"Sweepings" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attend to yon scum," he told his squire. "The camp marshal will have fruit for his gallows. The sweepings of all Europe have drifted with us to England, and it is our business to make bonfire of them before they breed a plague.... See to the wounded man, likewise. He may be one of the stout house-carles ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... wealth into it, was the least that I could do. And we worked, my word, we did work—early and late we went at it—but never a bit of gold did we see; no, not even a nugget large enough to make a scarf-pin out of. The American gentleman had secured it all and left us the sweepings. ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... from a long semi-circle of north Italian cities during the barbarian invasions. Each refugee colony occupied a separate island, and finally all coalesced to form the city of Venice. Central mountain districts like the Alps and Caucasus contain "the sweepings of the plains." The Caucasus particularly, on the border between Europe and Asia, contains every physical type and representative of every linguistic family of Eurasia, except pure Aryan. Nowhere else in the world probably is there such a heterogeneous lot of peoples, languages and religions. ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... attributed to William Hogarth, inveighs bitterly against these speculators and their endeavours to depreciate every English work in order to enhance the value of their imported shiploads of Dead Christs, Holy Families and Madonnas: the sweepings of the continental art-markets. Auction-rooms were opened in all parts of London for the exhibition and sale of choice objects of every kind, and became the resort and rendezvous of all pretending to wealth and fashion. Agents were to be found ...
— Art in England - Notes and Studies • Dutton Cook
... shudder, as on some incarnate Mephistopheles, to whom this great terrestrial and celestial Round, after all, were but some huge foolish Whirligig, where kings and beggars, and angels and demons, and stars and street-sweepings, were chaotically whirled, in which only children could take interest. His look, as we mentioned, is probably the gravest ever seen: yet it is not of that cast-iron gravity frequent enough among our own Chancery ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... resolution, it declined to comply with that most modest demand. Then the sword came out and struck at our life. "Was it matter of choice with us whether we would fight? Not unless it were also matter of choice whether we would become the very sweepings and blemish ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... are ugly enough, what you can see of them, and that is not much. What a rascally set the Europeans look! The Egyptians are gentlemen by the side of them. I fancy from what I have heard they are the sweepings of the European ports—Greeks, Italians, Maltese, and French. When a fellow makes it too hot at home for the place to hold ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... through which any passing stranger may watch him; his food will be handed to him in a tin pan with a tin knife and spoon; and he will be periodically called out of his cell and driven round the exercise yard with a mob composed, for the most part, of the sweepings of the London slums. If he is acquitted, he will be turned loose without a suggestion of compensation or apology for these indignities or the losses he may have sustained through ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... fifteenth the temple was ceremonially cleaned and the sweepings and the ashes collected from the sacred fire for the year past were solemnly carried in a stately procession to a prescribed spot on the slope of the Capitol where a great pit was closed by a heavy maple-wood door. In this pit the ashes ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... in making a soft bed with few materials besides boards; in mixing the various compounds of burgoo, lobscouse, and dough, (which he affectedly pronounced duff); in fattening pigs on beef-bones, and ducks on the sweepings of the deck; in looking at molasses without licking his lips; and in various other similar accomplishments, which he maintained were as familiar to the children of Stunin'tun, as their singing-books and the ten ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... day and night in the churches. Palm branches, blessed on Palm Sunday, had been hung on the trees. At Solaparuta, in accordance with a very old custom, the dust swept from the churches on Palm Sunday had been spread on the fields. In ordinary years these holy sweepings preserve the crops; but that year, if you will believe me, they had no effect whatever. At Nicosia the inhabitants, bare-headed and bare-foot, carried the crucifixes through all the wards of the town and scourged each other with iron whips. It was all in vain. Even the great St. Francis ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... had been duly cautioned, and on repeating his offense his little folder of ideas was suppressed, and the precious fonts and presses thrown into the sea with the street-sweepings ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 9 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Reformers • Elbert Hubbard
... confirmed. No excise duty is to be levied "for ten years, and until we order to the contrary." A hospital is provided for by one hundred thousand maravedis taken from fines. The hospital also is to receive the rights of escobilla [22] and the sweepings in the founding of metals. Lawyers and attorneys are prohibited from engaging in their callings in the lands and islands discovered. The royal officials appointed by the king are to be taken in the fleet, as well as ecclesiastics "for the instruction of the natives of the said islands and provinces ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803, Volume II, 1521-1569 • Emma Helen Blair
... language. Well, I used to poke about among a lot of scum that has no respect for any cloth whatever—no, nor for life itself; and all the time I felt in me bones I'd surely find what I wanted among a crew that's just the sweepings of creation! ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... general to the herbs we made use of, in the nature and quality of which we fancied ourselves mistaken; but a little farther enquiry let us into the real occasion of it, which was no other than this: the biscuit-dust was the sweepings of the bread-room, but the bag in which they were put had been a tobacco-bag, the contents of which not being entirely taken out, what remained mixed with the biscuit- dust, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... the more disposed to listen to his suggestion. While our young mate was getting the boat ready, therefore, Bob collected his tools, provided himself with a bucket, passed the half-barrel, into which Mark had thrown the sweepings of the decks, into the dingui, and descended himself and took the sculls. The two then proceeded to Bob's rock, where, amid the screams of a thousand sea-birds, the honest fellow filled his bucket with as good guano as was ever found on the coast ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... certain canton which, three years later, furnishes in one day from fifty to one hundred volunteers, the young men cut off their thumbs to escape the draft.[5406] To this scum of society is added the sweepings of the depots and of the jails. Among the vagabonds that fill these, after winnowing out those able to make their families known or to obtain sponsors, "there are none left," says an intendant, "but those who are entirely unknown or dangerous, out of which those regarded as the least ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 1 (of 6) - The Ancient Regime • Hippolyte A. Taine
... girl passing on the street smiled boldly at such youths they were fired with triumph and happiness; they nudged each other violently and made brazen declarations which, faced by the girls, escaped in disconcerted laughter. Their language—and this, too, was a revolt—was like the sweepings of the cow barns. ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... putrefy in the very heart of our cities. The dust bins—a necessary accompaniment of the water-carriage system of disposing of sewage—are theoretically supposed to be receptacles mainly for organic refuse, such as coal-ashes, broken crockery, and at worst the sweepings from the floors. In sober fact they are largely mixed with the rinds, shells, etc., of fruits and vegetables, the bones and heads of fish, egg-shells, the sweepings out of dog-kennels and henhouses, forming thus, in short, a mixture of evil odor, and well adapted for the breeding-place ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 303 - October 22, 1881 • Various
... elevators save the climbing of stairs. The inside arrangement of the houses—floorings, garnishing of the walls, furnitures—will be contrived with an eye to the facility of cleaning and to the prevention of the gathering of dust and bacteria. Dust, sweepings and offal of all sorts will be carried by pipes out of the houses as water, that has been used, is carried off to-day. In the United States, in many a European city—Zurich, for instance—there are to-day tenements, exquisitely equipped, in which numerous ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... punishments. It was made known that the Committee had set for itself a rule that capital punishment would be inflicted by it only for crimes so punishable by the regular law. But each outgoing ship took a crowd of the banished. The majority of the first sweepings were low thugs—"Sydney Ducks," hangers-on, and the worst class of criminals; but a certain number were taken from what had been known as the city's best. In the law courts these men would have been declared as white ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... of Thibet.—A sample of this curious product was shown by the East India Company in 1851. It is formed of the refuse tea-leaves and sweepings of the granaries, damped and pressed into a mould, generally with a little bullock's blood. The finer sorts are friable masses, and are packed in papers; the coarser sewn up in sheep's skin. In this form it is an article of commerce throughout Central and Northern Asia and the Himalayan provinces; ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... of—Hades only knows what!—mixed dust of every unclean thing that can crumble in drought, and mildew of every unclean thing that can rot or rust in damp: ashes and rags, beer-bottles and old shoes, battered pans, smashed crockery, shreds of nameless clothes, door-sweepings, floor-sweepings, kitchen garbage, back-garden sewage, old iron, rotten timber jagged with out-torn nails, cigar-ends, pipe-bowls, cinders, bones, and ordure, indescribable; and, variously kneaded ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... And they found on top of the snow a pile of dusty sweepings from the hay-mow, with grass-seeds in it and some cracked corn and crumbs. And there were squash-seeds, and sunflower-seeds, and seedy apple-cores that had been broken up in the grinder used to crunch bones for the ...
— Bird Stories • Edith M. Patch
... against him for a pair of saddle-bags whereof he hath robbed me, he cometh now with his story of the boothose, which I have had in my house this many a day. An you believe me not, I can bring you to witness my next-door neighbor Trecca and Grassa the tripewoman and one who goeth gathering the sweepings from Santa Masia at Verjaza, who saw him when he came back from ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... here are tales and sketches like these of Nathaniel Hawthorne, which it would have done one's heart good to have read under shady coverts, or sitting—no unpleasant lounge—by the sea-side on the rolling shingles of the beach. They give us the sweepings of Mr Colburn's counter, and then boastfully proclaim the zeal with which they serve the public. So certain other servants of the public feed the eye with gaudy advertisements of every generous liquor under heaven, and retail nothing but the sour ale of some crafty brewer ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... steps. B. Pahloeuk, porch. C. Wadl-leek, passage. D. Haddnoeweek, for the reception of the sweepings of the house. E. G. Tokheuook, antechamber, or passage. F. Annarroeartoweek. H. Eegah, cooking-house. I. Eegah-natkah, passage. K. Keidgewack, for piling wood upon. L. Keek kloweyt, cooking side. M. Keek loot, fireplace built ...
— The Journey to the Polar Sea • John Franklin
... am disowned, and relegated to the sweepings,' the old man begins, draped in his sayon, and with a majesty that frightens us, 'you shall hear the crow sing!' Then the Count, turning the color of the wall, cold as a bench of stone, said, 'Varlets, here, cast out this dismal phantom!' Two tears ...
— Frederic Mistral - Poet and Leader in Provence • Charles Alfred Downer
... fists at the smoking lights. "Ye're no men!" he cried, in a deadened tone. No one moved. "Yer 'aven't the pluck of a mouse!" His voice rose to a husky screech. Wamibo darted out a dishevelled head, and looked at him wildly. "Ye're sweepings ov ships! I 'ope you will all rot before you die!" Wamibo blinked, uncomprehending but interested. Donkin sat down heavily; he blew with force through quivering nostrils, he ground and snapped his ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... of the emperor, could I get near you, you rogue, I would quarter you with my fingers alone!—A grinning scoundrel that jeers at others! A filthy flatterer that dirts the very ground he walks on! By the blood of the martyrs, should I fling the sweepings of the slaughter-house at him, he knows not where ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... seed and also a fine fibre, are sown in exact oblongs or squares resembling the plots in allotment-grounds in England. Near the villages are large heaps of manure, collected from the cattle zareebas. These are mixed with the sweepings of the stations, and the ashes from the cattle-fires, and are divided when required among the proprietors of ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... tumult, but as these consisted mainly of "vagrants, gipsies, parish charges, maimed, halt and idiots," the magisterial resentment caused greater rejoicings at Lynn than it did at Spithead, where the sweepings of the borough were eventually deposited. [Footnote: Admiralty Records 1. 920 —Admiral Sir Edward Hawke, 8 ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... cf. p. 74, where there are two maidens, one of whom had saved the toad when the other desired to kill it. They stand sponsors for the fairy child, and are rewarded with sweepings which turn to gold; also Bartsch, vol. i. p. 50, where a ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... cooked in a pan not over clean; saintliness in the enforced attention which she gave to Keziah's rambling stories of her pigs and her chickens, her mother's ailments, Jenny's shortcomings in the matter of sweepings and savings, Tim's wastefulness in the garden over the kailrunts, and the hardships of life on a lone woman left with only a huzzy to look after her; saintliness in the repression of that proud, fastidious self to which Keziah's familiarity and snuff, Jenny's familiarity ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... Despatches, vols. xl. xli.: in a fragmentary state; so much of it as they had caught up, and tried to make use of;—far too much.] likely to be published by the Prussian Dryasdust in coming time: but a more sordid mass of eavesdroppings, kitchen-ashes and floor-sweepings, collected and interchanged by a pair of treacherous Flunkies (big bullying Flunky and little trembling cringing one, Grumkow and Reichenbach), was never got together out of a gentleman's household. To ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... envolvi, vindi. Sway (swing) balanci. Swear (jud.) jxuri. [Error in book: juri] Swear blasfemi. Sweat sxviti. [Error in book: sviti] Sweater (garment) trikoto. Swede, a Svedo. Sweep balai. Sweepings balaajxo. Sweet (mannered) dolcxa. Sweet, a sukerajxo. Sweet malacida. Sweetbriar rozo sovagxa. Sweetheart (m.) amanto, fiancxo. Sweetmeat sukerajxo. Swell sxveli. Swelling sxvelo. Swerve malrektigxi. Swift rapida. Swiftness rapideco. Swill glutegi, ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... Churton was keenly alive and deeply interested in all that was passing around her. She noted that the hours of study were very much shortened now, and that the girls were continually together in the house, and from their bedroom sweepings and stray threads clinging to their dresses, and the snipping sound of scissors, she judged that they were busy with their preparations. Fan had gone back to her ancient but happily not lost art of dressmaking, and was making Constance a dress from a piece of stuff which the latter had kept by ...
— Fan • Henry Harford
... finished off in a circle, one arc of which touched the steps of an open porch. These steps were sagging and decayed, and the porch was swept by the gentle eddyings of leaves of past summers that had sought refuge there and had been undisturbed by the ruthless sweepings of winds or brooms. There was a haunting odour of pine and something else that was damp and old and weary and forgotten, and a shrivelled wisteria vine that clung with withered fingers to a trellis at the house corner began to whisper at their approach. A yellow bar of light shot for a ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... wholesome, spending her life in some close city-nook and pasturing on strange food. I have seen, once or twice, a donkey coming into one of these streets with panniers full of vegetables, and departing with a return cargo of what looked like rubbish and street-sweepings. No other commerce seemed to exist, except, possibly, a girl might offer you a pair of stockings or a worked collar, or a man whisper something mysterious about wonderfully cheap cigars. And yet I remember ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... said the child holding in her hand a gold ornament set with garnets that she had just picked up from a heap of rubbish which appeared to be sweepings from Louisita's abode. ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... also those of half a hundred other detectives, professional and amateur. At eleven I will visit the opera-house, where I expect to find the incriminating letter on the floor, or if the cleaning women have already done their work, which is very doubtful, I will find it later among the sweepings of waste paper in the cellar of the opera-house. Accompanied by two plain-clothes men from headquarters I will then proceed to Nervy's quarters, and, if he is really sincere in his desire to go to jail for a protracted period, we shall find him there giving an ...
— R. Holmes & Co. • John Kendrick Bangs
... mathematics, measles, mechanics, mnemonics, merils, metaphysics, middlings, movables, mumps, nuptials, optics, phonics, phonetics, physics,[146] pneumatics, poetics, politics, riches, rickets, settlings, shatters, skimmings, spherics, staggers, statics, statistics, stays, strangles, sundries, sweepings, tactics, thanks, tidings, trappings, vives, ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... of the sleeping closet adjoining the living room, each dwelling affords three good sleeping apartments. The meat safe preserves provisions. The dust flue is so arranged that all the sweepings of the house, and all the refuse of the cookery, have only to be thrown down to disappear forever; while the sink is supplied to an unlimited extent with hot and cold water. These galleries, into which every tenement opens, ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the free middle classes of Italy had almost wholly disappeared. Above the position which they had occupied, an oligarchy of wealth had reared itself: beneath that position a degraded mass of poverty and misery was fermenting. Slaves, the chance sweepings of every conquered country, shoals of Africans, Sardinians, Asiatics, Illyrians, and others, made up the bulk of the population of the Italian peninsula. The foulest profligacy of manners was general in all ranks. In universal weariness ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... overcast. Low down it is armored in steely blue by great clouds. Above, in a weakly luminous silvering, it is crossed by enormous sweepings of wet mist. The weather is worsening, and more rain on the way. The end of the tempest and the long ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... wherever you are stationed. There is no disgrace in serving his Majesty in any capacity. I tell you candidly, that although I would not have impressed you myself, I am very glad that I have you on board; I wish I had fifty more of the same sort, instead of the sweepings of the gaols, which I am obliged to ...
— Newton Forster • Frederick Marryat
... confess, troubling me seriously. I look forward with very much greater dread to the prospect of having to smoke dried leaves and the sweepings of tobacco warehouses, than I do to the eating of rats. I have been making inquiries of all sorts as to the state of the stock of tobacco, and I intend this evening to invest five pounds in laying in a store; and mean to take up a plank and hide it under the floor, and to maintain ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... of the ship, on a level with the ice, so that when the ice broke up during the following summer the ship filled and sunk. No tracks were seen in the salt-water ice or on the ship, which also was covered with snow, but they saw scrapings and sweepings alongside, which seemed to have been brushed off by people who had been living on board. They found some red cans of fresh meat, with plenty of what looked like tallow mixed with it. A great many had been opened, and four were still unopened. They saw no bread. They found plenty of knives, ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... in a tone of mockery. "I have more pistols!" And then with a sudden change to ferocity, "You dogs!" he went on. "You scum of a filthy city, sweepings of the Halles! Do you think to beard me? Do you think to frighten me or murder me? I am Tavannes, and this is my house, and were there a score of Huguenots in it, you should not touch one, nor harm a hair of his head! Begone, I say again, while you may! Seek ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... were exultant. They appeared at Spires in great numbers, and openly manifested their hostility toward the Reformers and all who favored them. Said Melanchthon, "We are the execration and the sweepings of the world; but Christ will look down on His poor people, and will preserve them."(284) The evangelical princes in attendance at the Diet were forbidden even to have the gospel preached in their dwellings. But ...
— The Great Controversy Between Christ and Satan • Ellen G. White
... manures have been employed in attaining the greatest success with this vegetable. In England, pigeon-dung and the cleanings of the pigsty are extensively employed. In this country the sweepings of the hen-roost are generally recommended. It should be remembered that all these are strong agents, and if brought in contact with the roots of any vegetable while in a crude, undiluted state, burn like fire, especially in our climate. ...
— The Home Acre • E. P. Roe
... that's why they want to get rid of us." We evaded the gardiners, scrambled through shrubs, on our knees, and at last on our bellies up a little bank, on the other side of which was the vacant place on which dead leaves and sweepings were shot down. As we got there, pushing aside the leaves, we saw the big backside of a woman, who was half standing, half squatting, a stream of piss falling in front of her, and a big hairy gash, as it seemed, under her arse; but only for a second, she had just finished as we ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... acknowledged this and then proceeded. "I am an American and I am proud of it. Not because of the great power and wealth of my country, nor of its hundred and odd millions of people made up of the nations of the earth, the sweepings of Europe, the overflow of Asia, and the bag of the slave-hunter of Africa, which centuries will amalgamate into a cafe au lait conglomerate, but because I am proud of that small group of Anglo-Saxons who, under the influence of the free air of our great country, have developed ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... to put on his hat as for one of our free and enlightened citizens to go from Bosting to New Orleens." The appearance of the town was very repulsive. A fall of snow had thawed, and mixing with the dust, store-sweepings, cabbage-stalks, oyster-shells, and other rubbish, had formed a soft and peculiarly penetrating mixture from three ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... lower slopes of the hills are covered by a labyrinth of stone fences, minute patches of corn, and endless cottages. It would seem as if for twenty miles the long withdrawing valley had been swept of its inhabitants, and the accumulated sweepings left at its mouth, just as we see the sweepings of a room sometimes left at the door. And such generally is the present state of Sutherland. The interior is a solitude occupied by a few sheep-farmers and their hinds; while a more numerous population ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller
... means, first and foremost, just the off-scourings of creation, the very dust and sweepings of the shop," answered Bludger, who had somehow regained his confidence. To have a fellow-sufferer, and to see the pallor which, doubtless, overspread my features, was a source of comfort to this hardened man. At the same time I confess that, if William Bludger alone had been ...
— In the Wrong Paradise • Andrew Lang
... and the Auditing Committee watching her like a Hawk. Then a 10-cent Tip, bestowed as if endowing Princeton, and the Quartet representing the Flower of America's Young Womanhood was once more out in the Ozone, marching abreast with shining Faces and pushing white-haired Business Men off into the Sweepings. ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... lazy dragon, reddish-yellow, tawny, it is the dirtiest stream in the world. For not only does it carry the sand of its own grinding, as it passes through the hundred miles of canyon of its waterway, but it accepts the sweepings of vast areas made by its tributaries. Some of these extend through barren and desolate areas,—great stretches of the most forsaken desert lands, where the rains occasionally pour down with deluge-like force. Cloudbursts and floods are common; for the whole country is high in altitude, ...
— The Grand Canyon of Arizona: How to See It, • George Wharton James
... affidavit in his chamber privately; and he may take an affidavit, though not exactly in the place of his jurisdiction, to authenticate a bond, or the like."—We are not to be cheated by words. It is not dirty shreds of worn-out parchments, the sweepings of Westminster Hall, that shall serve us in place of that justice upon, which the world stands. Affidavits! We know that in the language of our courts affidavits do not signify a body of evidence to sustain a criminal charge, but are generally relative to matter [matters?] in process ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. XII. (of XII.) • Edmund Burke
... effect on the natives was extreme. Bishop Dordillon might entreat; Temoana himself command and threaten; at the note of the drum wild instincts triumphed. And now it might beat upon these ruins, and who should assemble? The houses are down, the people dead, their lineage extinct; and the sweepings and fugitives of distant bays and islands encamp upon their graves. The decline of the dance Stanislao especially laments. 'Chaque pays a ses coutumes,' said he; but in the report of any gendarme, perhaps corruptly eager to increase the number of delits and the instruments of his own power, custom ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... track, this may be due to the uneven work of the broom, which has left certain particles of the scented dust in position. The Ants who went round the cleared portion may have been guided by the sweepings removed to either side. Before, therefore, pronouncing judgment for or against the sense of smell, it were well to renew the experiment under better conditions and to remove everything containing ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... The sweepings of the mill-floor did not last them long, and by the time they saw rising before them the spires and chimneys of the small county town to which the road had been leading them, they were very hungry indeed—as hungry ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... under sixteen hands his size is not mentioned, and all the world is our customer at L5000 or L6000 a horse. And if more people had the skill to ride him, the merits of the thorough-bred horse as a hunter would be better known; though, indeed, under any circumstances, it is but the sweepings of the training stable which descends to the hunting field ...
— Hints on Horsemanship, to a Nephew and Niece - or, Common Sense and Common Errors in Common Riding • George Greenwood
... found himself. With a few exceptions the regiment was made up of wild and worthless fellows, of whom the various magistrates had been only too glad to clear their towns, and mingled with these were the sweepings of the jails, rogues and ruffians of every description. The regiment might eventually be welded into a body of good soldiers, but at present discipline had not done its work, and it was simply a collection of reckless men, ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... to abuse us to the people, bidding them look upon us for English dogs, Lutherans, enemies of God, sweepings of the English sink of iniquity, for whom neither rack, thumb-screw, nor stake was sufficient reward. Me he denounced to the people as a runaway criminal, describing me in such terms as made my blood boil within me, and my hands itch to take him by the neck and crush the ...
— In the Days of Drake • J. S. Fletcher
... march to Johannesburg, and disbandment within reach of the filthy lucre which they coveted. And so new corps were raised, with spirit-stirring titles, while old, honoured, and existing regiments were sullied beyond recognition by association with the refuse and sweepings from the least manly community in the universe. Such fuel could not even clear the dummy supports at the base of the Boer resistance. It refused to burn. It could never have burned in any circumstances. These men had no intention of fighting. Their appearance in the field gave new life ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... we could up anchor and be off," answered Hartog. "But we have work to do ashore in attending to the ship's repairs before we may hope to leave this place where, I make no doubt, we shall be imposed upon and robbed by the sweepings of Europe who inhabit this island. It is fortunate we have the word of the Spanish captain that he himself will be responsible for ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... the book contains many curiosities to reward the dust-sifting historian. And were it not our object to hasten on and sketch the ministerial model to which our last number alluded, we could cheerfully halt for half an hour, and entertain our readers and ourselves with the sweepings of Dr. ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... miscellaneous rabble—flunkies long out of place, and unable to live on their liveries—felons acquitted, or that have dreed their punishment—picked men from the shilling galleries of playhouses—and the elite of the refuse and sweepings of the jails. Look how all the rogues and reprobates march like one man! Alas! was it of such materials that our conquering army was made?—were such the heroes of Talavera, Salamanca, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... roll before him a heap of grayish sweepings, as if he had done nothing else all his life. Then, he gave bark the broom to ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... great joy to her. Last of all, she begged a bit of frayed muslin from the sweepings for a night-dress. Then she could undress ...
— The Potato Child and Others • Mrs. Charles J. Woodbury
... of soil, however, is distinctly objectionable, although, fortunately, in the country such a soil is unusual: That is, a soil made up of refuse, whether it be garbage, street sweepings from a ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden
... the dining-room floor with a linen picture book, brought in a broom and dustpan from the kitchen and began furiously to sweep the parlor. When the dust cleared somewhat she emerged with the dustpan heaped with sweepings and the corners of the room still untouched. She hung the coats and hats in the entry and rubbed off the top of the table with her winter Tam o' Shanter, from which the moths flew as she worked. She ...
— Lydia of the Pines • Honore Willsie Morrow
... year my master Ulivieri had occasion to go to Florence, in order to sell certain gold and silver sweepings which he had; [1] and inasmuch as the bad air of Pisa had given me a touch of fever, I went with the fever hanging still about me, in my master's company, back to Florence. There my father received him most affectionately, and lovingly ...
— The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini • Benvenuto Cellini
... brush them inside and out; use a soft brush or a dust mop to take the dust from the floor. Use a carpet sweeper for the rugs unless you have electricity and can use a vacuum cleaner; collect the sweepings and burn them. ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... being able to return home, I was perfectly content to belong to her. Men-of-war in those days were very different to what they are at present. Men of all classes were shipped on board, often out of the prisons and hulks, and the sweepings of the streets. Quantity was looked-for because quality could not be got. An able seaman was a great prize. The pressgangs were always at work on shore, and they thought themselves fortunate when such could be found. Now, with such ...
— Will Weatherhelm - The Yarn of an Old Sailor • W.H.G. Kingston
... admirable pedantry, he had refrained from asking her for details—no, not so much as the name of the father, because maternity should be an anarchist function. Razumov had been admitted twice to that suite of several small dark rooms on the top floor: dusty window-panes, litter of all sorts of sweepings all over the place, half-full glasses of tea forgotten on every table, the two Laspara daughters prowling about enigmatically silent, sleepy-eyed, corsetless, and generally, in their want of shape and the disorder of their rumpled ...
— Under Western Eyes • Joseph Conrad
... little attention, as inelegant and barbarous, till Mr. Irving, with his cast-iron features and sledge-hammer blows, puffing like a grim Vulcan, set to work to forge more classic thunderbolts, and kindle the expiring flames anew with the very sweepings of sceptical and infidel libraries, so as to excite a pleasing horror in the female part of his congregation. In short, our popular declaimer has, contrary to the Scripture-caution, put new wine into old bottles, or new cloth on ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... more effectual way of crippling the tenant than before. He seized on the farm implements and stock, of which the dunghill was in his eyes the most important. He had it, without a legal sale, carried away to his own farm-yard, even to the very rakings and sweepings of the road and the yard near which it lay. This he did that Ring might have no manure for his potato ground, knowing that crops so planted would not easily afford the rent; and that, when no rent ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 55, No. 343, May 1844 • Various
... hell. The men who went to Zeebrugge were the true sons of those who fought the Spanish Armada and singed the King o' Spain's beard in Cadiz harbor. The victors of the Jutland battle were better men than Nelson's (the scourings of the prisons and the sweepings of the press-gang) and not less brave in frightful hours. Without the service of the British seamen the war would have been lost for France and Italy and Belgium, and all ...
— Now It Can Be Told • Philip Gibbs
... turning his endeavors to the thousand-fold immeasurable interests of men and gods,—dismissing the one extremely contemptible interest of scoundrels; sweeping that into the cesspool, tumbling that over London Bridge, in a very brief manner, if needful! Who are you, ye thriftless sweepings of Creation, that we should forever be pestered with you? Have we no work to do but drilling ...
— Latter-Day Pamphlets • Thomas Carlyle
... a large amount of waste products in human and social economy. The products of combustion, such as ashes, cinders, etc.; the products of street sweepings and waste from houses, as dust, rubbish, paper, etc.; the waste from various trades; the waste from kitchens, e. g., scraps of food, etc.; the waste water from the cleansing processes of individuals, domestic animals, clothing, ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume V (of VI) • Various
... Nitre is found in Bengal naturally crystallized, and is swept by brooms from earths and stones, and thence called sweepings of nitre. It has lately been found in large quantities in a natural bason of calcareous earth at Molfetta in Italy, both in thin strata between the calcareous beds, and in efflorescences of various beautiful leafy and hairy forms. An account of this nitre-bed is given by Mr. Zimmerman ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... speck for waste. He showed her the rabbit's foot he used to brush off any flecks of gold left on the cheville and the leather he kept on his lap to catch any gold that fell. Twice weekly the shop was swept out carefully, the sweepings collected and burned and the ashes sifted. This recovered up to twenty-five or thirty francs' worth of gold ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... soil is wanted at once, and no rotted sod is to be had, use good garden loam, preferably from some spot which was under clover-sod the year before. If it is difficult to obtain well-rotted manure, street sweepings may be used as a substitute, and old chip-dirt from under the wood pile, or the bottom of the woodshed if it has a dirt floor, will do in place of leaf-mould. Peat, or thoroughly dried and sweetened muck are also good ...
— Gardening Indoors and Under Glass • F. F. Rockwell
... to loose or to bind. Of all the terrible railway rides in the world, for dirt and discomfort, none compares with the trip from Cairo to Luxor and Assouan. The carriages are stuffy and unclean, and during the whole journey one stifles in an opaque atmosphere of grit mixed with the sweepings of the ages. The calcined earths quickly cushion the seats, powder you from head to foot, and fill your pockets and every other receptacle with soil enough to make you feel like a landed proprietor—or, at any rate, rich enough in loam to lay out a suburban garden. With ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... his wife (euphemistically). I remember an Italian lady being much hurt when a Maltese said to her "Mia moglie con rispetto parlando" (my wife, saving your presence). "What," she cried, "he speaks of his wife as he would of the sweepings!" ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... and gentlemen parading in a Sunday avenue. Perhaps twenty of them, in snowy white shirts and black velvet knee-breeches, strutted like pigeons in a knot, some with one woman on the arm, some with two. Bundles of variegated rags lay against the walls, as if they were sweepings. Well, they were the sweepings of Havana jail. The men in white and black were the great thieves... and there were children, too—the place was the city orphanage. For the fifth part of a second my advent made no difference. Then, at the far end, one of the men in black and white separated ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... where that big fly is buzzing loud enough to deafen me! Look at the sweepings scattered under the bed! Look at the dust on the window-panes, so thick that I can ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... of all sorts, and from all parts of the houses, were emptied into the street before the front doors! The ashes were disposed of in a very peculiar manner. Each house had, on the edge of the parapet opposite, an old flour-barrel, or something of the sort, into which were thrown ashes, sweepings, fish-bones, dead rats, and all kinds of refuse. A dead rat very frequently garnished the top of the barrel. This was the order of things, not in small by-streets only, but also in the very best streets, and before the very best houses. The pavement too, even in Broadway, ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... Company's selected growth of Early Green Leaf Spring Pickings;" i.e., "A damaged cargo and last year's rotten sweepings, mingled with chipped broom, dried cabbage, and other equally suitable ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... could show me how to get control of that it would mean all. Still I do not despair. She is not here now, and there is the land, the country all before me. Let her keep away till after Villarayo has returned, and I have scattered all his horde of ruffians, the sweepings of the place—as I shall, for once I have landed with my warlike supplies, all that is good and true in Velova will fight for me to the death—and then the march to San Cristobal will be an easy task. The news that Villarayo and his people are scattered ...
— Fitz the Filibuster • George Manville Fenn
... me with neglect and slight? 20 Me, who contribute to your cheer, And raise your mirth with ale and beer? Why thus insulted, thus disgraced, And that vile dunghill near me placed? Are those poor sweepings of a groom, That filthy sight, that nauseous fume, Meet objects here? Command it hence: A thing so mean must give offence' The humble dunghill thus replied: 'Thy master hears, and mocks thy pride: 30 Insult not thus the meek and low; In ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... reconciliation with the Bearnese, and for a handsome price paid down on the nail having acknowledged him to be their legitimate and Catholic sovereign, now turned their temporary attention to the Turk. The sweepings of the League—Frenchmen, Walloons, Germans, Italians, Spaniards—were tossed into Hungary, because for a season the war had become languid in Flanders. And the warriors grown grey in the religious wars of France astonished the pagans ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... him then wait ten years, observing these directions faithfully. Every fall, after the first frost—that frost which blackens his dahlias—let him cover the crown of his Gunnera with one of its own leaves. Pile some stable-stuff over that, and then heap upon all the leaf-sweepings of that part of the garden. Growth starts in mid-April and proceeds by feet a week. Mine, which is about ten years old now, is thirty-five feet in circumference, nearly twelve feet high, has flowers two-feet-six ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... worthlessness, nugacity^; triviality &c (unimportance) 643. caput mortuum [Lat.], waste paper, dead letter; blunt tool. litter, rubbish, junk, lumber, odds and ends, cast-off clothes; button top; shoddy; rags, orts^, trash, refuse, sweepings, scourings, offscourings^, waste, rubble, debris, detritus; stubble, leavings; broken meat; dregs &c (dirt) 653; weeds, tares; rubbish heap, dust hole; rudera^, deads^. fruges consumere natus [Lat.] [Horace]. &c (drone) 683 V. be useless &c adj.; go a begging &c (redundant) 641; fail &c ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... The greatest slattern, I assert, 150 Is she and if unsewn her skirt Not a stitch will it get from her, And though she covered be with dirt Yet will she never comb her hair, And at the merest word will she 155 Be vanquished of laughter utterly. She sweeps and lets the sweepings lie, She eats and will never wash the dishes, Her uncle beats her hourly, So laxly doth she flout his wishes. 160 Madanela's the apple of my eye. And there is no more to be said But tell Meigengra presently To reckon ...
— Four Plays of Gil Vicente • Gil Vicente
... customers. He has to put as large a margin of profit as possible on his books, and an average of sixpence each has to be added to the original cost of every item catalogued. The bookstall-man is, naturally, handicapped in many ways, and if he finds the sweepings of his more aristocratic confreres' shops a long time on his hands, he, at all events, makes as large a profit with much ...
— The Book-Hunter in London - Historical and Other Studies of Collectors and Collecting • William Roberts
... that is true, and that may have had its difficulties: but, after all, we prefer to have the thing precisely as it would have been without any fighting. You, therefore, what is the good of you? You are a—person whom we fling out like sweepings, now that our eyesight returns, and accuse of ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume V. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... from me that he now for the first time trumps up this story about a pair of jack boots that I have had in my house down to the last day or two; and if you doubt what I say, I can bring as witness Trecca, my neighbour, and Grassa, the tripe-woman, and one that goes about gathering the sweepings of Santa Maria a Verzaia, who saw him when he was on his way back from the farm." But shout as he might, Maso was still even with him, nor for all that did Ribi bate a jot of his clamour. And while the judge stood, bending now towards the one, now towards ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... is in Mohammed and his success, we are to remember what an umpire Nature is; what a greatness, composure of depth and tolerance there is in her. You take wheat to cast into the Earth's bosom: your wheat may be mixed with chaff, chopped straw, barn-sweepings, dust and all imaginable rubbish; no matter: you cast it into the kind just Earth; she grows the wheat,—the whole rubbish she silently absorbs, shrouds it in, says nothing of the rubbish. The yellow wheat is growing there; the good Earth is silent about all the rest,—has ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... there are outbuildings, slums, and alleys not visible from the front. These back on the Orient, and the rear view of the structure of European civilization, seen from the Orient, is not imposing at all. The sweepings and refuse of Western civilization and Western morality are dumped out upon the Orient, ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... art, and puts on a periwig, valuing himself upon an unnatural bundle of hairs, all covered with powder, that never grew upon his head; but now, should this, our broomstick, pretend to enter the scene, proud of those birchen spoils it never bore, and all covered with dust, though the sweepings of the finest lady's chamber, we should be apt to ridicule and despise its vanity. Partial judges that we are of our own excellencies, and other ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... the report of a rifle followed by a fusillade, and bullets flew all over the place. We at first thought the Germans were upon us, but the scattering of the fire brands all over the room told us that some "blighter" had left some clips of live cartridges in the sweepings of the fire place. The stampede which had followed the first burst of fire died away in roars of laughter. No one was hurt although pieces of cartridge cases had ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... loomed enormous. Then, at Morey's direction, they swung, and before them loomed a planet. Large as Thett, near a half million miles in diameter, its mass was very closely equal to that of our sun. Yet it was but the burned-out sweepings of the outermost photospheric layers of this giant sun, and the radioactive atoms that made a sun active were not here; it was a cold planet. But its density was far, far higher than that of our sun, for our sun is but slightly denser than ordinary sea water. This world ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... at him curiously. "Oh, you'll find out fast enough, padre," he said. "Wonder what you'll make of it. Rum place just now, France, I can tell you. There's the sweepings of half the world over there, and everything's turned upside down. Fellows are out for a spree, of course, and you can't be hard on a chap down from the line if he goes on the bust a bit. It's human nature, and you must allow for ...
— Simon Called Peter • Robert Keable
... them in his pocket. But it puzzled him to explain how there came to be gold on the cabin floor. His surprise deepened when, a few days later, he found another "prospect" in the same place. His two sweepings had yielded perhaps a pennyweight of the precious metal—enough to set him to thinking. It seemed queer that in the neighborhood of Black Jack's bunk he could find no ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... so. Haines here," with a wave of the hand towards the man in brown, "had a lot picked out for me to choose from. I have six negroes and three of those blackguards from Newgate—mighty poor policy to shoulder ourselves with such gaol sweepings. I doubt we'll repent it some day. The blacks come by way of Boston, which means that they will have to be cockered up considerably before they are fit for work. Is that you, Woodson? ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... screened by the hackney-cab stand, till he reached the Rue Froid-Manteau, a dirty, poky, disreputable street—a sort of sewer tolerated by the police close to the purified purlieus of the Palais-Royal, as an Italian major-domo allows a careless servant to leave the sweepings of the rooms in a corner ...
— Gambara • Honore de Balzac
... thread. I will not let you wear it." The queen did as she was bid, and, pulling off the thread bracelet, threw it on the floor. Next morning the maids and the slave-girls began to sweep the palace, and among the sweepings one of them noticed the queen's thread bracelet. She picked it up and showed it to Wonderways, and he grew very wroth with Queen Patmadhavrani. He took the thread and at once went with it to the palace of the ...
— Deccan Nursery Tales - or, Fairy Tales from the South • Charles Augustus Kincaid
... of old Louhi had laid a wager with the Sun, that she would rise before him the next morning. And so she did, and had time to shear six lambs before the Sun had left his couch beneath the ocean. And after this she swept up the floor of the stable with a birch broom, and collecting the sweepings on a copper shovel, she carried them to the meadow near the seashore. There she heard the sound of some one weeping, and hastening back she ...
— Finnish Legends for English Children • R. Eivind
... curses. Barnabas sprang to his feet, and hurrying out into the yard, beheld a powerful black horse that reared and plunged in the grip of two struggling grooms; in an adjacent corner was the late rider, who sat upon a pile of stable-sweepings and swore, while, near by, perched precariously upon an upturned bucket, his slim legs stretched out before him, was a young exquisite—a Corinthian from top to toe—who rocked with laughter, yet was careful to keep his head rigid, so as to avoid crushing his cravat, ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... high-sounding titles and vain boasts, wherewith to carry off their squalid, dirty poverty; Perak men from the fair Kinta valley, prospecting for tin, or trading skilfully; fugitives from Pahang, long settled in the district; and the sweepings of Sumatra, Java, and the Peninsula. It was in this place that I heard the following story of a Were-Tiger, from Penghulu Mat Saleh, who was, and perhaps is still, the Headman of ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... perpendicular depth of twenty-seven inches from the top of the ridge. About one foot of prepared soil should be placed in the bottom of the trench. This may be composed of such material as the trimmings of hedges, sweepings of shrubberies, twigs from a faggot pile, wood ashes and leaf-mould. The constituents must to some extent depend on the materials at command. What is wanted is a light compost, consisting almost wholly of vegetable matter ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... fears, the anxieties and suspense, which in turn laid hold of me. Night by night for a week, in pitch darkness and bitter cold, we scraped away the cement, carrying away in the morning in our pockets the dust that fell, and disposing of it in the sweepings of ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... or lining, or they will be apt to draw with difficulty. Gas pipes of insufficient diameter cause the flames to burn with unsteady, dim light. Made ground is seldom fit for immediate building; and never for other than isolated structures. Ashes, street-sweepings, garbage, rotten vegetation, and house refuse are unfit filling for low ground on which it is intended to build. Cobble pavements are admirably adapted to soaking-up and afterwards emitting unwholesome matters. Asphalt has none ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... stomach, is much better for children, being a mild aperient as well as cleanser; fine flour in every shape is the reverse. Where biscuit-powder is in use, let it be made at home; this, at all events, will prevent them getting the sweepings of the baker's counters, boxes, and baskets, All the waste bread in the nursery, hard ends of stale loaves, &c., ought to be dried in the oven or screen, and reduced to powder ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... appetite for tyranny was thus balked; and to satisfy it in some way he patiently studied the laws relating to rentals and party-walls; he fathomed the jurisprudence which regulates the dwellings of Paris in an infinite number of petty questions as to tenants, abutters, liabilities, taxes, repairs, sweepings, decorations for the Fete-Dieu, waste-pipes, lighting, projections over the public way, and the neighborhood of unhealthy buildings. His means, his strength, in fact his whole mind was spent in keeping his proprietary rights on a complete war-footing. He had made it an amusement, and the ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... With bows and suppliant sweepings of his hands the dragoman explained that the Christians were already full of doubt, and that it needed but a little more light of knowledge to guide them on to the path of Allah. The two Emirs stroked their beards and gazed suspiciously at them. Then Abderrahman spoke in his crisp, stern ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it is true, without much or any cultivation raise several useful trees and plants; but they are in very small quantities, and immediately about their villages, where the ground is fertilised in spite of their indolence by the common sweepings of their houses and streets and the mere vicinity of their buildings. I have often had occasion to observe in young plantations that those few trees which surrounded the house of the owner or the hut of the keeper considerably over-topped ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Noll. There's about two hundred town-sweepings, not worth powder and shot, who want tying on their horses, and hardly know butt from bayonet, and there's another two hundred better men, got together coming along, or in the country around Lichfield. Sneyd, a rattling good fellow, and I have tossed for stations, and when it ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... occasion I chose the general "moving-day" for my visit to Ole, for on that day it is anything but agreeable down in the streets in the town; for they are full of sweepings, shreds, and remnants of all sorts, to say nothing of the cast-off bed straw in which one has to wade about. But this time I happened to see two children playing in this wilderness of sweepings. They were playing at "going ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... "Ye street-sweepings!" exclaimed Adsalis passionately, "what evil spirit has entered into you that ye would thus compel the Sultana Asseki to give way before ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... constructed for the purpose of disposing by burning of town refuse, which is a heterogeneous mass of material, including, besides general household and ash-bin refuse, small quantities of garden refuse, trade refuse, market refuse and often street sweepings. The mere disposal of this material is not, however, by any means the only consideration in dealing with it upon the destructor system. For many years past scientific experts, municipal engineers and public authorities have been directing careful attention ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... the sky was beginning to shed a gray, wan light, under which the vast, watery plain took on the whitish color of absinthe. Down the stream the debris of the inundation was floating, sweepings of wretched poverty, uprooted trees, clumps of reeds, thatched roofs from huts, all dirty, slimy, nauseating. Bits of flotsam and jetsam became entangled between the orange-trees and formed dams that ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... more as the instrument they handle is singularly explosive. Recruited by volunteer enlistment "amongst a passionate, turbulent, and somewhat debauched people," the army is composed of "all that are most fiery, most turbulent, and most debauched in the nation."[3336] Add to these the sweepings of the alms-houses, and you find a good many blackguards in uniform! When we consider that the pay is small, the food bad, discipline severe, no promotion, and desertion endemic, we are no longer surprised at the general disorder: license, ...
— The Origins of Contemporary France, Volume 2 (of 6) - The French Revolution, Volume 1 (of 3) • Hippolyte A. Taine
... thoughts and rose to do it himself. Out there, on the edge of the pavement, his four little ones were sitting, in close proximity of the waste pipes. Their feet were in the dry gutter, and they were playing with orange peels which they had found in the sweepings of the road. The sight stabbed his heart, and he felt a lump rising in his throat. But poverty had so blunted his feelings that he remained standing at the ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... solstice. At the winter solstice the chosen fire-maker collects a faggot of cedar-wood from every house in the village, and each person, as he hands the wood to the fire-maker, prays that the crops may be good in the coming year. For several days before the new fire is kindled, no ashes or sweepings may be removed from the houses and no artificial light may appear outside of them, not even a burning cigarette or the flash of firearms. The Indians believe that no rain will fall on the fields of the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... more than a few hundred yards away from some house or barnyard. His favorite place for breeding is in piles of stable manure, especially horse manure; but neglected garbage cans, refuse heaps, piles of dirt and sweepings, decaying matter of all sorts, which are allowed to remain for more than ten days or two weeks at a time, will give him the breeding grounds that ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... of the youngest brother, Palo, had gone towards that field to throw away the sweepings of the cowshed and she thought Ret Mongla was calling her name; this surprised her and made her very angry; and she made up her mind to pay him back and then if she were scolded for not paying proper respect to her husband's eldest brother to explain that he had insulted her first. So that ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... Wales for the advancement of His glory and the salvation of the heathen nations in those distant parts of the globe by men of character and principle? On the contrary, He takes men from the dregs of society, the sweepings of gaols, hulks, and prisons. Men who had forfeited their lives to the laws of their country, He gives them their lives for a prey, and sends them forth to make a way for His chosen, for them that should bring glad tidings of good things. How unsearchable are His judgments, ...
— A History of the English Church in New Zealand • Henry Thomas Purchas
... was receiver-general; but the testimony of his valet de chambre was the worst of all. Ah! if the masters suspected what the servants know, all that they tell in their quarters, if they could hear their names dragged about in the sweepings of the salons and the kitchen refuse, they would never again dare to say so much as: "Close the door," or "Order the carriage." There's Dr. Jenkins, for example, with the richest practice in Paris, has lived ten years with a magnificent wife, who ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... cover was removed it was found that the whole contents were covered with a thin layer of sweepings. The Khansama (the servant who serves at the table) looked at Mr. Anderson and Mr. Anderson at the Khansama "with a wild surmise"; the cover was replaced and the dish taken away. ...
— Indian Ghost Stories - Second Edition • S. Mukerji
... boys" and "He's paid for lookin' arter things" were the arguments whereby the antagonists testified their mutual respect, in both of which the parents concurred; and his severity did not cost the old man a penny when he made his Easter rounds to collect the "sweepings." It may, perhaps, be well to explain that the "sweepings" consisted of an annual sum of threepence which every householder contributed towards the cleaning of the church, and which represented a large part ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... foreign market, the superior quality of the goods commands a decided preference at once, and that preference ensures comparatively higher rates of price in the midst of the piled up packages of warehouse sweepings and goods, made, like Peter's razors, for special sale abroad, which are vainly offered at prime or any cost. These and other specialties escape, and not unaccountably, the view and the calculation of the speculative economist, who is so often astounded to find ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... old Jew cobbler bleated out of the hollow of his stall, "Dake him to the shustish of the beace!" The lion himself; in his dark state, tried to roar as his hapless champion, after a desperate struggle, rolled on the ground among the spilt pence and the sweepings. ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... the exception of one or two organized emigrations of poor, but honest, girls, were the sweepings of the streets of Paris and London. They were sometimes deported with as little ceremony as the engages, and sometimes collected by the Government, especially of France, for the deliberate purpose of meeting the not over nice demands of the adventurers; for it was the interest of France ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... plunder, frequently compelling those industrious inmates to forsake their habitation. About the time when the wasps begin to appear, several phials should be filled three parts full of a mixture consisting of the lees of beer or wine, and the sweepings of sugar, or the dregs of molasses, and suspended by yellow packthread on nails in the garden wall. When the bottles are filled with insects, the liquor must be poured into another vial, and the wasps crushed on the ground. If they settle on wall fruit, they may be destroyed by touching them with ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... dangerous during the fly season. However, the danger may be greatly reduced by covering the excreta with earth or by a thorough daily burning of the entire area of the trench. Combustible sweepings or straw, saturated with oil, may be ...
— Infantry Drill Regulations, United States Army, 1911 - Corrected to April 15, 1917 (Changes Nos. 1 to 19) • United States War Department
... seems in danger of being rolled away. On the contrary, such a surplus of surety of balance has he that time and again he lent his surplus to me. I begin to have more respect, not for the sea, but for the men of the sea, and not for the sweepings of seamen that are as slaves on our decks, but for the real seamen who are their masters—for Captain West, for Mr. Pike, yes, and for Mr. Mellaire, dislike him ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... Jones and Mackay all that winter and at intervals during the following year, through which that "cunning devil," the machine, consumed its monthly four thousand dollars—money that was the final gleanings and sweepings of every nook and corner of the strong-box and bank-account and savings of the Clemens family resources. With all of Mark Twain's fame and honors his life at this period was far from an enviable one. It was, in fact, a fevered ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Gardner. I have conversed with a gentleman who has seen the original receipt for the amount, with the different items of the deposit. The amount was by no means large, and affords evidence of no such mighty sweepings of the seas as have been told of in story and in song. Of gold, in coins, gold dust, and bars, there were seven hundred and fifty ounces. Of silver, five hundred and six ounces, and of precious stones about ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... few symptoms exhibited by the horse that will lead one to suspect the presence of gastric calculi, and possibly none by which we can unmistakably assert their presence. They have been found most frequently in millers' horses fed sweepings from the mills. A depraved and capricious appetite is common in horses that have a stone forming in the stomachs. There is a disposition to eat the woodwork of the stable, earth, and, in fact, almost any substance within their reach. This symptom must not, however, be considered as pathognomonic, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... The human organism is so constituted that it can stand the sweepings of the elephants' house in the Zoological Gardens. Try. ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... eating-houses of the same kind, with all of whom he made similar bargains. Upon this he established a bakery, extending his operations till there was scarcely a restaurant in Paris of which the sweepings did not find their way to the oven of Pere Fabrice. Hence it is that the fourpenny restaurants are supplied; hence it is that the itinerant venders of gingerbread find their first material. Let any ...
— Paris: With Pen and Pencil - Its People and Literature, Its Life and Business • David W. Bartlett
... part they were heavy, frowsy creatures, slatternly and uncouth. They came generally from the dregs of frontier cities, or were the sweepings of the open country, gleaned in the debauched moments of the men who protected them. Nor, as his eyes wandered in their direction, was it possible to help a comparison between them and the burden of delicate ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... but coarser, more brittle and of stronger flavor; turns rust of iron color when bruised; grows on banks, street-sweepings ...
— Mushrooms of America, Edible and Poisonous • Anonymous
... which still remain to the devourer of books, if, after having consumed all the solid volumes within his reach, he should be reduced to shreds and patches of literature,—like a ship's crew having resort to shoe-leather and the sweepings ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... and dust-pans, if she can," whispered Polly to Fan, while Maud took a joyful "header" among the pillows, and came up smiling and blowzy, for she loved house-work, and often got lectured for stolen visits to the kitchen, and surreptitious sweepings and dustings when the coast ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott
... this she washed the tables, Swept the wide-extended flooring, 150 With the broom of twigs all leafless, Then with broom of leafy branches. Then the sweepings she collected In the dustpan made of copper; Out of doors she took the rubbish, To the field beyond the farmyard, To the field's extremest limit, Where the lowest fence has opening. There she stood upon the ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... grunted. "I know their kidney. They've done time, the three of them. They're just plain sweepings ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... South Saxon cocked a shrewd sceptical eye at him, sized him up and down and sucked in its cheek refusing to be impressed. While by untoward accident, his misfortune rather than his fault, the earliest of his moral sweepings brought him into collision with the most reactionary element in the community, namely the inhabitants of the black cottages ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... strewn with rubbish, for no one had the will or wish to keep it neat. Anna Andreevna rummaged by the stove of Sergius Andreevich, Lina's husband, looking among the papers and sweepings. She peered into the stove and discovered that Leontyevna, the maid—a one-eyed Cyclop—had filled it with birch-wood, whereas it had been agreed that the rotting timber from the summer-house should ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... limp. "It makes me sick," he said, "to think how I've been fooled with. My old schoolmaster ought to have a juiced HIDING. He's a thief. He pretended to undertake to make a man of me, and be's stole twenty-three years of my life, filled me up with scraps and sweepings. Here I am! I don't KNOW anything, and I can't DO anything, and all the ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... floor of the room from edge to edge. That finished, he had thrust his fingers between the carpet and the wood of the window-sill, holding it back with one hand while he passed his magnifying glass over the accumulation of dust and dirt and sweepings that lay in the crack. His pains were rewarded. A tiny scrap of something that glittered in its nest of dirt caught his eye, but it was not until it lay on the tip of one finger beneath his glass that he realized ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... unacquainted with the exact locality of the school, I was fain to make some inquiries about it. These were very jocosely received in general; but everybody knew where it was, and gave the right direction to it. The prevailing idea among the loungers (the greater part of them the very sweepings of the streets and station houses) seemed to be, that the teachers were quixotic, and the school upon the whole "a lark". But there was certainly a kind of rough respect for the intention, and (as I have said) nobody denied the school or its whereabouts, ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... a clear, benign, but heatless shining: a ghostly, remote, yet quite limpid light, which seemed designed for the lighting of other planets and systems, and to strike here by happy chance. A great wind from the S.W., meantime, sent thin snow-sweepings flying ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... evening of this begun Reformation and purging of the Lords House among you, yet in the morning when the discovered filthinesse and sweepings of the Temple shall be orderly cast out, joy shall come with thanksgiving and praise. Though a fire be kindled in the Land, yet it is not to consume any of the mettal, for the Lord is sitting down as a Refiner amongst you, and especially to purifie the ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... wrote me that she had done all she could and that poor Lord Dorimont, who had really been worried to death, was extremely sorry. I couldn't have the matter out with Mrs. Wimbush, for I didn't want to be taunted by her with desiring to aggrandise myself by a public connexion with Mr. Paraday's sweepings. She had signified her willingness to meet the expense of all advertising, as indeed she was always ready to do. The last night of the horrible series, the night before he died, I put my ear ...
— The Death of the Lion • Henry James
... better feeling in one of the girls,—a large coarse Fleming, who sat by the new lord's side. "Fine words," said she, scornfully enough, "for the sweepings of Norman and Flemish kennels. You forget that you left one of this very Leofric's sons behind in Flanders, who would besom all out if he was here ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... in my house all day, with that ever-present sense of privacy and novelty which had thrilled me when I first shut the street door behind me. At evening I sallied out and bought a loaf of bread, half a pound of tea ("sweepings," they call it, and it cost eightpence), a tin kettle (fivepence), a pound of sugar, a tin of Swiss milk, and a tin of American potted meat. I had often heard my mother groan over the expenses of housekeeping, and now I began to understand what she meant. Two and ninepence went like a flash, ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro |
