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Scrub   Listen
verb
Scrub  v. i.  To rub anything hard, especially with a wet brush; to scour; hence, to be diligent and penurious; as, to scrub hard for a living.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Scrub" Quotes from Famous Books



... self, To Rafael... I have known it all these years... (When the young man was flaming out his thoughts Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see, Too lifted up in heart because of it) "Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how, 190 Who, were he set to plan and execute As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings, Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!" To Rafael's!—And indeed the arm is wrong. I hardly dare ... yet, only ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning

... not have done this. WILKES. 'Garrick would have made the small-beer still smaller. He is now leaving the stage; but he will play Scrub all his life.' I knew that Johnson would let nobody attack Garrick but himself, as Garrick once said to me, and I had heard him praise his liberality; so to bring out his commendation of his celebrated pupil, I said, loudly, 'I have heard Garrick is liberal.' ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell

... 11 a. m., the artillery became engaged. Before long the Sixty-first N. Y., and the Hundred and Forty-eight Pennsylvania were ordered forward, and we went to the front and right of what I suppose became our line. We worked our way through a piece of scrub pine that was almost impervious, having passed this obstruction, we were in open ground, and we advanced, I think, in skirmish line formation. It was not long before we met Mr. Johnny Reb., and in such force that we fell back at a lively pace, and worked ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller

... visible enough above the brush, was still some eighth of a mile farther down the spit, and it took me a goodish while to get up with it, crawling, often on all-fours, among the scrub. Night had almost come when I laid my hand on its rough sides. Right below it there was an exceedingly small hollow of green turf, hidden by banks and a thick underwood about knee-deep, that grew there very plentifully; and in the centre of the dell, sure ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... primitive, had, nevertheless, been made comfortable and kept immaculate. But there is a superstition rampant in all provincial communities which dictates that the first line of action to be pursued when there is a death in the family is to scrub the house thoroughly from cellar to garret, and Mrs. Pennycook had been inoculated with the virus of this superstition very early in life. She tucked up her skirts, seized a broom and a mop, rounded up Soft Wind ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne

... shall save your child if I can," she cried, and flew for the nearest scrub oak on the edge of the bank. Up the tree she scrambled, with the fawn still securely bound to her back. The grizzly came on with teeth exposed, and the doe-mother in her flight came between him and the ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... and began to scrub his forehead against the rough bark of a tree, endeavoring to remove the bandage. After a time he worked it above his eyes, although it still bound his ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day

... near the middle of the range was the broad, low-roofed ranch-house. A windmill purred in the light breeze, its lean, flickering shadow aslant the corrals. The buildings looked new and raw in contrast to the huge pile of grayish-green greasewood and scrub cedar gathered from the ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert

... should make me presents only of innumerable stitches: which she had done. Polly, whom it is both impossible and irrelevant to describe, took the opportunity to scrub the house from top to bottom. Her own wedding-present to me, homely though it was, I wrapped in silver paper, and showed it to her lying in state on the library-table, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various

... He rose and greeted each one of the women with a bow and a compliment. The tinker was a man of unfailing courtesy, and one thing in him was extremely odd,—even there in that land of pure democracy,—he treated a scrub-woman with the same politeness he would have accorded the finest lady. But he was in no sense a flatterer; none that saw him often were long in ignorance of that. His rebuke was even quicker than his compliment, as many had reason to know. And there was another curious thing ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... start, crouch behind a tree, make ready to shoot, and then to fall back from cover to cover, continually presenting his gun at an unseen enemy. He rejoined us out of breath, and feverishly reported having heard men in the scrub, and a voice ordering him to surrender. The sergeant was hastily sending out our squad to investigate the birches, when a bunch of men were seen to break cover from them. As they wore no white hat-bands we knew they must be our ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French

... the last scrub timber and straggling copses, into the heart of the Barrens where the niggard North is supposed to deny the Earth, are to be found great sweeps of forests and stretches of smiling land. But this the world is just beginning to know. The world's explorers have known ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... darkness or nearing the land when the bullets took their toll. But, as the keel of the boats touched bottom, each boat-load dashed into the water and then into the enemy's fire. At first it seemed that nothing could stop them, but by degrees wire, scrub and cliffs; thirst, sheer exhaustion broke the back of their impetus. Then the enemy's howitzers and field guns had it all their own way, forcing attack to yield a lot of ground. Things looked anxious for a bit, but by this morning's dawn all are ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... glove, yanked Jim off his feet, and scared me so that I let go his forelock. Then he broke the rope which held him to the tree. There was a plunge, a scattering of men, though Jim still valiantly held on to Baldy's head, and a thrashing of scrub pinyon, where Baldy reached out vigorously with his hind feet. But for ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey

... of Destiny that caused the turn in Amarilly's fate-tide came one morning when, in her capacity as assistant to the scrub ladies at the Barlow Stock Theatre, she viewed for the first time the dress rehearsal of A Terrible Trial. Heretofore the patient little plodder had found in her occupation only the sordid satisfaction of drawing her wages, but now the resplendent costumes, the tragedy in ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates

... delineation. Many a night, and oft after midnight, in the rotunda of the Tremont House, when John A. Rice of bibliomaniac fame, was its lessee, I was the sole paying auditor of these seances, the balance of the audience consisting of the head night clerk, night watchman, and "scrub ladies." ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson

... good fortune they met no one, since the few who dwelt in these wild parts had gone up to Bonsa Town to be present at the great feast, the sun was sinking before ever they reached the place. Moreover, this promontory proved to be covered with dense thorn scrub, through which they must force a way in the gathering darkness, not without hurt and difficulty. Still they accomplished it and at length, quite exhausted, crept to the very point, where they hid themselves between some stones ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard

... hands? They have only known the gentle tasks of love. Well, I'll scrub, sew and wash the clothes of working-men before one dollar of her gold ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon

... the way of a weapon that he might use, unless the oars. They were heavy, but he was strong. She determined to leave nothing to chance and, carrying the oars down the beach to the break in the cliffs, she hid them amongst some scrub bushes. Then she remembered the axe, sought for it and ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole

... so as well as you," said the landlady; "but, as my first husband used to say, everything is not what it looks to be. He is an arrant scrub, I assure you. However, take no notice that I mentioned anything to you of the matter; but I think people in business oft always to let one ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding

... on living with them unless I promise to marry Monsieur Charretier," I explained. "I'd rather scrub ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson

... ground! and all his store Snug in beneath him. Such a heaven was his. Now, honest Teddy, think of such a wretch, And learn to shun his vices, one and all. Though richer than a Jew, he was more poor Than is the meanest beggar. At the cost Of other men a glutton. At his own, A starveling. A mere scrub. And such a coward, A cozener and liar—but a coward, And would have been ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various

... Mr. Winston he turned directly to Helen, "what do you think Helen, I've furnished the attic all by myself, the only thing Marshland did was to scrub the floor ...
— Daisy Ashford: Her Book • Daisy Ashford

... still a very young man when he joined a war party against the Utes. Having pushed eagerly forward on the trail, he found himself far in advance of his companions as night came on, and at the same time rain began to fall heavily. Among the scattered scrub pines, the lone warrior found a natural cave, and after a hasty examination, he decided to shelter there ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... within gunshot of her concoctions. She has a running bill here. Her father settles once a month. She gives nine-tenths of it away. Hardly ever touches it herself, but when she does she makes me mix it. She's just old persimmons. Even the scrub-boy of this establishment would fight for her. It lasts the year round, for in winter it's some poor, frozen cuss that she's warming up on ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter

... Italy and Greece. For as we descend into the glen, every lane-bank and low tree is entwined, not with ivy, but with a still more beautiful evergreen, the Smilax of South-eastern Europe, with its zigzag stems, and curving heart-shaped leaves, and hooked thorns; the very oak- scrub is of species unknown to Britain. And what are these tall lilies, which fill every glade breast-high with their sword-like leaves, and spires of white flowers, lilac-pencilled? They are the classic flower, ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley

... use talking like that when you know Docia has heart disease and can't scrub the clothes clean," she responded. "If she'd drop down dead I'd like to know ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow

... but never such a one as this. The wind was blowing a hurricane, and, when I had ridden about two miles into scrub, high enough to brush my horse's belly, I began to get frightened. Still I persevered, against hope; the heat grew more fearful every moment; but I reflected that I had often ridden up close to a bush-fire, turned when I began to see the ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley

... when they had overtaken their prey and were tearing it to pieces. Sick at heart, I drew my sword with the determination that, if we were too late to save our companion, we should at least revenge him upon the four-footed fiends. Bursting through a thick belt of scrub and tangled gorse bushes, we came upon a scene so unlike what we had expected that we pulled up our horses ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle

... one would disturb her. She had brought the Parsonage key to unlock the door, and after filling her bucket at the pump in the yard, she put on the apron, tucked up her sleeves, and set to work. And it was work! Gwen had never in her life before tried to scrub a floor, and though her arms were sturdy and strong at wielding a tennis-racket or the lawn mower, they soon began to ache at the unwonted exercise which she had set herself. The room seemed most ...
— The Youngest Girl in the Fifth - A School Story • Angela Brazil

... flows the slow negro life of the village. Here children of all colors from black to cream fight and play; deep-chested negresses loiter to and fro, some on errands to the white section of the village on the other side of the hill, where they go to scrub or cook or wash or iron. Others go down to the public well with a bucket in each hand and one balanced on ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling

... superior as he had imagined, since even he may occasionally confute them in argument. Thus awe subsides into confidence, confidence inspires familiarity, and familiarity produces contempt. Such was the case, say they, with William the Testy. By making himself too easy of access, he enabled every scrub-politician to measure wits with him, and to find out the true dimensions not only of his person, but of his mind; and thus it was that, by being familiarly scanned, he was discovered to be a very little man. Peter Stuyvesant, on the contrary, say they, by conducting himself with ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving

... bush we had hitherto been passing, screened the bases of a range of hills which obviously formed the backbone of the island; and as the whole bay crept into view we discerned in the north (or, to be accurate, N.N.E.) corner of this long recess a marshy valley dividing the scrub from the forest. The mouth of this valley, where it widened out upon the beach, measured at least half a mile across. The chart marked it as Misery Swamp, and indicated a river there. We could detect none, or, at any rate, no river entrance. If river there were, doubtless it emptied its ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)

... selling or buying. Presently he is buying again; this time, still with striking of legal attitudes, calling together of relations, and accompaniments of crabbed Latin notarial documents, a piece of ground in the suburbs of Genoa, consisting of scrub and undergrowth, which cannot have been of any earthly use to him. But also, according to the documents, there went some old wine-vats with the land. Domenico, taking a walk after Mass on some feast-day, sees the land and the wine-vats; thinks dimly but ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... sat down by the big pear-tree to read, though not forgetting to keep an eye on her little brother's proceedings. Missions seemed as interesting as ever as she read. Presently she saw Evaline coming out of the kitchen with a pail of water and brush to scrub the back steps. ...
— A Missionary Twig • Emma L. Burnett

... "Scrub" cattle are not profitable. They mature slowly and consequently consume much food before they are able to give any return for it. Even when fattened, the fat and lean portions are not evenly distributed, and "choice ...
— Agriculture for Beginners - Revised Edition • Charles William Burkett

... a little place at the foot of the higher mountains called Temescal, a very diminutive place, consisting, indeed, of but one small house. The surroundings, however, were very beautiful, and the presence of a hot sulphur-spring, bubbling up in the scrub not one hundred yards from the house, and making a most inviting natural bath, coupled with the favourable reports of game of all kinds to be got, induced us to stop. And life was very pleasant there in the crisp dry air, ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various

... his condition will in any wise permit, he has been given a boiling hot bath and scrub the night before, and put to bed in a sterilized nightgown between sterilized sheets. The region which is to be operated upon has, at the same time, been scrubbed and rubbed and flushed with hot water, germicides, alcohol, soap,—in fact, has gone through the same sacred ceremonial of cleansing ...
— Preventable Diseases • Woods Hutchinson

... ridge for a casual survey of the broad brule he had just crossed. The next instant he brought up rigidly erect as his eye caught a swift blur of motion far back on his trail at the opposite edge of the brule. He looked again but could make out only an army of blackened stumps. Entering the scrub with a vague sense of uneasiness, he circled among the stunted trees and took up a position under cover of a granite outcropping that gave him a view of his back trail. He had hardly settled himself before a man stepped from behind ...
— The Challenge of the North • James Hendryx

... look silly," he continued; "as silly as a country girl, who's got to scrub an' wash an' make the butter, dressed out in silks an' fandangoes. She ought to be too proud of being what she is, to try and look like what she isn't. Give me down that big brown book yonder an' I'll read you something fine ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton

... carefully counted out the money required to purchase this astonishing outlay the bulky proprietor tasked pleasantly: "Uncle Noah, do you happen to know where I can get a good woman to scrub up my store ...
— Uncle Noah's Christmas Inspiration • Leona Dalrymple

... Dick and I began our preparations for the all important dinner. This was to consist of roast scrub turkey and plum pudding, washed down by Battle axe brandy. And here the good old cookery-book adage came into play, for as yet our bird was running wild in the scrub, and it was a case of first catch your turkey. ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt

... a little wilderness of hills and scrub forest, all lying under the deep snow, and without sign of ...
— Before the Dawn - A Story of the Fall of Richmond • Joseph Alexander Altsheler

... unhurt! Now why was He unharmed those forty nights with the scrub around Him alive with claws and talons and fangs? He was with the wild beasts, Mark tells us, and yet no lion sprang upon Him; no lone wolf slashed at Him with her frightful fangs; ...
— Mushrooms on the Moor • Frank Boreham

... unknown land. The north, described by Mr. Minchin, Bolivian Government Explorer, as "a barren zone—an almost uninterrupted extent of low, thorny scrub, with great scarcity of water," and the centre and south, as I have seen in exploring journeys, great plains covered with millions of palm trees, through which the astonished traveller can ride for weeks without seeing any limit. In the dry season the land is baked by the ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... by a bath playing a harp, the poor old wives stand by a washtub and play tunes on the washboard, and scrub, and take care of children. I thought the custom of spanking children was an American institution, but it is as old as the ages, for I saw a Turkish mother grab up a child that had lifted a kitten by the tail, and take it across her knee and give it a few with a red hand covered ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck

... the line o' the British craft; The skipper called to his Lascar crew, and put her about and laughed:— "It's mainsail haul, my bully boys all—we'll out to the seas again— Ere they set us to paint their pirate saint, or scrub at ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling

... She told him that she had long ago pawned it all. She faced their distress like a heroine. Wagner used to weep when he told of her self-denial, and the cheerfulness with which she, the pretty actress of former days, cooked what meals there were to cook, and scrubbed what clothes there were to scrub. For diversion, when they had no money for theatres and the opera, the genius and his wife and the dog could always take a ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... just sounding in the Spanish camp when Jack, having placed his forces in position in open order behind a screen of bamboo and scrub which completely commanded the approach to the mined bridge, and also effectually masked the position of his twelve-pounder, proceeded down the road alone for the purpose of destroying the bridge. Ten minutes later a deep boom, accompanied by a volcanic upheaval of dust ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood

... camping-place was much nearer the river than I had supposed, and I was thus able to obtain a clear and unobstructed view of its surface for many miles north and south, except a width of a few yards on its eastern side, which was shut off by the mangroves and low scrub which grew along its margin. I most carefully searched the shining bosom of the stream for signs of our expected pursuers, but saw none; nor had they hove in sight when, about half an hour later, Ama returned with some seven or eight ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood

... every one is astir, and Saturday is a long glorious day. At noon we stop to take aboard an Indian who hails us from the scrub-pine, sore afraid that he will miss connection with his five dollar treaty present from the Government. It is good to stretch out on the grass after this somewhat restricted Primrose path of dalliance. In front of us extends a long row of islands, in the hot haze suspended midway between ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron

... administration, but the same spirit," said Mr. Dempster, with a simple earnestness that weighed much with Francis. But here Mr. Dempster's attention was called to a message from an old friend who had just died one of the saddest of deaths, having been lost in the Australian scrub twelve years before. ...
— Mr. Hogarth's Will • Catherine Helen Spence

... rations and grain from the cornfields purchased to send out a formidable expedition against the Cheyennes, so I set out for Arbuckle accompanied by my quartermaster, Colonel A. J. McGonigle. "California Joe" also went along to guide us through the scrub-oaks covering the ridge, but even the most thorough exploration failed to discover any route more practicable than that already in use; indeed, the high ground was, if anything, worse than the bottom land, our horses in ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan

... another stream basin was encountered. "Hit's a little Ranty," explained Landy. "That's a dam downstream aways en the B-line waters a couple o' hundred acres." In these meadows there were cattle—cows and calves and some scrub yearlings. Crossing the Ranty, the horsemen mounted to the levels again. Here, there were fences. Farther on, stables, sheds, and a cluster of houses. The ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney

... played the fool once. I've learned my lesson. Surely I'll never do it again." As she drank, her eyes chanced upon the clock. Half-past ten. Mrs. Tucker had probably just fallen asleep. And Mrs. Reardon was going out to scrub—going out limping and groaning with rheumatism. No, Mrs. Reardon was lying up at the morgue dead, her one chance to live lost forever. Dead! Yet better off than Mrs. Tucker lying alive. Susan could see her—the seamed and broken and dirty old remnant of a face—could see the ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips

... in length, forming part of the shore of a shallow bay into which we had driven and wherein the schooner now lay stranded. The beach was distant about half a cable's length from us, and was backed by a rocky cliff averaging about fifty feet in height, crowned by a growth of low scrub, over the top of which appeared what now seemed to be a low, flat-topped hill, distant perhaps ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood

... scrub oak, he caught sight of Gowan more than an eighth of a mile ahead. He whistled repeatedly. At last Gowan twisted about in the saddle, and drew rein. He did not turn back, but made Ashton come all the way ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet

... made the strong lines of landscape with their stiffly driven swords of the soil. It is not only nonsense, but blasphemy, to say that man has spoilt the country. Man has created the country; it was his business, as the image of God. No hill, covered with common scrub or patches of purple heath, could have been so sublimely hilly as that ridge up to which the ranked furrows rose like aspiring angels. No valley, confused with needless cottages and towns, can have been so utterly valleyish ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... endured themselves. The Military detailed two men for two days to spade up and carry away the filth from the bedrooms, and it took two women an entire week all but one day, scrubbing all day long until their shoulders ached, to scrub the place clean. But they got it clean. They were the kind of women that did not give up even when a thing seemed an impossibility. This was the sort of thing they were up against continually. They could have no meetings that week because they had ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill

... in search of opossums. They drove holes into the trunks with their stone axes, dug in their big toes, and ascended. Such efforts provided them with long legs, while, again, they walked with turned-in toes. Why? Having scrub to penetrate, they must cut roads through it—a tiresome labour, not pursued more than was necessary. If they turned in their toes, they could sidle along a mere ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne

... the black earth, filled with the holes of small beasts, would be most productive, and the outer coat is an expanse of tall, waving, sunburnt grass, so unbroken, that from a distance it resembles the nap of yellow velvet. In the frequent Wadys, which carry off the surplus rain of the hills, scrub and thorn trees grow in dense thickets, and the grass is temptingly green. Yet the land lies fallow: water and fuel are scarce at a distance from the hills, and the wildest Bedouins dare not front the danger of foraging parties, the fatal ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton

... deal to do after that. She had to bathe and dress grand'mA"re; she had to cook the food and scrub the floor and scour the pots and pans. She kept the pans very bright. Grand'mA"re might some day open her eyes, and there would be a great scolding if the pans were not bright. Claire RenA(C) also tended the garden; Jacques helped her with ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... have warned you, but there, you can't think of every blooming thing at once. Don't you worry, kid. I'm not blaming you. He would have been at you sooner or later. It's all the same in the long run, but it means I've got to scrub the floors. And my back's that bad—I do suffer with ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles

... just sittin' there, in all the dust and cobwebs. When I get time, I aim to go over there and clean up the house for her—'t ain't decent for a body to live like that. I'll take you with me, to help scrub, and what I'm telling you all this for is so 's you won't ask any questions, nor act as if you thought it was queer for a woman to wear a white veil all the time. You'll have to act as if nothing was out of the way at all, and not look at her ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed

... day passed in the same unrelaxing round of duties, and the third commenced in a similar way. The little thing had by this time become almost sick from such constant confinement and extra labour for one of her strength. She was set, on this day, to scrub down a pair of back stairs, a task to which she was unequal. Before she had got down to the third step, she accidentally upset the basin and flooded the whole stair-case—dashing the dirty-water in the face of Mrs. Tompkins who was just coming up. She was ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... been giving us the itinerary for our "cross-country" journey, by way of the Lakes, to Ekoniah Scrub. How many of all the Florida tourists know where that is? I wonder. Or even what it is—the strange amphibious land which goes on from year to year "developing"—the solid ground into marshy "parrairas," the prairies into lakes, bright, sparkling sapphires which Nature ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various

... threw them down and took up the clean one. There was a damp spot on it, and as he unfolded it he recognized the scent of a cologne Enid often used. For some reason this attention unmanned him. He felt the smart of tears in his eyes, and to hide them bent over the metal basin and began to scrub his face. Enid stood behind him, adjusting ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather

... the first time these ten years, you know the flavor of cold water. Good by; and, whenever you are thirsty, remember that I keep a constant supply, at the old stand. Who next? O, my little friend, you are let loose from school, and come hither to scrub your blooming face, and drown the memory of certain taps of the ferule, and other school-boy troubles, in a draught from the Town Pump. Take it, pure as the current of your young life. Take it, and ...
— A Rill From the Town Pump (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... Joseph. But I never could do that, could you? I said good-by to my kind friend and started out for where, I did not know. All of a sudden I said to myself, 'I'll go back to the hospital and offer to scrub and do chores; anything, so they'll take me and my baby in.' It took me till nearly one o'clock to reach there. Every time I sat down to rest and a policeman came along, I'd get up quickly and walk on, for fear he might arrest me as ...
— Fifteen Years With The Outcast • Mrs. Florence (Mother) Roberts

... an hour she had him well in hand, and was bowling smoothly along a level stretch of road at the foot of an abrupt rise of land covered with scrub oak and broken with outcroppings of granite of a curious formation. Just beyond here the road crossed the canal by a narrow—in fact, a much too narrow—plank bridge without guard-rails. The wide-axled dog-cart had just sufficient room on either hand, and Lloyd, too good a whip to take ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris

... covered was a rough wagon-road winding among patches of poplar scrub and willow. Issuing out upon the wide clearing which contained their village they saw afar the little storehouse burning like a torch, ...
— The Fur Bringers - A Story of the Canadian Northwest • Hulbert Footner

... the truth, Belle, I could have been, if he had been in circumstances to marry. But, you see, I am one of those to whom the luxuries are essential. I never could rub and scrub and work; in fact, I had rather not live at all than live poor; and Harry is poor, and he always will be poor. It's a pity, too, poor fellow, for he's nice. Well, he is off in India! I know he will be tragical and ...
— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... and others again hard-uddered; there was not butter nor milk enough even for the children. There were no eggs. They could get no fowls; old, purplish, stringy cocks were all they had for roasting and boiling. Impossible to get women to scrub the floors—all were potato-hoeing. Driving was out of the question, because one of the horses was restive, and bolted in the shafts. There was no place where they could bathe; the whole of the river-bank was trampled ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... to scrub the stable," said Vrouw Vedder. "It is getting too cold for the cows to stay all night in the pastures. Father means to bring Mevrouw Holstein in to-night, and I want her stable to be ...
— The Dutch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins

... to stop at Staples' Half-Way House and put up for the night. In the mornin' I riz up early and goes into the stable yard, and the first thing I sees was the 'ostler. 'I hope ye giv' my hoss a good scrub down,' I sez, 'as I told ye, for his color is that delicate the smallest spot shows. It's a very rare color for a hoss.' 'I was hopin' it might be,' sez he. I was a little huffed at that, and I sez: 'It's considered a very beautiful color.' 'Mebbe ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte

... up to the Table and began to distribute a few sample Smiles, so as to indicate the Character of her Work, the musical Team went out with the Tide, the Grass Widow curled up like an Autumn Leaf, the touch-me-not Married Lady dropped into the Scrub Division. The Lady who read was shy a Spoon and afraid to ask for it. The Men were all google-eyed, and the Help was running into Chairs and dropping important parts ...
— People You Know • George Ade

... Wells and his woe drops out of sight. He's managed to keep hold of a little property that brings him in just enough to scrub along on, and he joins that hungry-eyed, trembly-fingered fringe of margin pikers that hangs around every hotel broker's branch in town, takin' a timid flier now and then, but tappin' the free lunch hard and reg'lar. You know the kind,—seedy hasbeens, with their ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford

... he adjourned to Nettlebank, where he no doubt counselled more; but through this labyrinth we shall not follow him. Only Andrew Sharp, who again brought out his horse, heard him say, as he was about to depart, "Well, I think I have the old scrub for the new barn, and, in the meantime, Mr. Gilbert, who is really a smart lad, must ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various

... cleared roads in New South Wales runs to within a couple of miles of Hungerford, and stops there; then you strike through the scrub to the town. There is no distant prospect of Hungerford—you don't see the town till you are quite close to it, and then two or three white-washed galvanized-iron roofs start ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson

... was breaking in sickly pallor over the jagged scarp of the Mesa, bounding the chaotic labyrinth of bowlders, crag and canon beneath. Far up the rugged valley, jutting from the faded fringe of pine, juniper and scrub oak that bearded the Mogollon, a solitary butte stood like sentry against the cloudless sky, its lofty crown of rock just faintly signalling the still distant coming of the heralds of the god of day. Here ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King

... the second day I received a call from Mrs. Noonan, whom I had employed to scrub the house. She had in her hand a folded paper, which she ...
— Making His Way - Frank Courtney's Struggle Upward • Horatio Alger, Jr.

... over-soul is slowly but inevitably coming into its own. "Let a man believe in God, not in names and places and persons. Let the great soul incarnated in some poor ... sad and simple Joan, go out to service and sweep chimneys and scrub floors ... its effulgent day beams cannot be muffled..." and then "to sweep and scrub will instantly appear supreme and beautiful actions ... and all people will get brooms and mops." Perhaps, if all of Emerson—his works and his life—were to be swept away, and nothing of him ...
— Essays Before a Sonata • Charles Ives

... you can't stay there. They'll pot you from the top of the bluff, first off. Besides, you got a canteen, I see. You back up to that mountain mahogany bush, slip under it, and worm down through the rocks till you come to a little scrub-oak tree and a big granite bowlder. They'll give you shelter to cross the ridge into a deep ravine that leads here where I am. You'll be out of sight all the way up once you hit the ravine. I'd—I'd worm along pretty spry if I was you, going down as far as ...
— The Desire of the Moth; and The Come On • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... nor the cardinal is to be found in Colorado, but they are replaced by the black-headed and blue grosbeaks, the former dwelling among the lower mountains, the latter occurring along the streams of the plains. Master black-head and his mate are partial to the scrub oaks for nesting sites. I found one nest with four callow bantlings in it, but, much to my grief and anger, at my next call it had been robbed of its precious treasures. A few days later, not far ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser

... takes away the garbage, helps to keep away the scourge of typhoid fever, and cholera and other dread diseases, by being willing to do the dirty work and to wear the old hat. Why, just suppose everybody was a college president. Who would wash our clothes? Who would scrub our floors? Who would clean our streets? Who would ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold

... hills east of Rio Paraguay; Gran Chaco region west of Rio Paraguay mostly low, marshy plain near the river, and dry forest and thorny scrub elsewhere ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States

... Mrs. Slessor, "you did not wash behind your ears. Go with Mary and let her scrub the dirt away. Now I'll put a bit of perfume on your hankies, and here's a peppermint for each of you. There, off we go to Sunday ...
— White Queen of the Cannibals: The Story of Mary Slessor • A. J. Bueltmann

... genuinely their own discovery, should not have been in a more interesting region than was actually the case; for the true "Terre Napoleon" is no better for the most part than a sterile waste, with a back country of sand, swamp, and mallee scrub, populated principally by ...
— Terre Napoleon - A history of French explorations and projects in Australia • Ernest Scott

... possible, and immediately set to work. The very details, the mere thought of which reduced her husband to terror, immediately engaged her attention. She sent for the doctor, sent to the chemist's, set the maid who had come with her and Marya Nikolaevna to sweep and dust and scrub; she herself washed up something, washed out something else, laid something under the quilt. Something was by her directions brought into the sick-room, something else was carried out. She herself went several times to her room, regardless of the men she met in the corridor, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... macchia I had learnt how easily a man may be lost in it; and in less than half of five minutes I had lost not only my way but my temper. To pursue after the hogs was nearly hopeless: all sound of them was swallowed up in the tangle of scrub. Yet I held on, crawling through thickets of lentisk, tangling my legs in creepers, pushing my head into clumps of cactus, here tearing my hands and boots on sharp granite, there ripping my clothes on prickly thorns. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... extensive stretch of undulating plateaux intersected by ravines, swept by cold W. winds, and rainless for eight months of the year. The base of the Andes is fertile and forest-clad, the river valleys can be cultivated, but most of the plains are covered with coarse grass or sparse scrub, and there are some utterly desolate regions. Lagoons abound, and there are many rivers running eastward from the Andes. Herds of horses and cattle are bred on the pampas. The Indians of this region (7) are among ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood

... "Sindiyan" (from the Persian) gen. used for the holm-oak, the Quercus pseudococcifera, vulgarly termed ilex, or native oak, and forming an extensive scrub in Syria, For this and other varieties of Quercus, as the Mallul and the Ballut, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... birds were distributed throughout most of Coahuila. When this area became arid, these species disappeared from all of Coahuila except from the high mountains in the southeastern part. For example, Steller's Jay and the Scrub Jay are absent in the Sierra del Carmen of northwestern Coahuila but ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban

... speak to if I met them in the street, and I got them in easily on the fingers of one hand. That included," she confessed after a hesitation, "the doctor, the butcher's boy and the woman who comes to scrub. It would surprise you to find what a very interesting woman ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow

... disforesting, limits the right of cutting timber, and places the state forests under the control of inspectors. According to official statistics, 11,640 sq. m. or about 30% of the whole superficies of the kingdom, are under forest, but the greater portion of this area is covered only by brushwood and scrub. The beautiful forests of the Rila district are rapidly disappearing ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various

... went, and, when day broke, they were once more in the scrub pines and cedars, with a cold wind blowing and nipping at their ears and noses. But Boyd, who went far back on the trail, could discover no sign of Felton's band, and they concluded ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... brought down in the rainy season from the mountains which have already been deforested by human hands. Another shows a pebbly river-bed in southern Manchuria where what was once a great stream has dried up owing to the deforestation in the mountains. Only some scrub wood is left, which will disappear within a half century. Yet another shows the effect of one of the washouts, destroying an arable mountain side, these washouts being due to the removal of all vegetation; ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various

... given a clean shirt; and away to bed with them! They jumped and, with their shirt-tails waving behind them, skipped about and smacked one another until father came along and stopped their game. Mother had still her floor to scrub; and Horieneke read out evening prayers while the ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels

... have around. She was going to stay with them all winter; Gertrude was going to teach her German and music, and she was going to teach Gertrude how to cook. She was doing all the work just now, she and the neighbors. Mrs. Ferry came in every morning to scrub the kitchen and black the stove. They said Gertrude must keep her hands nice—Philip had seemed more worried about her hands than about anything else, all the time he was sick. Did he see how soft and white they were? She had been washing them in buttermilk—the ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various

... Scrub the shells until perfectly clean. Put into pans and set them in the oven. Take them out as soon as the shells begin to open, and before the liquor is lost. Take the upper shells off and serve ...
— 365 Luncheon Dishes - A Luncheon Dish for Every Day in the Year • Anonymous

... the men subdued. So far as local indications were concerned, it was—as Captain Buxton had insisted—almost dark. But square over the gilded tree-tops to the east, stretching for miles and miles to their right and left, blazed a vertical wall of rock crested with scrub-oak and pine, every boulder, every tree, glittering in the radiant light of the invisibly setting sun. O'Grady had ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King

... the scrub here. Quick! for perhaps he's got another match!" said Paul, following up his ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren

... sports, great at picnics and dances, beloved by school children at school feasts (I wonder if they call them feasts still), giver of extra or special prizes, mostly sovs. and half-sovs., for foot races, etc.; leading spirit for the scrub district in electioneering campaigns—they went as right as men could go in the politics of those days who watched and went the way Jack Denver went; header of subscription lists for burnt-out, flooded-out, sick, hurt, dead or killed or otherwise knocked-out selectors ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... half-moon to the south and west, he found a low, squat building with a light hung over the door illuminating a bit of humor in the form of a printed legend which said that it was "King Edward's Hotel." The scrub bush of the forest grew within a hundred yards of it, and in this bush Jan tied his dogs and left his sledge. It did not occur to him that now, when he had entered civilization, he had come also into the land of lock ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood

... walls, lay outspread vineyards and cane fields and gardens. Splotching the whole with imperial and gorgeous purple, hung masses of bougonvillea between trellis and masonry. At a more lofty line, where the sub-tropical profusion halted in the warning breath of a keener atmosphere, came the scrub growth and beyond that, in succeeding altitudes, the pine belt, the snow line and the film of trailing cloud on the ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck

... division and the ground on which we were to make our camp. The prospect was not cheering, and as two or three of our staff officers rode upon the ground, the place seemed forbidding enough. It had been recently the location of a thicket of scrub pines, but the trees had been cut down for fuel, and the stumps and brush remained, so that the mounted officers found much difficulty in reining their horses into the midst. Snow covered the ground to the depth of several inches. ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... space of waste land, marsh and thicket, tapering to the narrow strip of sand and scrub joining the peninsula to the forest, and here and there upon this waste ground rose a mean house, dwelt in by the poorer sort. All were dark. We left them behind, and found ourselves upon the neck, with the desolate murmur of the river on either hand, and before us the deep blackness ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... as we wash dirty wool so's to cleanse it, so with a pitiless zeal we will scrub Through the whole city for all greasy fellows; burrs too, the parasites, off we will rub. That verminous plague of insensate place-seekers soon between thumb and forefinger we'll crack. All who inside Athens' walls have ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes

... rounded the crest of a sharp hill, and, from off the summit, we could look directly down into the river valley. Except for little groves of scrub oak it was open country, the broad stream showing clearly between green banks, with few cultivated fields in sight. We had turned toward the north, and the straggling town lay directly in front two miles away, so hidden behind trees the houses were scarcely distinguishable; ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish

... that's a blessing! It's small good they've done her here for all the money they've taken. (Gazing about the room critically.) It's neat and clean enough; and why shouldn't it, a tiny room and the lot of them nothing to do all day but scrub. (Scornfully.) Two sticks of chairs and a table! They don't ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill

... a mangy sheep could scrub, Or nobly fling the gospel club, And New-Light herds could nicely drub Or pay their skin; Could shake them o'er the burning dub, Or ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns

... "Lovey sat down on one of the hot pies that Uncle Pomp had just taken out of the stove for me to put in the basket, and it burned him through his trousers and blouse and all. Uncle Pomp has got a dreadful fit of asthma, and the pie is all over everything where Lovey ran around and around. I've got to scrub him and the whole house. Please go on and don't be late for the train." And as Roxanne looked out at us over the dancing Lovelace Peyton that was the first time I had ever seen her face without its dimple on the left side of her chin, or her head down ...
— Phyllis • Maria Thompson Daviess

... you with tubs of hot water, then they shampoo you with fresh layers of soap, and then douche again. They give you iced sherbet, and tie towels dipped in cold water round your head, which prevent you fainting and make you perspire. They scrub your feet with pumice- stone, and move you back through all the rooms gradually, douche you with water, and shampoo you with towels. You now return to the large hall where you first undressed, wrap in woollen shawls, and recline on a divan. The place is ...
— The Romance of Isabel Lady Burton Volume II • Isabel Lady Burton & W. H. Wilkins

... banks. As we come up, the peasants drive into the stable, one by one, a lot of mares with their foals. Along the road a drove of great long-horned grey oxen; a bull-calf canters among them. Between us and St. Peter's is a dell full of scrub ilex; walls also, full of valerian and that grey ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee

... "bushy". In New Zealand it is a timber getter. Lawson was sacked from a forestry job in New Zealand, "because he wasn't a bushman":-) bushranger: an Australian "highwayman'', who lived in the 'bush'— scrub—and attacked and robbed, especially gold carrying coaches and banks. Romanticised as anti-authoritarian Robin Hood figures— cf. Ned Kelly—but usually very violent. US use was very different (more explorer), though some lexicographers think ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson

... a towel at the tea kettle and proceeded to scour the unsuspecting Lydia's neck and ears. "Children in the high school are apt to get ink in the back of their necks and ears," she said. "Always scrub there, Lydia! Remember!" ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow

... the fat man slipped up on the soap at the top of the stairs and slid to the bottom where the scrub-woman left her tub of water. Do you 'spect that was real water, Nan Sherwood? He'd ha' been ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr

... swiftly. He no longer followed the tracks. He had turned off, meaning to come up with his quarry against the wind. At every opening in the bush he paused, his keen eyes alert for a sign of his prey. But the leafless branches of the scrub, faintly tinged with the signs of coming spring, alone confronted him; only that, and the noise of breaking ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum

... July 20. Fog drifts rode the bay like huge white swans, shrouding the Island of Alcatraz with a rise and fall of impalpable wings and casting many a whilom plume over the tents and adobe houses nestling between sandhills and scrub-oaks in the cove ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman

... lass, dame," said the doctor, when she was gone; "and, by the same token, I wish her better mated than to a scrub of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various

... jungle lands. The salt tract runs the whole way down the coast, and forms a desolate strip a few miles broad. Towards the beach it rises into sandy ridges, from 50 to 80 ft. high, sloping inland and covered with a [v.03 p.0240] vegetation of low scrub jungle. Sluggish brackish streams creep along between banks of fetid black mud. The sandhills on the verge of the ocean are carpeted with creepers and the wild convolvulus. Inland, it spreads out into prairies of coarse long grass and scrub jungle, which harbour wild animals in ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various

... door opened of itself, and I found there a pleasant woman of middle age, but frowning. She had three daughters, all of great strength, and she was upbraiding them loudly in the German of Alsace and making them scour and scrub. On the wall above her head was a great placard which I read very tactfully, and in a distant manner, until she had restored the discipline of her family. This great placard was framed in the three colours which once brought a little ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc

... instant the fox launched himself; just two jumps, and he had him. Quick as he was, the wing marks showed that the crow had started, and was pulled down out of the air. Reynard carried him into the densest thicket of scrub pines he could find, and ate him there, doubtless to avoid the attacks of the rest of the flock, which ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long

... dreamed of confluent smallpox for weeks to come. But we did none of these things in the Philippines. We merely requested the authorities to remove the smallpox patient, and ordered the janitor to scrub the room with soap and water. Nobody quitted school; nobody got the smallpox; and the whole thing was ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... shoes in the houses. There is a general and constant exercise of brooms, pails, floor-brushes and mops all over Holland, and in some places, even, this kind of thing is carried so far, I am told, that the only trees set out are scrub-oaks." ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... Scrub the shells of live oysters until free from sand; place in dripping pan in a hot oven and roast until shells open; take off the top shell, being careful not to spill the juice in lower shell; serve in the shell with ...
— Stevenson Memorial Cook Book • Various

... point of departure in our common membership in Jesus Christ. Suppose we drop the supposition that we make, I presume because we think it pious, that if they are both Christians a dock labourer ought to be quite at home at a millionaire's dinner party, or a scrub-woman in a box at the Metropolitan opera house. Suppose we drop the attempt to force people together on lines which will be impossible till after the social revolution has buried us all in a common grave, and fasten attention on the one fact that, from ...
— Our Lady Saint Mary • J. G. H. Barry

... Roy climbed out of that canuon, over a ridge into another, down long wooded slopes and through scrub-oak thickets, on and on till the sun stood straight overhead. Then he halted for a short rest, unsaddled the horses to let them roll, and gave the girls some cold lunch that he had packed. He strolled ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey

... ink-scrawled surface. "As the hunter looks upon the snow and says, Here but yesterday there passed a rabbit; and here by the willow scrub it stood and listened, and heard, and was afraid; and here it turned upon its trail; and here it went with great swiftness, leaping wide; and here, with greater swiftness and wider leapings, came a lynx; and here, where the claws cut deep into the snow, ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various

... to push the heavy tables, to scrub them, to be exact in placing the sheet. Her head cleared; she was able to look calmly in at her husband and the farmwife while they undressed the wailing man, got him into a clean nightgown, and washed his arm. Kennicott came to lay out his instruments. She realized that, with no hospital ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis

... of the cup on the rim, and know that she was setting it sloppily down on the cloth. He could remember her noisy drinking, the weight of her elbow on the table, the creaking of her calico dress under the pressure of superabundant flesh. Besides, she had tried to scrub his favorite violin with sapolio. No, anything was better than Mrs. Buck ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin

... her, it was not easy to locate the cave, for the slope was clawed into ravines and confused with meaningless criss-cross gulches. Whatever scrub evergreens grew there stood under the shade of boulders which threatened each instant to topple over and go thundering to the base. She had come upon the cave by chance in her ride with Dan, and now she hunted vainly through the ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand



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