"Scrubbing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... old widow-woman who eked out her existence by charing,—an industrious, drudging creature, whose sole occupation, since her husband, the journeyman bricklayer, fell from a scaffold, and, breaking his neck, left her happily childless as well as penniless, had been scrubbing stone floors and cleaning out dingy houses when about to be let,—charing, in a word. And in this vocation had she kept body and soul together till a bad rheumatism and old age had put an end to her utilities and entitled her to the receipt ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... in a potato patch, enclosed by a broken-down fence, patched up by Nelly and her new mother with old barrel-staves and branches of trees. The outdoor work which fell to her lot Nelly did not so much dislike. It was the nursing of a screaming baby, or scrubbing dingy, broken boards—work often imposed upon her—which sorely tried her childish strength ...
— Lucy Raymond - Or, The Children's Watchword • Agnes Maule Machar
... fire, while Porter's words echoed and reechoed through her mind. When she turned away from the fire her attention was caught by an Englishwoman who had thrown herself full length on the sofa. Her person was a curious mixture of cleanliness and untidiness, her face was even polished by soap and scrubbing, but her frock, although probably quite clean, looked anything but fresh, and lying down among the cushions had not improved her hair, which had been frowzily frizzed anyway. Nina would have thought Lady Dorothy an impossible person were it not for the "Lady" ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... scrupulously clean. The flagged floor, the deal table, the dresser, with its shelves filled with crockery—all spoke of frequent and thorough scrubbing. The high mantel-shelf bore brass candlesticks—more for ornament than use—which had been polished till they shone like gold. The very walls had been so often subjected to Maggie Jean's whitewashing brush that ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... as she looked out across the blue waves, rippling in the wind and white-capped here and there, "When you know it's washed all the time, grandpa," she responded. "The waves are just scrubbing it now. Can't ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... the inauspicious nature of the day was long prevalent, and is even not yet wholly extinct. To the present hour, we understand, the housewives in Cornwall, and probably also in other parts of the country, refrain scrupulously from scouring or scrubbing on ...
— A Righte Merrie Christmasse - The Story of Christ-Tide • John Ashton
... into the storm. When he came back, Lovin Child was sitting on the hearth with the socks off, and was picking bits of charcoal from the ashes and crunching them like candy in his small, white teeth. Cash was hurrying to finish his scrubbing before the charcoal gave out, and was keeping an eye on the crunching to see that Lovin Child did not get ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... see how sweeping and scrubbing a building was any preparation for the trade of electrician; but I did know that in the books all the boys started with the most menial tasks and by making good ultimately won to the ownership of ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... splendid buffalo-hide, neatly packed; a pipe, two red flannel shirts, a tobacco-pouch, and an Indian blanket; a leather bag, a gunpowder flask, two squares of yellow soap, a bullet mold, and a nightcap; a tomahawk, a paper of nails, a scrubbing-brush, a hammer, and an old gridiron. Having emptied the sack, Mat took up the buffalo hide, and spread it out on his bed, with a very expressive sneer at the patchwork counterpane and meager curtains. He next threw ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... stick. A rude broom enough, but one often used as far east as the new settlements in Pennsylvania to this day. When this was done, they found the floor covered by a slippery black mould that could not be swept off, and which they would have to remove by scrubbing. Here was a new dilemma. They had no bucket in which to bring water from the river, and their gourds would not hold over a quart each, which would make the task of bringing it from such a distance almost an ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... look in the water and see how white the little spot was. It was hard to see in the dim light of the jungle, but sure enough, the spot shone pearly white, just like new. The rhinoceros was so pleased that he grabbed the toothbrush and began scrubbing violently, ...
— My Father's Dragon • Ruth Stiles Gannett
... on Wednesday evening, Letty with her, and in a telescope basket her costume—a simple affair. A plaid shawl borrowed from the washerwoman, a ragged scrubbing skirt borrowed from the charwoman, and a gray wig rented from a costumer for twenty-five cents a night, completed the outfit; for Edna had elected to be an old Irishwoman singing ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... throat. Then he said, cutting off each word short: "Young Lady, what do you think of this? I'm worth more 'an a million dollars—and my wife gets up at five o'clock every morning to do washing and scrubbing." ...
— Lifted Masks - Stories • Susan Glaspell
... expected of us that we should work, but as an offering of love to life and the world, in order to come into harmony with the great law of service. Our ideas of values with regard to occupations are altogether erroneous, from the "inner wisdom" point of view. The scrubbing of a doorstep, if faithfully done in a true spirit of service, is of as much value and real importance as the writing of a deathless poem, or dying for one's country. We can never truthfully say that one act of service is of greater value, or is more important than ...
— Within You is the Power • Henry Thomas Hamblin
... her kitchen and fetched forth a Tin Bowl full of hot suds, and with these she washed me as she had been directed. I bore it all unresistingly—likewise a scrubbing with a rough towel. Then, when my hair was kempt with an old Felting comb, almost toothless, I felt refreshed and hungrier than ever. But Mother Drum never ceased to complain of having ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... of the breeches, I was saying, was the most fashious job, let alone courtship, that ever mortal man put his hand to. Indeed, there was no end to the rubbing, and scrubbing, and brushing, and fyling, and cleaning; for to the like of me, who was not well accustomed to the thing, the whitening was continually coming off and destroying my red coat, or my black leggings. I had mostly forgot to speak ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... do the work of a common sailor. And not only did he take his wheel and lookout, and heave on sheets and tackles, but the dirtiest and most arduous tasks were appointed him. Swung aloft in a bosun's chair, he scraped the masts and slushed down. Holystoning the deck or scrubbing it with fresh limes made his back ache and developed the wasted, flabby muscles. When the Kittiwake lay at anchor and her copper bottom was scrubbed with cocoa-nut husks by the native crew, who dived and did it under water, Pankburn was sent down ...
— A Son Of The Sun • Jack London
... found Pomp busy with a bucket of water and a brush down at the bottom of the garden, where he was scrubbing away at ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... filled the water glasses and opened the oven a dozen times and strained and stirred and mashed and salted and peppered, he begins to understand why his wife is so tired after getting a Sunday dinner. And when he thinks of other days, washing days and ironing and baking and scrubbing and sewing days, why, if he's anyway decent he begins to suspect that he's darn lucky to get a full-grown woman to do all that work for just her room and board. And when he stops to count the times she's tied his necktie, darned his socks and patched his clothes, besides giving him a clean bed, ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... 'Yes,' hollers back the skipper—and they must've been some surprised to hear him—'and the ghost'll be with you to-morrow in the race. Yes,' the skipper says, 'and we're all ready for it. Four weeks since we've been on the ways and maybe a scrubbing wouldn't hurt her, but if it keeps a-blowin' who'll mind that? Not the Johnnie.' Oh, Tommie, if you'd seen her comin' across the Bay of Fundy yesterday afternoon and last night. Did she ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... to clean new potatoes is to rub them with a coarse cloth or flannel, a or scrubbing-brush, and proceed ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... which covered part of the house seemed to Lilac to speak of peace and plenty. It was all so different from her home; the bare white cottage on the hillside where no trees grew, where all was so narrow and cold, and where life seemed to be made up of scrubbing, sweeping, and washing. She looked longingly down from this sometimes to the valley ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... looked cheerful enough this bright morning: the door standing wide open to the October sunlight—the huge fire of logs crackling and blazing on the wide hearth and roaring up the vast open chimney—the rude metal and wooden utensils as clean as scrubbing could make them—and the brick floor clean enough to eat off, as the saying goes. And this cleanliness was not so common in those days of partial civilization as it is now: there were farmhouses enough and to spare in the England of ...
— In the Wars of the Roses - A Story for the Young • Evelyn Everett-Green
... the grandmothers and great grandmothers of this generation, at least the country houses, with front door and back door always standing open, winter and summer, and a thorough draught always blowing through—with all the scrubbing, and cleaning, and polishing, and scouring which used to go on, the grandmothers, and still more the great grandmothers, always out of doors and never with a bonnet on except to go to church, these things entirely account for the fact so often seen of a great ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... that Virginia had "taken it so particular" with Mr. Stafford. Of course, they all suffered by the sacrifice, but most of the burden fell upon her. She certainly had the worst of it. Virginia, away all day, at least escaped the household drudgery. It was a terrible existence—scrubbing floors and washing dishes from morning till night, seeing nobody, beginning to lose hope that she would ever see a change ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... anxious look, produced of course by an occasion so interesting to a female, heightened her complexion to a blush that became her. The creature had certainly made the most of her little finery. Her face shone like that of a child after a fresh scrubbing with a strong towel; her hair, carefully curled with the hot blade of a knife, had been smoothed with soap until it became lustrous by repeated polishing, and her best red ribbon was tied tightly about it in a smart knot, that stood ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... of the hurricane season, but seldom used by the Fawcetts, was a small stone building, with two bedrooms and a living room, a swimming bath, and several huts for servants. The outbuildings were dilapidated, but the house after an airing and scrubbing was as fit for entertainment as any on St. Kitts. The furniture in the Tropics is of cane, and there are no carpets or hangings to invite destruction. Even the mattresses are often but plaited thongs of leather, covered with ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... are made of duck, and, except for spar-deck guns where they are exposed to the weather, should not be painted, but they, as well as the staves, should be kept clean by scrubbing. A becket should be attached to the end to ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... in her assertion. Her insolent rejection of your commands would not stand at all in her way of procuring a new place. And although cleaning a lady's shoes, and bringing in a pail of water, or an armful of wood, is by no means such disgusting employment as scouring greasy pots and scrubbing the floors, she has been told that the former is degrading work not fit for a woman, and she is now in a free country, and will not submit ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... lying on the dinner table. And if Congdon had left New York for Bailey Harbor immediately to put into effect his threat to abduct his child, it might have been Congdon he had shot—not Hoky! The Governor, scrubbing the paint from his hands, called ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... and dried him neatly with the towel. Then she took him back to his box, fed him a nursing bottle of warm milk—he had readily learned to take the bottle—covered him up and hung the soiled wet towel on the rose bush by the front door. Leaving the scrubbing brush in the porch swing and the jellied remains of the soap on a gingham pillow, Sarah retired to put on a dry frock, feeling that she had accomplished ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... could have had lots of fun with other people's hogs. He was a chump, Lou Sandberg. To kill yourself for a pig—think of that, now!" Nils laughed all the way downstairs, and quite embarrassed little Eric, who fell to scrubbing his face and hands at the tin basin. While he was parting his wet hair at the kitchen looking glass, a heavy tread sounded on the stairs. The boy dropped his comb. "Gracious, there's Mother. We must have talked too long." He ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... work-room," said her aunt. "We think the place where we work ought to be the prettiest room in the house. White paint requires more frequent scrubbing than colored paint; but the girls say they don't mind, since it keeps our spirits smiling. Would you like to help dry these pans? You will find towels on that line behind ...
— The Camerons of Highboro • Beth B. Gilchrist
... things—not showy but fine and good to look at. Then one day, when the weather was fine and I knew the old man would be out in his buggy driving round—I dressed myself up to beat the band. I took hours to it—scrubbing, powdering, sacheting, perfuming, fixing the hair, fixing my finger-nails, fixing up my feet, polishing every nail and making them ...
— The Price She Paid • David Graham Phillips
... her way to Carminster for a few weeks, and afterwards to Bath. Forthwith Mrs. Aylward and her subordinates fell into a frenzy of opening shutters, lighting fires, laying down carpets and uncovering furniture. Scrubbing was the daily task for the maids, and there was nothing extra possible in that line, but there was hurry enough to exacerbate the temper, and when Aurelia offered her services she was tartly told that she could solely be useful by keeping the children out of the way; for in spite of ...
— Love and Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... he was busy at the sink scrubbing the dishes, when he was surprised by feeling two very competent arms surround him, and a pink gingham apron was thrown over his head. "Mifflin," said his wife, "how many times have I told you to put on an apron when you ...
— The Haunted Bookshop • Christopher Morley
... Ned Trimble, and that ugly-looking fellow 'tending to the fire is George Wakeman, and that horrid-looking chap scrubbing off his dirty face, is Alfred Wilkins. Neither of them know much, and I brought them along to black my boots and dress ...
— Adrift in the Wilds - or, The Adventures of Two Shipwrecked Boys • Edward S. Ellis
... least ceremony—not even that of wiping the shoes. There was neither door-bell nor knocker, scraper nor mat; and the floor of the lobby seemed but slightly acquainted with the broom,—to say nothing of the scrubbing-brush. It looked like the floor of a corn or provision warehouse. I had no alternative but to venture in. Immediately after, there entered a young man with a fowling-piece, whom before I had seen at a little distance watching the movements of a flock of wild pigeons. I took him for ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... the corner was the all-night restaurant, through the glass front revealing a lunch counter, and a number of cloth-draped tables awaiting occupants. A few of these were in use, a single waiter catering to the guests; a woman was scrubbing the floor under the cigar stand, while a round-faced, rather genial-looking young fellow, stood, leaning negligently against the cashier's desk. Rather doubtfully I glanced uneasily up and down the deserted street, and then aside into the still averted face of my ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... dinner was served. Madame X.'s daughter and I, after such a scrubbing and disinfecting, came down the last ones and stepped into a veritable playworld of the Middle Ages with the most beautiful setting—a large salon, opening out onto the terrace, with old, Flemish-wood fire-place and raftered ceiling, Japanese ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... said Grandmother when Mary Jane brought up the potatoes, "take that scrubbing brush over there and scrub them clean. Then open the oven door with this holder and lay the potatoes on ...
— Mary Jane—Her Visit • Clara Ingram Judson
... girl is obliged to work in a kitchen she should respect her work and dignify her position. She may be a "Somebody" washing dishes or scrubbing a floor, if she does not depreciate her work and if she will give it status instead of half doing it and ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... of people you bring in. Their feet seem to have gone purposely to pick up the mud in the four quarters of the town in order to bring it in here afterwards; and poor Francoise is almost off her legs with the constant scrubbing of the floors, which your masters come and dirty every day as ...
— The Shopkeeper Turned Gentleman - (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme) • Moliere (Poquelin)
... minutes she fed heartily, showing really remarkable skill in conveying pieces of sausage to her mouth by means of the knife alone. Finding it necessary to breathe at last, she looked round at Jane. The hand-maiden was on her knees near the fire, scrubbing very hard at the pan with successive pieces of newspaper. It was a sight to increase the gusto of Clem's meal, but of a sudden there came into the girl's mind a yet more delightful thought. I have mentioned that in the back-kitchen lay the body ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... thing," she mused. "I must be a sort of chameleon, the way I change with my surroundings. It doesn't seem possible that only last week I was scrambling around with my head tied up in a towel, scrubbing and cleaning and dragging furniture around at a break-neck speed. I could almost believe I've never done anything all my life but trail around this garden at my elegant leisure like some ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... he muttered to himself, "I had got a cake or two of soap here, but I suppose it is a thing that they never heard of; even a scrubbing-brush would be a comfort. I shall be weeks before I get myself thoroughly white again; it is ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... homing was no task with a turkey at the end. Muggs, still wrapped in mysterious silence, knew the very spot where Christmas odors began to permeate the frosty air and redoubled the speed in his drumming arm, but when after a vigorous scrubbing his glistening eye fell upon the holly-bright table and an enormous turkey by the Doctor's plate, only a frosty menace in Mike's eye, it seemed, restrained another blood-curdling shriek of delight. There was paralyzing apology in his ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... Scrubbing is what they need. If you will come to-morrow morning and put these rooms in order, I will give you a ...
— Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley • Belle K. Maniates
... these ponds, took sand moistened with a little water, and rubbed the furniture till it was white and clean. This we have to do three times: such is the rule. If any of the furniture was polished, you can imagine that not much of the polish was left after all this scrubbing and rubbing. ...
— Pictures of Jewish Home-Life Fifty Years Ago • Hannah Trager
... cook, was scrubbing the stairs, With a mop and a pail of water; And Tiny ran off, with his head in the pot, While the ...
— Naughty Puppies • Anonymous
... iodine from the doctor, sir, and mixed it with water till it was just thick enough to tinge our skin. It will wash pretty well off with plenty of scrubbing, but we mean to use walnut juice when we start; it lasts much longer, and is ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... wasn't to blame for Mrs. Wiley dying, but that I must try to think of her good points and not of her bad ones. I dunno what good points she had, unless it was keeping her house clean and making first-class butter. I know I 'most wore my arms out scrubbing her old kitchen floor with the knots in it. But anything your father says goes with ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was a washing-stand, with ewers and basins, and soap and brushes, and towels, and a large bath full of clean water—what a heap of things all for washing! "She must be a very dirty lady," thought Tom, "by my master's rule, to want as much scrubbing as all that. But she must be very cunning to put the dirt out of the way so well afterwards, for I don't see a speck about the room, not ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... dicker! Why, Mary wife, such names will handicap the babies from the start. Who can imagine an Ivanora making bread? or an Idelia scrubbing a floor? But, however, if it pleases you, all right, though I do think a sensible Susan or Hannah would be more useful to girls of our ...
— Divided Skates • Evelyn Raymond
... there was much in it that deserved our highest praise. It was honest, humble work. But who would imagine from the pompous bearing assumed by the gentleman that he ever peddled newspapers, or that his mother earned her daily bread by scrubbing on her knees office floors? And how does this ...
— Henry Ossian Flipper, The Colored Cadet at West Point • Henry Ossian Flipper
... tightened within herself, but she marched on and found 13A. A dirty house, pots with ferns in the two grimy windows, and the walls streaky with white stains against the grey. The door was ajar and, pushing it a little, she saw a servant-girl on her knees scrubbing the floor. At the noise of her step the ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... water—the dust itself can be extracted by merely filtering the gas through cotton-wool, felt, or the like. The least volatile liquid impurities will be removed partly in the condenser, partly in the washer, and partly by the mechanical dry-scrubbing action of the solid purifying material in the chemical purifier. To some extent the more volatile liquid bodies will be removed similarly; but a complete extraction of them demands the employment of some special washing apparatus in which the crude acetylene is compelled to bubble (in finely ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... to island laziness, shiftlessness, slovenliness, dirt, and active assertion of Ohio vim. Sick of vermin and slime, I would take pail, scrubbing brush and lye, and fall to; sick of it all, I would get a Summit county breakfast, old fashioned pan cakes for old times' sake; sick of the native laundress who cleansed nothing, I would give an Akron rub myself to my own clothes and ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... glass of milk, and the lubras were told to scrub the floor. Sam brought the milk immediately, and the lubras, after scrubbing two or three isolated patches on the floor, went off on ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... day but one arrived, and Meg set about the scrubbing and the cleaning of the room heartily, as she had seen her mother do before her father's return. Robin was set upon the highest chair, with baby on his lap, to look on at Meg's exertions, out of the way of the wet flooring, ...
— Little Meg's Children • Hesba Stretton
... order as she talked. "When I went to get some oysters for Hannah, Mr. Laurence was in the fish shop, but he didn't see me, for I kept behind the fish barrel, and he was busy with Mr. Cutter the fishman. A poor woman came in with a pail and a mop, and asked Mr. Cutter if he would let her do some scrubbing for a bit of fish, because she hadn't any dinner for her children, and had been disappointed of a day's work. Mr. Cutter was in a hurry and said 'No', rather crossly, so she was going away, looking ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... any other washing machine on the market. Rights and patents are owned and controlled by us exclusively. The clothes when placed in the machine move with it, and the most delicate fabric cannot be worn or torn. This we guarantee. There is no stirring, crushing or scrubbing, Hot soapy water swashes back and forth through the clothes, eradicating almost instantly every particle of dirt. We guarantee a wash can be done in the "1900" Machine in less than half the time required by any other washer. There is no bending, no hand-car ...
— The Mayflower, January, 1905 • Various
... she would come out when she heard the sledge bells but she did not. Two bare-footed women with pails and tucked-up skirts, who had evidently been scrubbing the floors, came out of the side door. She was not at the front door either, and only Tikhon, the man-servant, with his apron on, evidently also busy cleaning, came out into the front porch. His aunt Sophia Ivanovna alone met him in the ante-room; she had a silk dress on and a cap ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... brushed his whiskers up into a curve on his cheeks, the curves almost corresponding with the curve of his spectacles above; then he gave his bristly, porcupine-shaped head a backward rub with a sort of thing like a scrubbing-brush. 'If I'd only had the silver specs,' thought he, 'I should ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... water to the tanks, but provision was made for trifles of this kind. When we peered over the edge of a steaming vat, it was to discover a platoon of Tommies enjoying the "time of their lives," before they joined the line of naked beings, each scrubbing the now happy man ahead. An endless stream of garments advanced through electric superheaters in parallel columns. There seemed as much excitement about the chance of every man getting his own clothing back as there is in the bran pie at ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... violent use, had been chipped, kicked, splintered, punched, stained, scorched, hammered, dessicated, damped, and defiled, had met indeed with almost every possible adventure except a conflagration or a scrubbing, until at last it had come to this high refuge of Parload's attic to sustain the simple requirements of Parload's personal cleanliness. There were, in chief, a basin and a jug of water and a slop-pail of tin, and, further, a piece of yellow soap in a tray, a tooth-brush, a ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... lay with her eyes wide open, watching a fly on the wall, that was scrubbing his thin wings ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... discovered my Uncle Roland in a great state of embarrassment. The maid-servant was scrubbing the stones at the hall-door; she was naturally plump,—and it is astonishing how much more plump a female becomes when she is on all-fours! The maid-servant, then, was scrubbing the stones, her face turned from the Captain; ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... told her dad that she wanted to fight with him, even though "fighting" in this case meant washing the coarse clothing of her father and Frank, scrubbing the rough, warped boards of the cabin floor, and frying ranch-cured bacon for every meal, and in making butter to sell, and counting the eggs every night and being careful to use only ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... at Biggleswick—was one of some two hundred others which ringed a pleasant Midland common. It was badly built and oddly furnished; the bed was too short, the windows did not fit, the doors did not stay shut; but it was as clean as soap and water and scrubbing could make it. The three-quarters of an acre of garden were mainly devoted to the culture of potatoes, though under the parlour window Mrs Jimson had a plot of sweet-smelling herbs, and lines of lank sunflowers ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... consisted of two men with cans of turpentine and gasoline and an equipment of scrubbing brushes. Parsons, the farmer, came over to watch this novel proceeding, happy in the possession of three crisp five-dollar notes given in accordance with the agreement made with him. All day the two men scrubbed the rocks ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces at Work • Edith Van Dyne
... function occupied a space of over two hours, and necessitated an attention to his toilet of a kind not commonly seen. That is to say, after a brief post-grandial nap he called for soap and water, and spent a considerable period in the task of scrubbing his cheeks (which, for the purpose, he supported from within with his tongue) and then of drying his full, round face, from the ears downwards, with a towel which he took from the waiter's shoulder. Twice ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... knees before the kitchen range, polishing the nickel name-plate on the oven door. A dish-pan of hot water and a scrubbing brush stood upon the floor beside her. As Mrs. Brewster came in, Sary glanced ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... rising, and she looked round. Beyond the heavy arch, beneath which she stood, was a courtyard where she could see two men, also in blue, with peaked caps. Then, to her left, she became conscious of a shaven-headed noiseless being in drab-gray clothes, on hands and knees, scrubbing the end of a corridor. Her tremor at the stealthy ugliness of this crouching figure yielded at once to a spasm of pity. The man gave her a look, furtive, yet so charged with intense penetrating curiosity that ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Islands. We are only about a mile from the shore, and refreshing it is to look at it; but as yet we have seen no beach; the rock runs right into the sea. Such bustle and excitement on board! emigrants getting their things ready, carpenters making the old "Duke" look smart, sailors scrubbing, but no painting going on, to our extreme delight. It is so calm, quite as smooth as a small lake; indeed there is less perceptible motion than I have felt on the Lake of Como. No backs, no bones aching, though here I speak for others more than for myself, for the Bishop began his talk ...
— Life of John Coleridge Patteson • Charlotte M. Yonge
... gave it to him that night when he was partly undressed, and he was so enchanted with it that he scampered around hugging it, and saying, "Pile! pile!" like a little Cockney. He gave such squeals of ecstasy that everybody came into the nursery to find him scrubbing his crib with a nail-brush and ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... to heels and with teeth rattling, for they had come from the Dardanelles, they stood stripped to the waist scrubbing their sun-tanned chests and shoulders with ice-water. It was a spectacle that inspired confidence. When a man is so keen after water to wash in that he will kick the top off a frozen lake to get it, a little thing ...
— With the French in France and Salonika • Richard Harding Davis
... of the week, when the rest of the world is having its relaxing Saturday off and coming to gloat over you as it acquires its Sunday-reading best seller, if you work in a library you begin just at noon to wish devoutly that you'd taken up scrubbing-by-the-day, or hack-driving, or porch-climbing or—anything on earth that gave you a ...
— The Rose Garden Husband • Margaret Widdemer
... or brass basins, a dipper and a lot of aromatic twigs bound in small bunches. With these he flails the dead cuticle much to the same effect as our scouring it off with a rough towel. Such is the grandfather of the "Russian Bath" found in some of our own cities. After scrubbing thoroughly, and steaming almost to the point of dissolution on one of the higher platforms, a Russian will dash on cold water from the barrel and dry himself and put on his clothes and feel tip-top. An American would make his will and call the undertaker before following suit. In the ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... must go to sleep—that's the only thing when you're as miserable as poor Nelly. You know it is, Will. Don't you remember that poor Mrs. Henessy whose son died here? Her letters to me afterwards used to be all about scrubbing. If she could scrub from morning till night, she could just get along. She scrubbed herself sane again. The bigger the floor, the better she liked it. When bedtime came, she just slept like a log. ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the exquisite idea of dipping his brush in the bucket and sprinkling William with water. A scrubbing-brush is in many ways almost as good as a hose. Each had a pail of ammunition. Each had a good-sized brush. During the next few minutes they experienced purest joy. Then William heard threatening movements above, and decided hastily ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... here this afternoon," he said as he hung up the receiver. "Will she bring her own scrubbing things, or are we supposed to have them for her? This is some ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... mistake of admiring her faults of character, but try to find her better qualities, and help her to develop them. It is a fatal thing when girls of your age set up these false standards, and order their lives by them. There are worse things than school-teaching, yes, or even floor-scrubbing or window-washing. Lovely tea-gowns and silver- backed brushes are all very pretty and nice to have, if they are not gained at the sacrifice of something better. I should have said to my daughter, had I been Mrs. Denton, "We will work for each other, my darling, and try ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... time, "The Long Trail" being discovered at the bottom of the pile and satisfactorily negotiated, and I forgot all about it until the next Friday evening, when, just as I was about to shake the dust of Cambridge Heath off my shoes, my cleaner, rising from her scrubbing, wiped her hands on her apron, produced two large limp sheets of white paper which resolved themselves into the music I ought to have had and hadn't, and pressed them upon me with all the eagerness of a more than ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... double back into the recessed part. There was nothing else for it. He had to sit still on a small folding stool, half smothered by the heavy coats hanging there. We listened to the steward going into the bath-room out of the saloon, filling the water-bottles there, scrubbing the bath, setting things to rights, whisk, bang, clatter—out again into the saloon—turn the key— click. Such was my scheme for keeping my second self invisible. Nothing better could be contrived under the circumstances. And there we sat; I at my writing-desk ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... as she grew older, had much time to spend outdoors, there were many tasks about the house and farm she had to perform. The chest was soon filled with quilts and that bugbear was gone from her life. But there was continual scrubbing, baking, mending, and other household tasks to be done, so that much practice caused the girl to develop into a capable little housekeeper. Aunt Maria frankly admitted that Phoebe worked cheerfully and well, a ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... watch on deck's "turning to'' at daybreak and washing down, scrubbing, and swabbing the decks. This, together with filling the "scuttled butt'' with fresh water, and coiling up the rigging, usually occupies the time until seven bells (half after seven), when all hands get breakfast. At eight the day's work begins, and lasts until sundown, with ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... skin grew moist, and I knew he was saved from that death of misplaced matter vulgarly called "dirt," to which well-paid medical inspectors had consigned him, while giving their invaluable scientific attention to floor-scrubbing and bed-making, to whitewashing ...
— Half a Century • Jane Grey Cannon Swisshelm
... Heathfield towards Burwash, is astonished to find a "Railway Inn," let him spend no time in seeking a station, for there is none within some miles. This inn was once "The Labour in Vain," with a signboard representing two men hard at work scrubbing a nigger till the white should gleam through. Then came a scheme to run a line to Eastbourne, midway between the present Heathfield line and the Burwash line, and enterprise dictated the changing of the sign to one more in keeping with the times. The railway project was abandoned but the ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... soon that the god of the hospital is the Staff, although worship did not blind the nurses to their weaknesses. Thus the older men, who had been trained before the day of asepsis and modern methods, were revered but carefully watched. They would get out of scrubbing their hands whenever they could, and they hated their beards tied up with gauze. The nurses, keen, competent and kindly, but shrewd, too, looked after these elderly recalcitrants; loved a ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... salt afterwards. It is also advisable to be your own weeding woman, that you may be sure that the weeds come up by the roots! Next to the cast-iron back before mentioned, I recommend a housemaid's kneeling mat (such as is used for scrubbing floors), as a ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... soft soap, and flannel, and a new scrubbing brush from the storeroom. But she was too tired to do any more. First she fell asleep in her chair, and then she went ...
— The Great Big Treasury of Beatrix Potter • Beatrix Potter
... to the air from the break, because of tearing of tissues by end of bone, condition is very dangerous; first treatment may save life, by preventing infection. Before reducing fracture, and without stirring the patient much, after scrubbing your hands very ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... am very silly," replied Nellie, wiping her eyes and scrubbing her wet cheeks with startling vehemence; "anyhow I'll stop now. And thank you for taking my part, Winnie; you'll be a friend worth having, ...
— Aunt Judith - The Story of a Loving Life • Grace Beaumont
... Friday before the tomb of the interred image of the Saviour, for the oblations for which it was not too large. Another of them is kept upon the altar of Boroughbridge Church (N. Riding of Yorkshire), but sadly worn down by scrubbing to keep it bright, and the attempt at a copy of the Inscription in a Harrowgate Guide is felicitously ludicrous: it is there taken as a relic of the Roman Isurium on the same spot. Three others were observed some years ago in a neglected nook of the sacristy ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 9, Saturday, December 29, 1849 • Various
... than any of its predecessors had done since I came to this idyllic spot. House-cleaning began on Monday, and under Mrs. Grundy's experienced eye the half-dozen negresses employed in the work moved with alacrity and precision. But what with beating carpets, scrubbing floors, and turning things topsy-turvy in general, the task was not accomplished with any considerable despatch. A man is a cumbrous article at house-cleaning time, as any housewife will aver, and Mr. Grundy, recognizing this fact, betook himself to the neighboring ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... task on hand, this city-ful of artists had time for frivolous idling? Since dawn these artists had been scrubbing their doors, washing windows, and sluicing the gutters. One is not a provincial for nothing; one is honest in the provinces; one does not drape finery over a filthy frame. The city was washed ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... the little house had almost driven her back from its threshold. She filled the small shabby hall, she fell over the brushes left by the general servant who had been scrubbing the oilcloth, not expecting her ladyship; she sat uncomfortably on the green rep chairs of the drawing-room staring at a Berlin-wool banner-screen which represented a poodle with beads for his eyes, at the silver shavings in the grate, ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... Hildegarde then looked for a scrubbing-brush, but finding none, was obliged to give the little black table such a cleaning as she could with the broom and bunches of grass. Behind the house was a lilac-bush, covered with lovely fragrant clusters of blossoms; she gathered a huge bunch of them, and putting them in a ...
— Hildegarde's Holiday - a story for girls • Laura E. Richards
... type of Celt. The wild thatch of his scrubbing-brush hair shone purple in the light. Scrape his face as he would, the purple shadow of his beard seemed ingrained in his white white skin. Black-browed and black-lashed, he had the luminous blue-gray-green eyes of the colleen. There was a curious untamable quality in his look that ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... emigration. Carrying heavy lumbering wooden furniture to the woods of Upper Canada is as "coals to Newcastle." The black walnut makes handsomer furniture than mahogany, and does not so easily stain, a property which saves much scrubbing and not a little scolding in families. In clothes, boots and shoes are most useful, for Canadian leather resembles hide, and one pair of English shoes will easily last out three American. In Canada, a sovereign ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 557., Saturday, July 14, 1832 • Various
... Frenchman, apparently, stood behind the board counter, and bowed at their approach. He wore a little black spike or goatee, and his face fairly shone above a collarless shirt. From a room behind sounded vigorous scrubbing ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... discomfort at the world shown him at lunch-time, a world capable of existing—there was no doubt about that—but so unnecessary, such a thing to believe in— Shaw and Wells and the serious sixpenny weeklies! What were they after, scrubbing and demolishing, these elderly people? Had they never read Homer, Shakespeare, the Elizabethans? He saw it clearly outlined against the feelings he drew from youth and natural inclination. The poor devils had rigged up this meagre object. Yet something of ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... being married for two months, so that she could see us settled and get the new nurse into our ways, as she called it; she too had been crying, so that she was quite a fright, for her nose was all bumpy-looking with the way she had been scrubbing at it and her eyes. She was very kind to us; she took Racey on her knee, and let Tom and me sit close up to her; and if she had had three arms she would have put one round each ...
— The Boys and I • Mrs. Molesworth
... slept under Joe's bed, woke him every morning with a sharp little bark, as much as saying, "Wake up, lazy fellow, and have a frolic with me," and then bounced up beside him for a game. And how he frisked when Joe took him out! The only thing he did not enjoy was his weekly scrubbing, and the combing with an old coarse toilet comb which followed. But he bore it patiently for Joe's sake. Vacation came to an end, and school began. This was as sore a trial to Blinky as to Joe, for of course he could not be allowed in school, though he left Joe at the door with most ...
— Harper's Young People, January 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... on the bridge, and into the chart-room, where a letter, commenced two days before, awaited termination. These long letters began with the words, "My darling wife," and the steward, between the scrubbing of the floors and the dusting of chronometer-boxes, snatched at every opportunity to read them. They interested him much more than they possibly could the woman for whose eye they were intended; and this for the reason that they related ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... conceiving that in this situation there would be less danger of his being seen from the shore, which was the only circumstance that could deprive us of the immense treasure, on which we had at present so eagerly fixed our thoughts. During this interval, we were employed in scrubbing and cleansing our ships, in bringing them into their most advantageous trim, and in regulating the orders, signals, and stations to be observed, when we should arrive off Acapulco, and the time of the departure of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 11 • Robert Kerr
... to keep our gowns clean, Louis, when we are milking and scrubbing, and doing all sorts of ...
— Canadian Crusoes - A Tale of The Rice Lake Plains • Catharine Parr Traill
... frightened face; and Tommie, a round headed youngster, like a thousand other round headed and freckle-faced boys. Both of them were now sitting very straight in their chairs, staring at the visitor with a certain resentment, he thought. He suspected that they had been included in the general scrubbing. Inasmuch as it had been uncertain just when the visitor would come, they must have been required to do this every night, and he could imagine family disturbances, with arguments possibly not altogether ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... to bed again, and it being nearly morning, the maid was called up, and I heard her scrubbing the floor and reducing the kitchen to its usual ...
— Kristy's Rainy Day Picnic • Olive Thorne Miller
... the grub, I can tell you he worked for two, but as to anything else, he made me carry his pack as well as my own, on the pretext that he had sprained his ankle, and his only contribution to the firm was a frousy old scrubbing-brush which he sneaked from a poor woman whilst I was selling her a ha'p'orth of pins. He seemed to think he'd done something mighty grand—'expropriation' he called it; pah, those are your English revolutionists!" and ...
— A Girl Among the Anarchists • Isabel Meredith
... the crew fell to scrubbing the bottom of the boat with an earnestness and zeal which soon removed every trace of moss and grass. She was then permitted to dry for a short time, and the bright October sun soon completed their work. ...
— In School and Out - or, The Conquest of Richard Grant. • Oliver Optic
... attractive window curtains and portieres; painting the stones that framed the fireplace, the crude window-casings and door jamb; and in draping certain corner recesses which were to achieve dignity as clothes closets. They were scrubbing the floor when Percival passed on his ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... I heard him descend into the cellar and there was a faint digging sound as he performed some outlandish task. Then I heard him in the hallway and on the stairs. I heard the splashing of water and the sound of scrubbing. ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... New York, a frail and highly sensitive woman, was put in a "punishment cell" on bread and water, under a 'charge of "impudence." Mrs. Kendall says that her impudence consisted of "protesting to the matron that scrubbing floors on my hands and knees was too severe work for me as I had been unable for days to eat the prison food. My impudence further consisted ...
— Jailed for Freedom • Doris Stevens
... thee, Goetz, that I would do ought with the girl that should hinder her from being the very same fat, sourkrout-cooking, pewter-scrubbing housewife ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a small brush, like a test-tube brush; he was scrubbing out the holes. The chambers. He was using a solvent that smelled ...
— Murder in the Gunroom • Henry Beam Piper
... are, old chap!" cried the hilarious voice of Anthony from an inner apartment. "Turn to the right, steer clear of the scrubbing brushes, and help yourself to a ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various
... having misconducted himself. The moment Lika had gone upstairs for two or three hours' sleep, he said to me: 'Richie, you and I have no time for that. We must have a man at Falmouth's house by eight o'clock. If the scrubbing-maid on all fours-not an inelegant position, I have remarked—declares him dead, we are at Bartlett's (money-lender) by ten: and in Chippenden borough before two post meridian. As I am a tactician, there is mischief! but I will turn it to my uses, as ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... at once humble his individual pride by the contemplation of their sagacity, and to elevate him by the frequent evidence of the marvels of animal life—all these calls upon our higher faculties will be wanting, and lacking them your immortal part will be dizzied, stunned by the monotony of the scrubbing-brush, and poisoned past the remedy of perfume by yellow soap. Your wife and children, too, will have their faces continually shining like the holiday saucers on the mantel-piece. Now consider the conceit, the worse than arrogance of ...
— History of English Humour, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alfred Guy Kingan L'Estrange
... been heard of, and the washing was wrung by hand. The stalwart farmer "calculated to hire" in haying, harvesting, planting, plowing, threshing and killing times. Whatever might have been the wife's calculations, she toiled unaided, cooking, washing, ironing, scrubbing, sewing, churning, butter-making and "bringing up a family," single-handed, with never a creature to lift an ounce or do a stroke for her while she could stand upon ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... naked boys were mounted on a buffalo, and near them an Arab, also in the water, was scrubbing the back of another buffalo, to the ...
— A Trip to the Orient - The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise • Robert Urie Jacob
... Yes, you will have time enough. The train isn't due till after six, and they'll be a half-hour longer getting home from the station. Sit you down, Goodsoul, just for one little bit of minute. The scrubbing must surely be done by now. ...
— Reels and Spindles - A Story of Mill Life • Evelyn Raymond |
