Well-known K.C.'s brother.... Murder and suicide.... Paiper!" Was he to let loose that flood of foulness? Was he, who had done nothing, to smirch his own little daughter's life; to smirch his dead brother, their dead mother--himself, his own valuable, important future? And all for a sewer rat! Let him hang, let the fellow hang if he must! And that was not certain. Appeal!英文原著 · 《Five Tales》
The fireplace was deep, and there was a "settle" in the chimney corner, where three of us youngest girls could sit together and toast our toes on the andirons (two Continental soldiers in full uniform, marching one after the other), while we looked up the chimney into a square of blue sky, and sometimes caught a snow- flake on our foreheads; or sometimes smirched our clean aprons (high-necked and long sleeved ones, known as "tiers") against the swinging crane with its sooty pot-hooks and trammels.英文原著 · 《A New England Girlhood》
But isn't there danger of your devotion to your father leading you too far? A marriage founded on a lie--no matter for what purpose!--mustn't it degrade a woman-- smirch her soul for all time? We have a right to give up the things that belong to ourselves, but not the things that belong to God: our truth, our sincerity, our cleanliness of mind and body; the things that He may one day want of us. It led you into evil once before. Don't think I'm judging you. I was no better than you. I argued just as you must have done. Something stopped me just in time.英文原著 · 《All Roads Lead to Calvary》
Edison, could be other than an accomplished electrician. His reputation as a scientist, indeed, is smirched by the newspaper exaggerations, and no doubt he will be more careful in future. But there is a danger nearer home, indeed, among his own friends and in his very household. The writer of page 242" (the original article) "is probably a friend of Mr. Edison, but possibly, alas! a wicked partner. Why does he say such things as these? Edison claims that he realizes 90 per cent.英文原著 · 《Edison, His Life and Inventions》
"And you are--married to her? There is no way of being rid of her?"
"No, there is no way," said Waldeaux stoutly. "And if there were, I should not look for it. I am sorry that there is any smirch on Lisa's birth. But even her mother, I fancy, was not altogether a bad lot. Bygones must be bygones. I love my wife, mother. She's worth loving, as you'd find if you would take the trouble to know her.英文原著 · 《Frances Waldeaux》
And now all blurred and smirched with vice the day's sad pages end, For while the short `large hours' toward the longer `small hours' trend, With smiles that mock the wearer, and with words that half entreat, Delilah pleads for custom at the corner of the street -- Sinking down, sinking down, Battered wreck by tempests beat -- A dreadful, thankless trade is hers, that Woman of the Street.英文原著 · 《In the Days When the World Was Wide》