, so it persisted in me, but to this feeling a second was speedily ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi

... On the first blush of the thing Lady Lufton did not quite go along with him. Now that Lord Lufton was to marry the parson's sister it might be well that the parson should be a dignitary of the Church; and it might be well, also, that one so nearly connected ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope

... horror I noticed what to my mind went to prove that she was the person for whom I was looking. There were dark red stains on the white roses she wore on her dress. It was an unpleasant shock to me, placing me, as it seemed, in a terribly difficult position. For, at the first blush of my discovery, it all seemed to fit in. Clement Henshaw had been, I imagined, in love with Miss Tredworth before Kelson appeared on the scene. She had thrown him over for my friend, and Henshaw, taking his rejection in bad part, had threatened ...
— The Hunt Ball Mystery • Magnay, William

... open sea: if I may call open sea that far outlying expanse of ocean covered with thick-grown weed. But it was needful that I should plan for my supply of food as I went onward, that was to be got only by returning to the far-away barque; and also I felt an itching desire—as strong as at first blush it was unreasonable—to carry away with me some part of the treasure that I had found. That I ever should get out into the world again, and so have the good of my riches, seemed likely to me only in my most sanguine moments; but even on the slimmest chance of accomplishing ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier

... this measure will be too well known to need any explanation to the public. Every friend and every enemy of America will comprehend them at first blush. To you, sir, I owe all the apology I can make. The urgent necessity I am in of your advice and assistance, indeed of your conduct and direction of the war, is all I can urge; and that is a sufficient justification to myself and to the world. I hope it will ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 5 (of 5) • John Marshall

... light-heartedly into laughter, 'you don't mean to tell me that a woman doesn't know her own husband when she sees him—or, for the matter of that, when she doesn't see him? If Tom came home from a ramble as handsome as Apollo to-morrow, I'd recognise him at the very first blush—literally! He'd go nuzzling off to get his slippers, or complain that the lamps had been smoking, or hunt the house down for last week's paper. Oh, besides, Tom's Tom—and there's ...
— The Return • Walter de la Mare

... the left, or northward, his eye ranged over the lovely undulating Sussex Weald, with its park-like, well-wooded hills and valleys, now in the first blush of their summer beauty, the leafage all tender green, and the soft meadowlike pastures gilded with the dazzling yellow ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn

... Ere the first blush of morning is red in the skies, Ere the lark plumes his wing, or the dew drops are dry, Ere the sun walks abroad, must the harvestman rise, With stout heart, unwearied, the sickle to ply: He exults in his strength, when the ale-horn is crown'd, And the ...
— Enthusiasm and Other Poems • Susanna Moodie

... ghostly light, long miles to the south, were the Uncapapa scouts, watching for the first sign of the coming of the column that, slipping away from before them in the darkness of midnight, had ridden in wide circuit around and across their front, burrowed into the earth at the first blush of the morning sky, reappeared dripping on the left bank of the bordering stream, the Rubicon of the reservation, and now was swiftly bearing down upon the devoted village from ...
— Under Fire • Charles King

... a terrible thought, for to be left alone in that vast plain without horses seemed too hard to be borne. At the first blush it made Bart shudder, and it was quite in despair that with cocked rifle he waited for morning light, which seemed as if ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn

... PROPOSITIONS. These obviously and at first blush appear to contain no instruction in them; for when we affirm the said term of itself, whether it be barely verbal, or whether it contains any clear and real idea, it shows us nothing but what we must certainly know ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume II. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books III. and IV. (of 4) • John Locke

... about the theatre that the public does not know. A statement, at first blush, to be disputed. The press agent, the special writer, the critic, the magazines, the Sunday supplement, the divorce courts—what have they left untold? We know the make of car Miss Billboard drives; who her husbands are and were; how much the movies have offered her; what she wears, reads, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... at first blush, as if an examination of the well-known odium theologicum, or the traditional bitterness which has been apt to characterize controversies about points of doctrine, from the Middle Ages down to a period within our own memory, would throw some light on the matter. But a little consideration ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin

... perhaps a distance of two hundred yards, as though the interview was over, and he were leaving her. She, as she saw him go, wished that he would return that she might say some word of comfort to him. Not that she could have said the only word that would have comforted him. At the first blush of the thing, at the first sound of the address which he had made to her, she had been angry with him. He had disappointed her, and she was indignant. But her anger had already melted and turned itself to ruth. She could not but love him better, in that he had loved ...
— The Belton Estate • Anthony Trollope

... an immediate answer, Miss Clibborn. I know at first blush it must surprise you that I should come forward with an offer so soon after the rupture of your engagement with Captain Parsons. But if you examine the matter closely, you will see that it is less surprising than it seems. While you were engaged to Captain Parsons it was my duty ...
— The Hero • William Somerset Maugham

... hunters were led on and on, revelling in the prospect of many joys before them, when all at once they came on something that turned their joy to grief—the track of a man; the fresh imprint of a cowhide boot. It was maddening. At first blush, it meant some other trapper ahead of them with a prior claim to the valley; a claim that the unwritten law would allow. They followed it a mile. It went striding along the shore at a great pace, sometimes running, ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton

... weak, and this was one of them. It is as certain as anything in life or politics can be that if the Bill of 1902 had been accepted, the Irish tenants would be still going gaily on under the old rent-paying conditions. The United Irish League was still in the first blush of its pristine vigour, and when the delegates of the National Directory came up from the country to Dublin they soon showed the mettle they were made of. They wanted no paltry compromises, and it was then and there ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan

... endeavouring to limit their practice to cases which they believed to be just. Sir Matthew Hale is a conspicuous example, but he acknowledged that he considerably relaxed his rule on the subject, having found in two instances that cases which at the first blush seemed very worthless were in truth well founded. As a general rule English lawyers make no discrimination on this ground in accepting briefs unless the injustice is very flagrant, nor will they, except in very extreme cases, do their client ...
— The Map of Life - Conduct and Character • William Edward Hartpole Lecky

... police investigation, this home of ancient Knicker-bocker respectability. But once in the room of the missing girl, every consideration fled save that of professional pride and curiosity. For almost at first blush, I saw that whether Mrs. Daniels was correct or not in her surmises as to the manner of the girl's disappearance, the fact that she had disappeared was likely to prove an affair of some importance. For, let me ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green

... already gone. But others, a crowd of others, are facing the big ploughed field immediately before them. That is the straightest riding, and with them he goes. Why has the scent lain so hot over the up-turned heavy ground? Why do they go so fast at this the very first blush of the morning? Fortune is always against him, and the horse is pulling him through the mud as though the brute meant to drag his arm out of the socket. At the first fence, as he is steadying himself, a butcher passes him roughly in the jump and nearly takes ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope

... whether I myself could stand fire; he knew that I was not a coward, but this was a different question. I told him that I had been shot at, once or twice before; but nevertheless disliked it, as much as almost anything. Upon that he said that I would do; for that when a man got over the first blush of diffidence, he soon began to look upon it as a ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore

... a narrow intellect, an individual woman of the character of Ninon de l'Enclos would seem hopelessly lost to all virtue, abandoned by every sense of shame, and irreclaimable to any feeling of social or private duty. But only at first blush, and to the most circumscribed of narrow minds, who, fortunately, do not control the policy of mankind, although occasional disorders here and there indicate that they are endeavouring to ...
— Life, Letters, and Epicurean Philosophy of Ninon de L'Enclos, - the Celebrated Beauty of the Seventeenth Century • Robinson [and] Overton, ed. and translation.

... smiles of cloudless skies serene, In Dawn's first blush and Sunset's lingering glow, And in the glamour of the Moon's chaste beams— My soul meets thine, and there thine image seen, More real than life, doth to my lone heart show Such charms as live in ...
— Sonnets • Nizam-ud-din-Ahmad, (Nawab Nizamat Jung Bahadur)

... the air! Never had her step been so light, or her daily walk to the dingy office—dingy no longer—so bracing. And the out-of-doors—the sky and drifting clouds; the low hills, bleak in the winter's gloom—what changes had come over them? Was it the first blush of the coming spring that had softened their lines, or had her eyes been blind to all their beauty? Oh! Marvellous elixir that makes hopes certainty and ...
— Abijah's Bubble - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... a very large one, and though the lamp that swung from the ceiling gave forth but a dim light, yet it was enough to enable me to see very clearly all that there was to see. At the first blush, indeed, there seemed to be nothing out of the way to witness. At the further end of the cabin two men were sitting at a table together, with a chart before them. Nearer to me, and in front of the men, a woman stood, and held up for their ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy

... own table in clear noonday light I saw a person whom, without my previous experience, I should have taken at the first blush for some housemaid who might have stayed at home to look after the place and who, availing herself of rare relief from observation and of the schoolroom table and my pens, ink, and paper, had applied herself ...
— The Turn of the Screw • Henry James

... expected to find Alphonse at a loss and put him to open shame we were destined to be disappointed. He bowed and scraped and smiled, and acknowledged that his conduct might at first blush appear strange, but really it was not, inasmuch as his teeth were not chattering from fear — oh, dear no! oh, certainly not! he marvelled how the 'messieurs' could think of such a thing — but from the chill air of the morning. As for the rag, if monsieur ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard

... at first blush, but as Caldew examined it closely several objections arose in his mind. The hidden motive of the crime, as innocently laid bare by his sister, was strong, but was it strong enough to impel a woman like Miss Heredith, with the rigid principles of her birth, breeding, and caste, and a woman, moreover, ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees

... have often worked and slept in opposing camps. So, do not expect from me anything like the consistency with which the majority of mankind solder and shape their life. Deep thought seems often, if not always, inconsistent at the first blush. The intensity and passiveness of the spirit are as natural in their attraction and repulsion as the elements, whose harmony is only patent on the surface. Consistency is superficial, narrow, one-sided. I am both ambitious, therefore, ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... At first blush it may seem to be a bad example of special pleading to attempt to discover the reason for his opposition to vaccination in his idealism. But it is not far from the truth. He believed in a Ministry of Public Health, that doctors should be servants of the State, and that they should ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant

... was meant to be crushing. How should she, a brand plucked from the burning of Bayswater, be able all at once, on the very first blush, to appreciate Botticelli? And it took the greatest critic of his age half a lifetime! Yet I venture to maintain, for all that, that the young lady was right, and that the critic was wrong—if such a thing be ...
— Post-Prandial Philosophy • Grant Allen

... through the upper Hell Gate, entering the Sagadahoc, passing the Chops, and finally through the Neck, into Merrymeeting Bay. The narrowness of the channel and the want of water at low tide in Back River would seem at first blush to throw a doubt over the possibility of Champlain's passing through this tidal passage. But it has at least seven feet of water at high tide. His little barque, of fifteen tons, without any cargo, would not ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 2 • Samuel de Champlain

... the lad's eyes, but it was only light, for with the first blush of dawn he awoke and prepared to commence ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green

... a half the two desperate foes wrestled with each other amid flame and smoke and darkness. As the first blush of dawn mantled the eastern sky the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... anti-revolutionary speculators was not so extravagant as might have been supposed at the first blush. It was always the way of these gentry to form alliance with those in power at the moment, and by virtue of his popularity, his pen, his character, Marat was a power to be reckoned with. The Girondists were near shipwreck; the Dantonists, ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... the Germanic peoples and those most closely allied to them, the Scandinavians, that Mark Twain found most complete and ready response. At first blush, it seems almost incredible that the writings of Mark Twain, with their occasional slang, their colloquialisms and their local peculiarities of dialect, should have borne translation so well into other languages, especially into German. It must, however, be borne in mind that, despite ...
— Mark Twain • Archibald Henderson

... avow it, this idea, which seemed natural at the first blush, appeared to him after a moment's reflection, as strange, impossible, and almost repulsive. For, at bottom, he shared the general impression, and the old member of the Convention inspired him, without his being clearly conscious of ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo

... his strength, not only by these excellent fruits, but also by sweet sleep, roused himself at the first blush of dawn, and as soon as he left his chamber met the beloved Apostle coming to seek him. St. John took him by the hand, and told him many things relating to the past and the future. Among others, he said, "Son, let me tell you what is now ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch

... Corsicans were able, in obedience to all the laws of justice, to shake off the yoke of Genoa, and can do likewise with that of the French. Amen." But in the spring it was the then famous but since forgotten Abbe Raynal of whom he became a devotee. At the first blush it seems as if Buonaparte's studies were irregular and haphazard. It is customary to attribute slender powers of observation and undefined purposes to childhood and youth. The opinion may be correct in the main, and would, for the matter of that, be true as ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. I. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane

... Durham's enemies his ordinance of banishment was a ukase; and, at first blush, it looks like an unwarrantable stretching of his powers. But Durham was on the ground and must necessarily have known the conditions prevailing much better than his critics three thousand miles away. Desperate diseases ...
— The Winning of Popular Government - A Chronicle of the Union of 1841 • Archibald Macmechan

... Staden had handed him the two cablegrams from the Blue Star Navigation Company, no suspicion that they were forgeries had entered the captain's mind; indeed, Matt Peasley's cablegram to him appeared at first blush to be an answer to the telegram which Murphy had sent his owners from Norfolk. In that telegram Murphy had mentioned his suspicions and hinted at unwarranted risks and the possibility of the circumstances attending the delivery of his cargo forcing his resignation. Matt's cablegram handed ...
— Cappy Ricks Retires • Peter B. Kyne

... there was something that might at first blush have seemed favorable to the Lutheran revolt. Few lands were more open to German and Swiss influences than was their transalpine neighbor. Commercially, Italy and Germany were united by a thousand bonds, and a constant influx of northern travellers, students, artists, officials and soldiers, might ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... prejudice. But this prejudice can only be in degree with the antiquity of its establishment; for modern error, how high soever its authority, has but little claim to our veneration. This concession made, could it be expected that our novel constitution, liable at first blush to so many important objections, should not have its opponents; but that in a moment it should be submitted to, as implicitly as if it had had the sanction of ages? What circumstance was there, in the production of this whimsical machine, that should silence, at once, all the remonstrances ...
— Nuts for Future Historians to Crack • Various

... buttery for beer and bread and cheese (for the great men did not sup with the rest, but had each his own allowance in his study or the fifth-form room), cleaning candlesticks and putting in new candles, toasting cheese, bottling beer, and carrying messages about the house; and Tom, in the first blush of his hero-worship, felt it a high privilege to receive orders from and be the bearer of the supper of old Brooke. And besides this night-work, each prepostor had three or four fags specially allotted to him, of whom he was supposed to be the guide, philosopher, and friend, and who ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes

... so powerful and so singular as that of individual character. It arises as often from the weakness of the character as from its strength. The dispersion of this clever and showy ministry is a fine illustration of this truth. One morning the Arch- Mediocrity himself died. At the first blush, it would seem that little difficulties could be experienced in finding his substitute. His long occupation of the post proved, at any rate, that the qualification was not excessive. But this cabinet, with its serene and blooming ...
— Coningsby • Benjamin Disraeli

... Pridgin, my new master, was not a very formidable sort of person at first blush. True he was in the Eleven and a fine all-round athlete. True he was fairly well up in the Sixth, and one of the boys Low Heath was proud of. These things did not strike one in beholding him. What did strike one was his air of lazy humour, ...
— Tom, Dick and Harry • Talbot Baines Reed

... offended at first, will take the trouble to read the Introduction which precedes and explains the Tales, they may find, not only that the softening process would have spoilt these popular traditions for all except the most childish readers, but that the things which shocked them at the first blush, are, after all, not so ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent

... who has lived all his days serenely in accord with the dictates of his own sweet will, taking no thought for the morrow, such a situation naturally seems both appalling and intolerable, at the first blush. It must be confessed that, to begin with, Kirkwood drew a long and disconsolate face over his fix. And in that black hour, primitive of its kind in his brief span, he became conscious of a sinister apparition taking shape at his ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance

... tempted to throw aside as absurd the notion that their bodies go through the many operations which they experience them to do, undirected by their minds; it is a thing they may say at once preposterous and incredible. And no doubt on the first blush it sounds absurd, and yet, on second thoughts, it is less so than it seems; and though we could not persuade ourselves to believe it, absurd in the sense of having nothing to be said for it, it certainly is not. It is far easier, for instance, to imagine ...
— Froude's Essays in Literature and History - With Introduction by Hilaire Belloc • James Froude

... never in the library by any chance. The real librarian, and a very worthy fellow he was, was a man of the name of Tallencourt. He was an old soldier, and this caused him to be elected captain of a grenadier company in the Citizen Guard—a position to which, in the first blush of his enthusiasm, he attached an exaggerated importance. Well, some time after Dumas had resigned his position in the library, in the midst of the riots which occurred so frequently about that period, we saw Tallencourt come home one day in full warlike ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville

... handsomely by her nieces, and it was agreed that Charlotte and Emily were to go to the Continent, Anne retaining her post of governess with Mrs. Robinson at Thorp Green. But Brussels schools did not seem at the first blush to be very satisfactory. Something ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter

... "At first blush," returned Greg, "some of you may not like the job. It is nothing more nor less than a visit to Dodge's room, while he and Blayton are absent ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock

... At first blush McClellan was in favor of the arrangement. It is probable that if left to himself he would have acceded. The imagination can hardly grasp the fame that would have come to "little Mac," and the blessings that would have come ...
— The Life of Abraham Lincoln • Henry Ketcham

... said; "but you will understand, Dispenser of a Thousand Mercies, why at first blush Islam and the lyric stage should ...
— The Patient Observer - And His Friends • Simeon Strunsky

... to in the historical texts of the Assyrian period. In the inscriptions of Sargon she appears under the rather strange title of 'Belit ilani,' i.e., the mistress of the gods.[313] This 'mistress' cannot be, as might at first blush appear, Ishtar or the old Belit, for elsewhere[314] Ishtar, Belit, and Belit ilani occur side by side. Sargon declares that he owes his wisdom to Ea and Belit ilani. In naming the gates of his palace, he again associates Ea with 'the mistress of the gods,' from ...
— The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria • Morris Jastrow

... humiliations of the Pariah's life had never presented themselves to her; and this unexpected suggestion of the ban that shut us out from the open daylight of the world around us, fell heavily upon her. It was the first blush of shame! But shaking off her rich tresses, which in the heat and flurry had fallen down over her shoulders, she looked up at me, and laughed—a brave laugh, that chilled me to ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various

... prefer to call it, Devolution. Through the principle of autonomy, incompletely applied, the British Possessions have so far evolved. Through the principle of autonomy, completely applied, and in no other wise, can they evolve into an ordered system worthy of the Imperial name. This is at first blush a singular development. Here lie Ireland and England separated by a mountain of misunderstanding. We Irish Nationalists have for a century been trying to bore a tunnel through from one side. And suddenly we become aware of ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle

... but hie thee to bed, good Denys. Next to Margaret I love thee best on earth, and value thy 'coeur d'or' far more than a dozen of these 'Tetes d'Or.' So prithee call me at the first blush of rosy-fingered morn, and let's away ere the woman with ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade

... first blush on meeting them, I had considered my expedition as terminated by having met them, and by their having accomplished the discovery of the Nile source; but upon my congratulating them with all my heart upon the honor they had so nobly earned, Speke and Grant with characteristic ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker

... senses. Neither do they swear such fealty to their mistress Antiquity, that they openly, and in sight of all, deny and desert their friend Truth. But even as they see that the credulous and vain are disposed at the first blush to accept and believe everything that is proposed to them, so do they observe that the dull and unintellectual are indisposed to see what lies before their eyes, and even deny the light of the noonday sun. They ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various

... fragrance. Nothing could exceed their fluttering loveliness or their luxuriant promise. A few days of fairy beauty, and showers of soft petals floated noiselessly down, covering the earth with delicate snow; but I knew, that, though the first blush of beauty was gone, a mighty work was going on in a million little laboratories, and that the real glory was yet to come. I was surprised to observe, one day, that the trees seemed to be turning red. I remarked to Halicarnassus that that was one of Nature's processes which I did not remember to have ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various

... am no party man—I have never judged—I cannot judge questions according to party, but according to constitutional principles and history. On the first blush I was favourably impressed with the position and resignation of the late council; but when I came to examine their position, as I had done Hon. Mr. Draper's speech on the University question by the light of history (it being a new question), I came to the conclusions that ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson

... and clearing, until the next summer saw the whole country golden with the wheat crop. Everything prospered in the strange settlement. Above all, the great temple which they had erected in the centre of the city grew ever taller and larger. From the first blush of dawn until the closing of the twilight, the clatter of the hammer and the rasp of the saw was never absent from the monument which the immigrants erected to Him who had led them ...
— A Study In Scarlet • Arthur Conan Doyle

... them from the Vowels and Semi-vowels, commixed together with them: No Man, for Example, shall so pronounce b. g. or d. as that he may be heard at a hundred Paces distant. And this seems to me to be the principal reason why we can most rarely pronounce or repeat at the first blush, any word ...
— The Talking Deaf Man - A Method Proposed, Whereby He Who is Born Deaf, May Learn to Speak, 1692 • John Conrade Amman

... At first blush, this argument appears to have some force, but upon close reading of the provisions of the bill, and its necessary effect upon the Practical operation of a primary campaign, it must be admitted that this sole objection is largely argumentative. In the first place, as pointed ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn

... to say it. We got the—the doctor found a—we engaged the sort of nurse that does everything, you know—a fine, strapping young woman, in the pink of condition; and—and—well, there it was. And at the first blush the worst of the trouble seemed over, instead of just beginning. I gave up my house, and went off to sea, miserable enough, as you may suppose, but at least with an easy mind about the boy. As far as he was concerned—as far as my poor Lily was concerned, I felt I had acted for the best. Indeed, ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge

... tripped blithely aboard the Sunyado Maru, anchored off the breaks of Amoy, and captured, at first blush, the hearts of the entire forward crew, Bobbie MacLaurin was the most eager ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts

... floating of ideas into the mental faculties, rather than an apprehension of them by an active and deliberate tension of the intellect, and that it is through this kind of intuitive investigation that the 'spirit of scepticism' primarily arises, is equally true; though not, perhaps, at the first blush, so apparent. In this sense, the statement of Mr. Buckle is simply one half of a truism, the other half of which, not enunciated by him, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various

... isn't considered at all disgraceful, when stirring such a terrible monster out of his den, for the hunters to post themselves in trees near by. While at first blush such a procedure might seem silly or cowardly to you, take an old hunter's advice, and give the rascal no more chance than you can help. Even then I've known him to shake a fellow out of a small tree, and only for the assistance of the others he must ...
— The Outdoor Chums After Big Game - Or, Perilous Adventures in the Wilderness • Captain Quincy Allen

... fine lively fellow of about twenty, not quite so tall as his brother, with a cheerful and pleasant countenance, a profusion of rich curly flaxen hair, and a disposition the counterpart of his father's. Their sister, Kate, was the third. She was about eighteen years of age, in the first blush and florescence of youth; the idol of her parents, and the pet of her brother William (whom she resembled in her disposition and complexion), while she seemed to have inherited her mother's beauty and virtues. Besides ...
— Fern Vale (Volume 1) - or the Queensland Squatter • Colin Munro

... some good services to mankind justify the appropriation of expense. It was not so with my friend, who was only unsettled and discouraged, and filled full of that trumpeting anger with which young men regard injustices in the first blush of youth; although in a few years they will tamely acquiesce in their existence, and knowingly profit by their complications. Yet all this while he suffered many indignant pangs. And once, when he put on his boots, like any other unripe donkey, to run away from home, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... food. He ended by transporting up that steep slope everything but his canoe and the small tent. It might be, he said to himself as he lugged load after load, just a whim, a fancy, but he was free to act on a whim or a fancy, as free as if he were in the first blush of careless, adventurous youth,—freer, because he had none of the impatient hopes and urges and dreams of youth. He was finished, he told himself in a transient mood of bitterness. Why should he be governed by practical ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... eighteenth century, and for some years later, the two approached the garden by water. They took boat on the Thames, at Temple-stairs, and soon arrived at the landing-place. It was in the awakening month of May, when the garden was in the first blush of its springtime beauty. "When I considered," Addison wrote, "the fragrancy of the walks and bowers, with the choirs of birds that sung upon the trees, and the loose tribe of people that walked under their shades, I could not but look upon the place as a kind of Mahometan paradise. Sir Roger ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... composed of fig-leaves, or of imperfectly dressed skins—nothing like the Astrachans of the nineteenth century—it would certainly have been very inconvenient to coddle ailing infantry through an attack of diphtheria, for example. So bountiful Nature, then in the first blush of maidenhood, doubtless brought the long-lived Patriarch through his nine hundred and sixty-nine years without once calling in the family medical adviser. It is recorded, however, that he was born and that he died, and he therefore certainly passed through that ...
— Punchinello, Vol.1, No. 4, April 23, 1870 • Various

... At first blush it might appear to the lay mind that a germ would scarcely care to pick a bone when it had fat meat to feed on, but my own recollections bore out my friend's statements. I remembered a man of my acquaintance, an enormously fleshy and unwieldy man, who, ...
— One Third Off • Irvin S. Cobb

... Christmas, 1745, seemed to be an act of considerable magnanimity on Friedrich's part. It was, at the first blush of it, "incredible" to Harrach, the Austrian Plenipotentiary; whose embarrassed, astonished bow we remember on that occasion, with English Villiers shedding pious tears. But what is very remarkable withal ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle

... spread Bright with its hair of golden thread! This strong desire, this eager will, Befits a gentle lady ill: But when I first beheld, its look My breast with fascination took. See, golden hair its flank adorns, And sapphires tip its branching horns. Resplendent as the lunar way, Or the first blush of opening day, With graceful form and radiant hue It charmed ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI

... his eyes fixed steadily upon her. "Well anyhow—I don't see the force of your objection, you know. That's my advice to you. Here I am. Consider you've got resources deposited with me. Perhaps at the first blush—it strikes you as odd. People are brought up to be so shy about money. As though it was indelicate—it's just a sort of shyness. But here I am to draw upon. Here I am as an alternative either ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells

... therefore, which looks at first blush like an axiom, is, as a matter of fact, an attempt to achieve a physical impossibility and always ends, as it has ended in Europe on this occasion, in explosion. You cannot indefinitely pile up explosive ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... with the first blush of surprise when Miss Tilney, anxious for her friend's being ready, entered the room, and to the rising shame of having harboured for some minutes an absurd expectation, was then added the shame of being caught in so idle a search. "That is a curious ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen

... instinct of search. I felt absolutely and at once that any such effort in my present blind state of mind would be totally unavailing. The secret trap and the passage it led to, with all the opportunities they offered for the concealment of a few folded documents, did not, strange as it may appear at first blush, suggest the spot where these papers might be lying hid. The manipulation of the concealed mechanism and the difficulties attending a descent there, even on the part of a well man, struck me as precluding all idea of any such solution to this mystery. Strong as dying men sometimes are in the last ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green

... first became possible through the discovery and settlement of North America. I said, at the close of my first lecture, that the victory of Wolfe at Quebec marks the greatest turning-point as yet discernible in all modern history. At the first blush such an unqualified statement may have sounded as if an American student of history were inclined to attach an undue value to events that have happened upon his own soil. After the survey of universal history which we have now taken, however, I ...
— American Political Ideas Viewed From The Standpoint Of Universal History • John Fiske

... chin, but a fire in thine eye, With lustiest Manhood's in passion to vie, A stripling in form, with a tongue that can make The oldest folks listen, maids sweethearts forsake, Hie over the fields at the first blush of May, And give thy ...
— Shakespeare and Precious Stones • George Frederick Kunz

... still subtler example. You are, we will suppose, at a tea-house, and you wish for sugar. The following almost stereotyped conversation is pretty sure to take place. I translate it literally, simply prefacing that every tea-house girl, usually in the first blush of youth, is generically addressed as "elder sister,"—another honorific, at least ...
— The Soul of the Far East • Percival Lowell

... teloteropathically from one of those absent, or that the postcarnate George Pelham himself wrote her about it, and also told me of it through Mrs. Piper's organism in New York, and four days later was working it into a cross-correspondence through Mrs. A. in Spain. At first blush the latter seems easier; and I am not sure but ...
— The Unpopular Review, Volume II Number 3 • Various

... they sleep through the moonshiny night, Each young one covered and tucked in tight; Morn wakes them up with the first blush of light, And they sing to each other with all their might: "Coo," say the little ones, "Coo," says she, All in their nest in the ...
— Pinafore Palace • Various

... under other names, would be, the dominant influences under the new regime. But it may be objected—If Irishmen have no respect for their members, why did they elect them? If they object to Home Rule, why did they vote for it? And so on, and so on. These queries at first blush seem unanswerable, but they are not really so. Attentive readers of later letters will discover the reason why. Further, it may be remarked, in passing, that questions are more easily asked than answered. Here is an instance. The facts ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... The story at first blush seems incredible, but I have no doubt our red squirrel would have made the leap safely; then why not the great black squirrel, since its parachute would be ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs

... the church might, at first blush, seem to say that everything was in a state of tranquility and peace. This is far from being the case. In the face of the record of Lott Cary as a Christian, a pastor, a representative of the Richmond African Baptist Missionary ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various

... to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment. Thus, under the name of Order and Civil Government, we are all made at last to pay homage to and support our own meanness. After the first blush of sin comes its indifference; and from immoral it becomes, as it were, unmoral, and not quite unnecessary to that life which we ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... There was much in that face to sadden the old man's heart. Had it been that of an old person, of one who had lived out her time, and had been gathered in, in due season, he would have thought less of it; but it was sad indeed to see one in the first blush of youth, scarcely more than a child, stricken down and dying in such a place, ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, June 1844 - Volume 23, Number 6 • Various

... he showed a ready inclination for the peace which the Pope, Calixtus II., in council at Rome, succeeded in establishing between the two rivals. The war with the Emperor of Germany, Henry V., in 1124, appeared, at the first blush, a more serious matter. The emperor had raised a numerous army of Lorrainers, Allemannians, Bavarians, Suabians, and Saxons, and was threatening the very city of Rheims with instant attack. Louis hastened to put himself in position; he went and took solemnly, ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume II. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot

... adoring admirer of the Philosopher. The fact that these two philosophies, in this so close juxta-position, always in contact, playing always into each other's hands, never once heard of each other, know nothing of each other, is a fact which would seem at the first blush to point to the secret of these 'Know-Nothings,' who are men of science in an age of popular ignorance, and therefore have a 'secret'; who are men of science in an age in which the questions of science are 'forbidden questions,' and are ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon

... said what was natural for you to say, and I thought what was natural for me to think, at first blush." ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... that in the first blush of such a scheme, its enemies must necessarily find their advantage in entrenching themselves behind those prejudices, that could not be eradicated in a moment, I was willing to wait for the hour of calmness ...
— Four Early Pamphlets • William Godwin

... sensation school; and when Catholics declare that there never was a plot, except that which was formed against their religion by artful men for the worst purposes, they do not talk so unreasonably as at the first blush it should seem. This plot was emphatically a gentlemanly transaction. There was hardly a person who had part in it who was not a gentleman by birth or education, or both. Catesby, Percy, Rookwood, Digby, the Winters, Grant, Tresham, Keyes, and the Littletons were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various

... at first blush, more gratifying to Simon than the original statement. Yet, when Eliza was gone, he went and looked in his bit of a looking-glass, half hoping to find some touch of the latent ruffian in his face. All he saw ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller

... the most astonishing of all tricks with cards. Although it may be true that whatever puzzle one man invents, some other man may unravel, as before observed, I am decidedly of opinion that this trick defies detection. At the first blush it seems very difficult to learn; but it is simplicity itself ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume II (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz

... word, used it the first time occasion offered. If he once heard a thing he seemed never to forget it, nor a man's name or face. If his wife wrote out a speech and read it to him a couple of times it was his for delivery in practically her words. He struck John as a man devoid of conscience, yet, at first blush, of pleasant ...
— Chit-Chat; Nirvana; The Searchlight • Mathew Joseph Holt

... be doing Herr Sorgenpfennig an eternal injustice did we pass over it in silence, more especially as he boasts of it as real "North German fare." Here we have it: raw herrings to begin with. Bah! I confess this does not sound well upon the first blush; but, then, a raw dried herring is somewhat different to one salted in a barrel. To cook it would be a sacrilege, say the Germans. And then the accompaniments! We have two dishes of wonderful little potatoes, baked in an oven, freshly peeled and shining; and in the centre of the table is a bowl ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... At first blush it seems almost ridiculous for us to rush to war shouting against autocracy while the man with the greatest power the world has ever seen announces to the world that we fight "to make the world ...
— Face to Face with Kaiserism • James W. Gerard

... the five cases, it should seem, the creative energy had set about to fashion its supposed ultimate and perfect work, and with what result? At first blush, the failure seemed most conspicuous in my companions, especially the big and the little one; but a small introspection might, perhaps, have disclosed a deeper disappointment in a nobler aim. The bear was the only success among ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various

... till age had worn off the first dazzling lustre from your favorite, your sway would have been unlimited and your exultation immeasurable. My good old Dame, hear for your comfort what a foolish, fickle youth has dared to say of your darling Jannette, and that while she is yet in the first blush and bloom of virgin loveliness—'next to painting I love Jannette the best.' Insufferable blasphemy! Hear, O Heavens, and be amazed! Tremble, O Earth, and ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse

... propriety for so long before. They afterward in fact could have dated it, their full clutch of their freedom and the bliss of their having so little henceforth to consider save their impotence, their poverty, their ruin; dated it from the hour of his recital to her of the—at the first blush—quite appalling upshot of his second and conclusive "scene of violence" with the mistress of his fortune, when the dire terms of his release had had to be formally, and oh! so abjectly, acceded to. She "compromised," the cruel brute, for Four Hundred Pounds down—for ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James

... At first blush this may seem like an unpardonable misconception and over-statement, and if it is not true it certainly is unpardonable. Let us consider the facts. Some of them are well known, and the salient ones ...
— The Fight For Conservation • Gifford Pinchot

... for enlistment. A condition of the contract under which they were secured for my troop was that one of their number be appointed sergeant. They were to name the man and the choice, made by ballot, fell upon Marvin E. Avery. At first blush, he was not a promising candidate for a non-commissioned office. Somewhat ungainly in figure, awkward in manners, and immature in mind and body, he appeared to be; while he seemed neither ambitious to excel nor quick to ...
— Personal Recollections of a Cavalryman - With Custer's Michigan Cavalry Brigade in the Civil War • J. H. (James Harvey) Kidd

... official translator of the Department of State. Though an able and learned man he was not in the line of preferment. He was without political standing or backing of any sort. At first blush a more unlikely, impossible appointment could hardly be suggested. But—so on the instant I reasoned—he was peculiarly fitted in his own person for the post in question. Though of Greek origin he looked like a Spaniard. He spoke the Spanish language fluently. He had the procedure of ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... Curator could utter a word, only to reappear in a few minutes with a man in his wake whom the former at first blush thought to be as much past the age where experience makes for efficiency as the other seemed to be ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green

... well, is by no means well done if done without charity."(237) We have purposely chosen passages in which the "Doctor of Grace" obviously treats of charity as theological love, not in the broad sense of dilectio.(238) At first blush these passages seem to agree with the teaching of Baius, who says: "Every love on the part of a rational creature is either sinful cupidity, by which the world is loved, and which is forbidden by St. John, or that praiseworthy ...
— Grace, Actual and Habitual • Joseph Pohle

... deliberation and debate, it had been decided that this should be Bellini's masterpiece, La Sonnambula. She was to sing it on one night only— the last Sunday of the Carnival; and the attraction on that night was proportionably great. The Sonnambula, then in the first blush of its immense popularity, had never yet been heard in Ravenna. It was one of the favourite parts of the Diva; and all the city was ...
— A Siren • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... are lined with eyes within, And, being so, the sage unmakes the man. In love he cannot therefore cease his trade; Scarce the first blush has overspread his cheek, He feels it, introverts his learned eye To catch the unconscious heart in the very act. His mother died,—the only friend he had,— Some tears escaped, but his philosophy Couched like a cat, sat watching ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... struggle in the bosom of Robert Bramble. It was some hours before he could recover from the first blush of amazement at the strange discovery he had made. Not to have had something of a brother's feelings come over him at such a time, he must have been less than human; and it was between the promptings of blood, of early recollections of childhood, ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray

... must be artificial, although I could not discover the source from which it was diffused. Mrs. Leete was an exceptionally fine looking and well preserved woman of about her husband's age, while the daughter, who was in the first blush of womanhood, was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Her face was as bewitching as deep blue eyes, delicately tinted complexion, and perfect features could make it, but even had her countenance lacked special charms, the faultless luxuriance of her figure ...
— Looking Backward - 2000-1887 • Edward Bellamy

... in the heavens, and the first streaks of dawn appeared. There is no twilight in these low latitudes, and the full daylight came well nigh at once. I had not closed my eyes since my encounter with the steward, and ever since the first blush of day I had labored under the impression that I could see some unusual dark mass half way up the mast. But although it again and again caught my eye, it hardly roused my curiosity, and I did not rise from the bundle of sails on which I was lying to ascertain what it really was. But no ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne

... respects our methods may have differed. They left no stone unturned in the pursuit of a criminal; no detail, however trifling, uncared for. No more should we in the present instance overlook the minutest bit of evidence, however irrelevant and absurd at first blush it may appear to be. The truth of what I say was very effectually proven in the strange case of the Brokedale tiara, in which I figured somewhat conspicuously, but which I have never made public, because it involves a secret affecting the integrity ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs



Words linked to "First blush" :   opinion, impression, belief, notion, feeling, at first blush



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