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






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Scrub" Quotes from Famous Books



... verandah, and having a bit of lawn in front. It was sheltered by trees, and between it and the beach a bank of sand from ten to fifteen feet high ran along the shore, the work of the southwest gales during many ages. In many places this bank was covered with scrub and brushwood on ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford

... is an area peculiarly adapted for the cultivation of tobacco; and east of the tobacco district, north of the coastal belt of wheat in a region of sandy scrub, the bush country, are the ostrich farms, in the hands mainly of men of considerable capital, who supply nearly all the feathers derived from the domesticated ostrich. The plumes are sometimes worth as much as $200 ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord

... Would people about him look like that naked? Thank God they were dressed! An ankle in silk was better than a thigh in sunlight. An old saw ... beauty lay in the imagination. Women removed their beauty with their clothes. The nymphs on the wall reminded one chiefly that they were careful to scrub their ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht

... came out; he went on, up and up. He would get to the top quicker than anyone ever had! It was something he could do better than that young beast. The pine-trees gave way to stunted larches, and these to pine scrub and bare scree, up which he scrambled, clutching at the tough bushes, terribly out of breath, his heart pumping, the sweat streaming into his eyes. He had no feeling now but wonder whether he would get to the top before he dropped, exhausted. He thought ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy

... delectable to hear, but not in the least like an ordinary woman's laugh,—"we women (there are four of us here already) will take the domestic and indoor part of the business, as a matter of course. To bake, to boil, to roast, to fry, to stew,—to wash, and iron, and scrub, and sweep,—and, at our idler intervals, to repose ourselves on knitting and sewing,—these, I suppose, must be feminine occupations, for the present. By and by, perhaps, when our individual adaptations begin to develop themselves, it may be that ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... O'Malligan,—the last of the O'Malligans being now in trousers,—and hung over the side with every mark of approving interest. And happy with something to love and an object to work for, Mary continued to scrub on with a heart strangely light. "And I couldn't slight the corners if I wanted to," she told her neighbors, "with them great solemn ...
— The Angel of the Tenement • George Madden Martin

... very eager to begin earning money for her passage home, offering to teach, to scrub, and even to learn to cook, if we'd learn ...
— The House of the Misty Star - A Romance of Youth and Hope and Love in Old Japan • Fannie Caldwell Macaulay

... foreign ports are very sympathetic, very kind, very pleasant, at the Wednesday evening concert in the rebuilt Genoese palace or the deserted Neapolitan hotel, or the tin tabernacle amid the white sand and scrub; but they take good care to keep together at the upper end of the room, and the audience is railed off from them if possible, while the merry girls outside, who live shameful lives, and whose existence is ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee

... the priest will scrub off thy turpentine with a new haircloth; and now, good-day, the maids are ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley

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

... cleaning up?" Samuel looked round. The place did not seem very neat to him. "I'll scrub the ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair

... forest, like the conqueror of some city who, having first prevailed over his adversary, applies the torch as the finishing blow to his conquest. For a long time Billy Kirby would then be seen sauntering around the taverns, the rider of scrub races, the bully of cock-fights, and not infrequently the hero of such sports as the ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... outside the house, the same illustration applies. They also think that we possess greater physical strength. They chivalrously shield us from the exhausting effort of voting, but allow us to stand in the street-cars, wash dishes, push a baby carriage, and scrub the kitchen floor. Should we not be proud because they consider us so much stronger and wiser than they? Interruptions are fatal to their work, as the wife of even ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed

... that Captain Vernon was ready to rush the position with the bayonet. The scene that followed was magnificent. Waving their hats and cheering like schoolboys after a football match, our men started to run through the scrub towards the silent fort. And then as they went, a pitiless fire suddenly poured in upon them, a hail of bullets tore up the ground at their feet, swept down their gallant ranks, like grass before the scythe, and the men realised amid that enclosing and remorseless fire that treachery ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie

... brought us by a lake which gave a chilly air to the landscape in the winter day, then past a strip of country meagrely wooded. We turned into a narrow road that struck the hills at once, skirting a sloping place covered with scrub and quite dark, like a black patch on the landscape. After that it was a barren pasture, prolific only in bleached boulders of rocks, of bracken that lay wasted, of broom that was sere. It was a very still afternoon, not a breath of wind stirring. Sheep looking ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly

... while you see if Polly can come and scrub the room out. It ought to be done before you stay here, let ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott

... routine of "the road" had gone on for more than a fortnight, they were crossing a broad expanse of hard stony country, shut in on the north by dense mulga scrub, when Sax noticed a thin column of smoke rising from the trees a few miles away. He could hardly believe his eyes, and when he looked again it was no longer coming up from the trees, but was rising ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman

... oppressed with the weight of beans, bacon, and soggy biscuit. As we smoked in silence our eyes rested gloomily upon the landscape—our domain. Before us lay an amber- coloured, sun-scorched plain; beyond were the foot-hills, bristling with chaparral, scrub-oaks, pines and cedars; beyond these again rose the grey peaks of the Santa Lucia range, pricking the eastern horizon. Over all hung the palpitating skies, eternally and exasperatingly blue, a-quiver ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell

... house-cleaning mania, and has dragged me into it by representing the sin and misery of those deluded mortals who think servants know how to sweep and to scrub. In spite of my resolution not to get under her thumb, I have somehow let her rule and reign over me to such an extent that I can hardly sit up long enough to write this. Does the whole duty of woman consist in keeping ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss

... more daily to invent—conceits, false analogies. Be it remembered, that the affectation of such conceits has always marked the decay and approaching death of a reigning school of poetry; that when, for instance, the primeval forest of the Elizabethan poets dwindled down into a barren scrub of Vaughans, and Cowleys, and Herberts, and Crashawes, this was the very form in which the deadly blight appeared. In vain did the poetasters, frightened now and then at their own nonsense, try to keep up the decaying dignity of ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley

... relentlessly until the snow was belly-deep and both animals began to fight obstinately to turn back. Douglas dismounted and fastened the horses to a scrub cedar. Then he wallowed forward afoot to break trail. The wind increased constantly with the elevation, but even higher than its eerie note sounded the wild call of a solitary coyote. Douglas heard the call but remotely. His mind ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie

... to quicken that decorous pace which the obedient animal had acquired through long experience of its master's habits. The locality had an unfavorable reputation. Sailors— deserters from whale-ships—had been seen lurking about the outskirts of the town, and low scrub oaks which everywhere beset the trail might have easily concealed some desperate runaway. Besides these material obstructions, the Devil, whose hostility to the Church was well known, was said to sometimes ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte

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

... Cousin Harry, take first ride on St. Patrick (the name of the ass)—here's a leg up. The two Dicks can have Scrub and Rasper. Jack and Billy, boys, catch a hold of the bridles, or devil a ha'p'worth of ride and tie there'll be in at all, if them Dicks get the start—Shanks' mare will take you to Kells. Don't be galloping off in that manner, but shoot aisy! Remember, the ass has got to keep up with you, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 1, August 28, 1841 • Various

... his hat on his head, seized the suit-case and umbrella, and galloped down the steps. The spiral marble staircase echoed his clattering flight; scrub-women heard him coming and fled; he leaped a pail of water and a mop; several old gentlemen flattened themselves against the wall to give him room; and a blond young person with pencils in her hair lisped "Gee!" ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers

... suggest that you reflect upon the reality of your condition. In any event, what will become of yourself? Hey? And what will become of this darling crew of yours, we hold prisoners below? And what will become of this scrub, here in the chair—this apple of ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer

... strength. He knew only that the very soul of him cried out aloud that he might at last come to her, and that his eyes, ever seeking, seeking, seeking, were more than half afraid to rest upon every shadowy, stirring bunch of scrub brush, more than half afraid to run ahead of him down the far sides of the ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory

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

... the southern slope he came to a deep gulch in which the tops of scrub pines showed above the snow. Following its edge for some distance his eye at length was caught by a dark shape on the rocks. He climbed slowly and painfully down to it and saw the body of a man, clothed like a German forester. His neck and many of ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler

... last. "He does it because it is a part of his work, and a shame it is that he has to. Scrub-women come in and do the rest of the cleaning, but they are not trusted with the desks, and so the attendants have to take turns doing that part of it. That's why your father has to leave so very early in ...
— The Soul of a Child • Edwin Bjorkman

... gallop, and over a creaking, swaying, loudly protesting bamboo bridge that seemed bound to collapse under the impact; up the corresponding ascent as hard as the four Walers could lay leg to the ground; off the track, tearing through the scrub on two wheels, righting again to shave a big tree by a mere hair's-breadth; it certainly was a fine exhibition of nerve and of recklessness redeemed by skill, but I do not think that elderly ladies would have preferred it to their ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton

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

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

... it's filthy"; this was absolutely unnecessary and the fellows swore vehemently under their breath; to the drivers,—"Clean up that 'ere 'arness and get that mud hoff it"; he also compelled us to burnish the steel and made the gunners scrub the paint off the brass and sandpaper it up. This necessitated the men going to a shop and purchasing the sandpaper themselves, as disobedience of the order meant a sojourn in the clink and the excuse that he had no ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... he ate, Hiram's gaze traveled again and again across the scrub-grown meadow. The lay of the land pleased him. The richness of the soil had been revealed when they dug ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd

... respects this hill, which was about one hundred and fifty feet in height, made a strong and easily defended position; but, unfortunately, it was covered nearly to the summit with a dense growth of bushes and scrub, and was commanded by a range of higher hills a little farther to the eastward. The enemy, therefore, could not only creep close up to the camp under cover of the dense chaparral, but could fire down upon it from the higher slopes ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan

... in a trance!" exclaimed Myrtella. "I been knowin' Maria about fourteen years an' I never heard of her movin' the furniture. She can go to more pains to scrub around a table leg than ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice

... Prescott, "you head a scrub team. Take the men you want after I've chosen for the ...
— The High School Captain of the Team - Dick & Co. Leading the Athletic Vanguard • H. Irving Hancock

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

... alarm of the natives, and to take Tu-Kila-Kila's palace-temple from the rear, where the big tree, which overshadowed it with its drooping branches, was most easily approachable. As he and Toko crept on, bending low, through that dense tropical scrub, in deathly silence, they were aware all the time of a low, crackling sound that rang ever some paces in the rear on their trail through the forest. It was Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes, following them stealthily ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... to Christina at last! Let's settle her case. Christina will stay at home and milk the cows and feed the pigs and bake and scrub and take the eggs and butter to Algonquin on Saturdays. She will be the old maid sister with the horny hands, who always bakes the pies and cakes for Christmas when the family ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith

... over, even the coolness under the hemlocks was beginning to grow warm and aromatic. The birds in the shore woods were quieter, though out at the sunny end of our island, where the hemlocks gave place to low scrub growth, the song sparrow sang gayly ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge

... Ephraim, "scrub oak and pine and cedars and young stuff springin' up until you couldn't see the length of a company, and the Rebs jumpin' and hollerin' around and shoutin' every which way. After a while a lot of them saplings was mowed off clean by the bullets, and then the woods caught ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... permanent crops: 0% other: 100% (mostly rock with sparse scrub oak, few trees, some ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... appeared to be as detached from the surrounding world as the umbrella-mender himself. An insignificant bit of a thing she was, anaemic and subdued, with a sad little face, soft hazel eyes slightly crossed, and the deprecating manner of those who scrub other people's doorsteps at fifteen cents ...
— From a Bench in Our Square • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... at a dollar, and here it was as good as gone for fifty cents,—to whom she did not know or care,—probably the scrub woman who had looked at it earlier in the evening and offered sixty. Her blood was up, and making her way to Mr. Bills she snatched at her gown, exclaiming, "It's mine, and shall never go for fifty cents, ...
— The Cromptons • Mary J. Holmes

... me," murmured Nort, and soon, after a bite to eat, they rolled themselves in their blankets, having tied the ponies to scrub bushes, and went to sleep. The riding of the boys, coupled with the pure air they had breathed, brought them slumber almost at once, and even Buck Tooth, alert as he usually was, neither saw nor heard anything of the sinister visitor who came softly upon the sleeping ones ...
— The Boy Ranchers in Camp - or The Water Fight at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker

... was heard. Then he had a glimpse of a dun colored object flitting through the scrub palmettoes ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne

... between Fred and Dick the High School atmosphere had suddenly become charged with intense excitement. The school eleven had come out of training, had played almost its last match with the "scrub" team and was now close to the time for its first regular match. Oakdale H.S. was to be the first opponent, and Oakdale was just good enough a team to make the Gridley boys a ...
— The High School Freshmen - Dick & Co.'s First Year Pranks and Sports • H. Irving Hancock

... bubbles deliciously at any joke, and gives affection sagaciously to those who merit. A jewel, who must be doing something pour la France. And we have Madame Jeanne Camille, mother of two daughters and one son, too young to be a soldier. It was her eldest daughter who wanted to come and scrub in the hospital, but was refused because she was too pretty. And her mother came instead. A woman who did not need to come, and nearly fifty, but strong, as the French are strong, with good red blood, deep colouring, hair still black, and handsome straight features. What a worker! ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy

... cargo of Columbuses, coming to colonize some new and virgin land, until now utterly unknown to the rest of the world. The shores we have passed along have presented to us every possible variety of savage wilderness, rocks and bush and scrub and fern, but no appearance of settlement at all, not even any signs of aboriginal life ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... amphitheatre of unexampled grandeur and rugged beauty. The valley itself at that time was a vast desert without tree or shrub, nothing but the wild sage-brush and the white alkali soil could be seen, if we except the scrub-oaks and lebanon cedars that covered the mountain sides and the emerald colored waters of the lake. Utah was then Mexican Territory, and this fact, as much perhaps as any other, determined Brigham Young to settle there. When the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 5 • Various

... girths, Strains hard to readjust his seat Ere the main body show the gap 'Twixt them and the read-guard; scrub-oaks near He sidelong eyes, while hands move fleet; Then mounts and spurs. One drop his cap— "Let Mosby ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville

... horrid little scrub," she said, watching him over her gently waving fan, "with a dreadful ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers

... go off the boat and walk down below the dock. There is a clump of scrub pines blown awry; then a little cove; the boat lies there; you will say 'Wanita,' twice; he will come and you will give him the ring; then ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas

... Amy," he said, laughingly, taking her scarf from an inner pocket. "I wore it till an envious scrub-oak tore it off. It was of very great help to me—the ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... deaconesses, as they were called. On entering, everyone had to go through the same work for a certain number of months, whether they meant to be hospital nurses or school teachers. All must learn to sew, cook, scrub, and read out clearly and pleasantly; but as Miss Nightingale had practised most of these things from the time she was a child, she soon was free to go into the hospital and attend to the sick people. The other nurses ...
— The Red Book of Heroes • Leonora Blanche Lang

... the signal sped by the line o' the British craft; The skipper called to his Lascar crew, and put her about and laughed:— "It's mainsail haul, my bully boys all—we'll out to the seas again— Ere they set us to paint their pirate saint, or scrub ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling

... quart of small potatoes, Bermuda potatoes are best. Do not peel them, just wash and scrub the potatoes thoroughly in cold water. Put them in a kettle with enough cold water, slightly salted, just to cover them; stand them over a brisk fire with the kettle covered until the water begins to boil; then turn down the heat, ...
— The International Jewish Cook Book • Florence Kreisler Greenbaum

... returned from their tour of the trenches. Headquarters were situated in Gully Ravine, that prince among ravines on the Peninsula. From my place I could see the gully floor, which was the dry bed of a water-course, winding away between high walls of perpendicular cliffs or steep, scrub-covered slopes, as it pursued its journey, like some colossal trench, towards the firing line. Down the great cleft, while I looked, a horseman came riding rapidly. He was an officer, with a slight open wound in his chin, and he rode up to our door and said: "Hardy's ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond

... to people the fat meadows of the Thames valley and the healthy downs and uplands of Sussex and Berkshire than to go hunting for elbow-room among the flies and fevers of the tropics? We have somewhere to go to, now, better than the scrub and the veldt ...
— When William Came • Saki

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

... up cheerfully enough, but it was quite hopeless. The breakaways were heading for the line of bush, and the sapling scrub along the creek was so thick that the boys would have been perfectly secure under its cover, even if the pursuers were not in hearty sympathy with the pursued, and the pursuit were not a ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... away a few yards, I tied his halter to a scrub tree and then advanced toward the bear with my rifle in my left hand. He didn't budge, and when I yelled at him he only started a little and cocked his head over on the other side. That made me laugh, and then I amused ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... with him, leaving all the dead weight of bones behind. The dense vegetation of the jungle terminated at the foot of the western slope, growing less and less abundant as he neared the summit beyond which was a sparse growth of sickly scrub and sunburned grasses, with here and there a gnarled and hardy tree that had withstood the vicissitudes of ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... know any more than you do. But it ought to be easy tellin' when a man's on the spot. The middle peak ought to be a good fifty feet higher than the others and flat lookin' on top. In a ravine, between the tall boy and the one at the left, Juarez said there was a lot of scrub trees and brush. He said plow through the brush, keepin' to the up edge when you can get to it, until you come to about the middle of the patch. There a man would find a lot of loose rock, boulders that looked like they'd slid off the mountain. This rock, and the Lord knows how ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory

... in my overcoat pocket now. I thought one spell I wasn't goin' to get it, for the old feller was mad about some one of his cranberry buyers failin' up on him and he was as cross-grained as a scrub oak root. He and I had a regular row over the matter of politics I went there to see him about 'special. I told him what he was and he told me where I could go. That's how we ...
— Shavings • Joseph C. Lincoln

... resemblance to a stunted whale. He was chiefly abdominal. His legs appeared to begin, without thighs, at his knees, and his face, without neck, at his chest. His face was large, both wide and long, and covered as to its lower part with a tough scrub of grey beard. The line of his mouth showed through the scrub and turned extravagantly downwards at the corners. He had a commanding, heavily knobbed brow, and small grey eyes of intense severity. His voice was cold, and his manner, though intensely polished and suave, singularly stern ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson

... but he was not so spry as he was ten years ago when he was fresh from playing full-back on our scrub team. For a number of years he had been tramping around outdoors all day and had been inclined to play full front on the gastronomic flying wedge at the restaurants, where we commuted for our meals as long as we could stand it before taking ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent

... the ensuing day and begged me to return to Vienna with them. But, full of the project in hand, I would not be moved. With the house full of carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, locksmiths, tinsmiths, plumbers, plasterers, glaziers, joiners, scrub-women and chimneysweeps, I felt that I couldn't go away and leave it ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon

... him then, and he saw a herd of deer coming through the scrub, and he went towards them, and threw a spear that went through the nearest stag and drove the bowels out of him. He kindled a fire then, and he cut thin bits of the flesh and put them on spits of white hazel, and that night he had his fill of ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory

... and other fruit breeders would not dream of crossing common scrub cull fruit trees and expect any degree ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various

... and she gave her eyes a final desperate scrub. By that time Jeff had begun to talk about the land and what he hoped to do with it next year. He meant at least to prune the orchard and maybe set out dwarfs. At first Lydia did not half listen, knowing ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown

... close together sometimes. But, while she hesitated and sought for words not too direct, her mother had recourse to Shakespeare, and turned page after page, set upon finding some quotation which said all this about love far, far better than she could. Accordingly, Katharine did nothing but scrub one of her circles an intense black with her pencil, in the midst of which process the telephone-bell rang, and she left ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf

... and with her little hands covering her eyes so as not to see the cruel wild bush in which she was lost. It seemed a long time before she summoned up courage to uncover her weeping eyes, and look once more at the bare, dry earth, and the wilderness of scrub and trees that seemed to close her in as if she were in a prison. When she did look up, she was surprised to see that she was no longer alone. She forgot all her trouble and fear in her astonishment ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley

... like all the unregenerate, did not change his ways for this; he would go away cursing, and as soon as he was able to catch a sacristan, or one of the curate's servants, he would arrest him, give him a beating, and make him scrub the floor of the barracks and that of his own house, which at such times was put in a decent condition. On going to pay the fine imposed by the curate for his absence, the sacristan would explain the cause. Fray ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal

... across the prairie. The sun rose as he climbed the bench. The prairie was not the "bald-headed" so dear to those who know it, but was diversified with poplar bluffs, clumps of willow, and wild-rose-scrub in the hollows. The crocuses were in bloom, the poplar trees hanging out millions of emerald pendants, and the sky showed that exquisite, tender luminousness that only the northern sky knows when the sun travels towards the north. ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner

... to hear recited passages from 'what is called Sacred History, that is to say, a mixture of positive history, with legends which have no value except in the eyes of believers.' In this spirit of the peddler who tried to 'scrub out the blood-stains' at Holyrood the law of 1881 was conceived. How it was executed we learn from M. Zevort, a distinguished inspector of the Academy of Paris, and by no means a Catholic. In some places the authorities ordered the words 'Love God, respect your parents,' to be effaced ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... swerved into the low scrub; the well-trained horse leapt at him like a cat; and Raphael, who dare not trust his skill in archery, struck with his whip at the long neck as it struggled past him, and felled the noble quarry to the ground. He was in the act of springing down to secure his prize, ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley

... Trina became a scrub-woman. She had taken council of Selina, and through her had obtained the position of caretaker in a little memorial kindergarten over on Pacific Street. Like Polk Street, it was an accommodation street, but running through a much poorer and more sordid ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris

... I won't bring up the subject again. Ten years from now you may be sorry you wouldn't put up with an occasional spree, and sacrifice a silly little love-affair, for the sake of everything else you'd get. But suit yourself. Cook and wash and iron and scrub, lose your color and your figure and your disposition, and bring half-a-dozen children into the world with no better heritage than that, if it's your idea of bliss—and it seems ...
— The Old Gray Homestead • Frances Parkinson Keyes

... "Scrub!" I said firmly. "I want to give them some of the easiest work, two kinds, but we can't touch the colored cards until all the hands are clean.—Shall we take soap and towels and all go down into the yard where the sink is, children, and turn up ...
— The Girl and the Kingdom - Learning to Teach • Kate Douglas Wiggin

... Penacerrada, which includes Baroja, is an austere land, covered with intricate mountain ranges which are clad with trees and scrub live oaks. ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... walked for an hour, upheld by the stimulus of light and morning air, when the cluster of scrub oaks, which was her destination, opened enough to show two rambling sheds, before one of which was a wooden platform containing a few barrels and bones. As she approached nearer, she could see that one or two horses were tethered under the trees, that ...
— Frontier Stories • Bret Harte

... was saying in a queer, fierce monotone, "I'll stay here this winter anyhow if I freeze for it! I'll scrub and cook and haul wood for ye till I've paid ye back—paid ye," she repeated more softly, "till no one can say the Perkinses don't keep their word! And then—in the spring—I'm going—it'll be for good—. For always," she added, and turned ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... and not gasoline, as gasoline will injure the rubber. Lay out on a flat surface and scrub lightly with soap and water; then rinse with clear water. Do not wring. Put on a coat-hanger and hang ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler

... frequented by highwaymen. The sly, rascally landlord, Boniface (who has given his name to the class), is said to have been drawn from life, and his portrait, we are told, was still to be seen at Lichfield in 1775. The inimitable 'brother Scrub,' that 'indispensable appendage to a country gentleman's kitchen' (Hazlitt), with his ignorance and shrewd eye to the main chance, is likewise said to have been a well-known personage who survived till 1759, one Thomas Bond, servant to Sir Theophilus Biddulph; others say ...
— The Beaux-Stratagem • George Farquhar

... Wash and scrub the clams thoroughly. Put them, a few at a time, in the soup kettle, the bottom of which has been covered with a pint of boiling water. Boil rapidly, take the clams out with a skimmer, and put in another lot, and so continue until all the clams have been cooked. Remove them from the shells, ...
— Ice Creams, Water Ices, Frozen Puddings Together with - Refreshments for all Social Affairs • Mrs. S. T. Rorer

... are all covered with timber and a dense growth of underbrush, in which wild-fig shrubs and the homely but beautiful ferns of the English commons, the Missouri Valley woods, and the California foot-hills, mingle their respective charms, and hob-nob with scrub-oak, chestnut, walnut, and scores of others. The whole face of the country is covered with this dense thicket, and the first little hamlet I pass on the road is nearly hidden in it, the roofs of the houses being barely ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... boy, and has to have so much mothering and looking after. He has to be watched for fear his hair gets too long, and sent to the tailor's now and then for clothes. And if someone didn't turn his old pajamas into scrub rags and silver cloths, he would go on wearing their ragged skeletons long after the flesh had departed hence. (What comforting rags Irvin ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb

... fifty or sixty rooms, bring towels and candles, and fetch several tons of water up several flights of stairs, a hundred pounds at a time, in prodigious metal pitchers. She does not have to work more than eighteen or twenty hours a day, and she can always get down on her knees and scrub the floors of halls and closets when she is tired and needs ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... in the Broadway Central, but not for long. He was in no shape or mood to do the scrub work that exists about the foundation of every hotel. Nothing better offering, he was set to aid the fireman, to work about the basement, to do anything and everything that might offer. Porters, cooks, firemen, clerks—all were over him. Moreover his appearance did not please these individuals—his ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser

... 'then I will get a pail of warm water, and we will scrub the rosewood, and get all this black dirt off it; and when that's done I'll begin the upholstering. I'm going to cover it with my old red cloak. It will be fine and soft for your grandfather, and I don't wear colours now, so that I can spare the cloak. ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various

... had made luncheon, Li Ho had brought tea. Otherwise Li Ho had left her alone. About one thing only had he been fussy. She must not sleep in her old room. It was not aired. It needed "heap scrub." He had arranged, he said, a little tent "all velly fine." Desire was passive. She did not care ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay

... and wooded hills east of Rio Paraguay; Gran Chaco region west of Rio Paraguay mostly low, marshy plain near the river, and dry forest and thorny scrub elsewhere ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.

... Said one day Agnolo, his very self To Rafael... I have known it all these years... (When the young man was flaming out his thoughts Upon a palace-wall for Rome to see, Too lifted up in heart because of it) Friend, there's a certain sorry little scrub Goes up and down our Florence, none cares how, Who, were he set to plan and execute As you are, pricked on by your popes and kings, Would bring the sweat into that brow of yours!" To Rafael's! And indeed the arm is wrong. I hardly ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

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

... crest it was, helmeted with a stratum of sand-stone, jutting out in visor-shaped fullness about his head, and feathery above with scrub-oak and cedar. ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... collar. All gathered about Darrel, who sat smoking outside the door. He rose and greeted each one of the women with a bow and a compliment. The tinker was a man of unfailing courtesy, and one thing in him was extremely odd,—even there in that land of pure democracy,—he treated a scrub-woman with the same politeness he would have accorded the finest lady. But he was in no sense a flatterer; none that saw him often were long in ignorance of that. His rebuke was even quicker than his compliment, ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... a fire even at night, as it might have attracted the blacks; therefore they took it in turn to sleep and watch when the others rested; while the dingoes sneaked from their cover in the belts of scrub, and howled ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... would be no longer safe, and he prepared to glide. While he was searching for a convenient landing place the sparking ceased altogether. The whole country was rugged; below, almost wholly forest land as far as the eye could reach; above, bare rocks or scrub, and at the greatest altitude, snow. The aeroplane flew on for a little by its own momentum, and Smith wasted a few painful seconds before, despairing of finding level ground, he began to descend in ...
— Round the World in Seven Days • Herbert Strang

... bay in a strange place—then drew a bucketful of water, turned up her sleeves, the skirt of her new black frock, tied on an old hessian apron of Mrs. Cohen's, with a savage jerk of the strings, and dropping upon her knees, started to scrub the floor, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors

... arranging frail lilies and night shades about the rim and laying a solid pyramid of violets in the centre. The mold, through which I was floundering, seemed to merge into a bog; but the lower reaches were hidden by a thicket of alder bushes and scrub willows. I mounted a fallen tree and tried to get cautiously down to some tempting lily-pads. Evidently some one else on the other side of the brush was after those same bulbs; for I heard the sucking sound of steps plunging through the ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... his piece, and the two boys advanced over the thick grass toward the patch of dense scrub, their hearts beating heavily as they drew nearer, and each feeling that, if he had been alone, he would have turned and run back as hard as ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn

... rogue goes a couple of leagues out of the way to have a glass of absinthe or champoreau with a chum. After which, 'Crack on, postillion!' to make up for the lost time. Though the sun be broiling and the dust scorching, we whip on! We catch in the scrub and spill over, but whip on! We swim rivers, we catch cold, we get swamped, we drown, but whip! whip! whip! Then in the evening, streaming—a nice thing for my age, with my rheumatics—I have to sleep in the open air of some caravanseral ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet

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

... knows the people of a community so well as the physician who lives among them? To the world the Doctor's patients were laborers, bankers, dressmakers, scrub-women, farmers, servants, teachers, preachers; to the Doctor they were men and women. Others knew their occupations—he knew their lives. The preachers knew what they professed—he knew what they practiced. Society ...
— The Calling Of Dan Matthews • Harold Bell Wright

... Windsor Forest, Edward the Saint's old hunting-ground; its bottoms choked with beech and oak, and birch and alder scrub; its upper lands vast flats of level heath; along the great trackway which runs along the lower side of Chobham Camp, some quarter of a mile broad, every rut and trackway as fresh at this day as when the ancient Briton, finding that his neighbor's essedum—chariot, or rather cart—had worn the ruts ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley

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

... and had hopes of getting a job in the yards; and though she did not see her old-time lover once a month, because of the misery of their state, yet she could not make up her mind to go away and give him up forever. Then, too, Elzbieta had heard something about a chance to scrub floors in Durham's offices and was waiting every day for word. In the end it was decided that Jurgis should go downtown to strike out for himself, and they would decide after he got a job. As there was no one from whom he could borrow there, and ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair

... she stood in the doorway, it seemed to be singularly calm; the southwest trades blew but faintly, and scarcely broke the crests of the long Pacific swell that lazily rose and fell on the beach, which only a slanting copse of scrub-oak and willow hid from the cottage. Nevertheless, she knew this league-long strip of shining sand much better, it is to be feared, than the scanty flower-garden, arid and stunted by its contiguity. It had been her playground when she first came there, a motherless girl of twelve, ...
— Colonel Starbottle's Client and Other Stories • Bret Harte

... the scoured utensils, rinse, and dry. If there are any stains on tin, iron, or enamel ware, remove with scouring soap. Apply the latter with a cork, or wring out the dish-cloth as dry as possible, rub scouring soap on it, and apply to the utensils. Scrub meat, pastry or bread boards, wooden rolling pins, and wooden table tops with cold water and scouring soap. Then rinse and wipe the scoured wood with a cloth which is free from grease. If it is not necessary to scrub meat, pastry, or bread boards on both sides, they should be rinsed on ...
— School and Home Cooking • Carlotta C. Greer

... weeks ago froze what garden things were started; what they are to live on till crops grow is not visible. The children evidently think our washbasins and soap and towels a great luxury, for they scrub and rub ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 49, No. 5, May 1895 • Various

... scrub her face and hands three times a day, and at least once between meals if she is to live in Pittsburgh," remarked she. "And please remember to have the grime soaked out of her white dresses, Mr. Curtis. Borax and a little ammonia will ...
— The Story of Glass • Sara Ware Bassett

... the scrub timber and went through it for half a mile or more, and then suddenly came out on the public highway. The guide suggested that we smarten up our gait, and we put the horses to a canter. I thought surely that the man would give ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris

... to flick away a tear-drop, for Hal 2d had roared lustily when ordered to his noonday nap. Away to the northward the heavily wooded heights seemed tipped by fleecy, summer clouds, and off to the northeast Laramie Peak thrust his dense crop of pine and scrub oak above the mass of snowy vapor that floated lazily across that grim-visaged southward scarp. The drowsy hum of insects, the plash of cool, running waters fell softly on the ear. Under the shade of willow ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King

... river by some bridge of boats or local ferry, he will find still wider expanses of sand sometimes bare and dry and white, at others moist and dark and covered with dwarf tamarisk. He may notice that, before he reaches the sand and the tamarisk scrub, he leaves by a gentle or abrupt descent the dry uplands, and passes into a lower, greener, and perhaps to his inexperienced eye more fertile seeming tract. This is the valley, often miles broad, through which the stream has moved in ever-shifting channels ...
— The Panjab, North-West Frontier Province, and Kashmir • Sir James McCrone Douie

... in sight but rock. No moss. No lichens. Not even stringy grass or the tufty scrub bushes that seemed able ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various

... hokey, if you say another word of impudence I'll tan your dirty hide, you bastely common scrub; and sorry I'd be to soil my fists upon ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous

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

... real name was Keturah, but being, Nurse explained, a hard sort of name to say, it had got changed into Kettles. "Her mother, a decent, hard-working woman, came to the College to scrub and clean sometimes. She was very poor, and had a great many children and a bad husband." Here Nurse ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton

... task of experience to undeceive youth from its romantic dreams. As a rule, Abel, men are rascals; that is to say, they pursue their own interests. How sad! True; how sad! Where was I? Oh! men are scamps—with some exceptions; but you must go by the rule. Life is a scrub-race—melancholy, Abel, but true. I talk plainly to you, but I do it for your good. If we were all angels, things would be different. If this were the Millennium, every thing would doubtless be agreeable to every body. But it is not—how very sad! True, how very sad! Where was I? ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis

... suds and plenty of hot water left in the iron kettle, June decided to scrub the bed covers. Twenty minutes later, barefooted and barelegged, her skirts tucked up above the knees, the young washwoman was trampling blankets in the tub. She had no reason to suppose that anybody was within a mile of her. Wherefore, since the world was beautiful and ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine

... brawny men themselves, who literally buckled to with anchor-cable drag-ropes—a hundred pair of straining men for each great, lumbering gun. Over the sand they went at a romp. Over the rocks they had to take care; and in the dense, obstructing scrub they had to haul through by main force. But this was child's play to what awaited them in the slimy, shifting, and boulder-strewn bog they had to pass before reaching the hillocks ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood



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