"Scrub" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a Jehu all right!" Mac shouted triumphantly. "It takes judgment to do the thing in style"; and the next moment, swinging round a patch of scrub, we flew off at a tangent to avoid a fallen tree, crashing through its branches and grinding over an out-crop of ironstone to miss a big boulder just beyond the tree. It undoubtedly took judgment this "travelling across country along ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... a. m., the artillery became engaged. Before long the Sixty-first N. Y., and the Hundred and Forty-eight Pennsylvania were ordered forward, and we went to the front and right of what I suppose became our line. We worked our way through a piece of scrub pine that was almost impervious, having passed this obstruction, we were in open ground, and we advanced, I think, in skirmish line formation. It was not long before we met Mr. Johnny Reb., and in such force that we fell back ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... be reckoned with among the schools of the city. That something was Sahwah. Thanks to her playing, Washington High had not lost a single game so far. Her being put on the team was purely due to chance. Sahwah was a Junior and the Varsity team were all Seniors. She was a member of the "scrub" or practice team and an ardent devotee of the sport. During one of the early games of the season Sahwah was sitting on the side lines attentively ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... so are all the other handsome chambers on this story. The men were obliging and tried to find scrub-women, but the poor things are afraid ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... 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 at his grapnel-chain. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... by: Jock learnt to scrub, He gave the bairns their Saturday tub, He made the beds, he blacked the grates, He washed up saucers and cups and plates, He cleaned and polished, he boiled and baked Till every bone ...
— Punch, Volume 156, 26 March 1919 • Various
... mountain stream, noisy and clear as crystal, dashed from rock to rock close beside the more northern wall, while the ill-defined pathway, strewn with bowlders and guarded by underbrush, clung to the opposite side, where low scrub trees partially ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... climbed out of that canuon, over a ridge into another, down long wooded slopes and through scrub-oak thickets, on and on till the sun stood straight overhead. Then he halted for a short rest, unsaddled the horses to let them roll, and gave the girls some cold lunch that he had packed. He strolled off with his gun, and, upon returning, resaddled ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... jungle. It is true I have to do as the mahouts tell me, but they treat me kindly, they feed me and I never have to go thirsty, and when my toe nails get too long they smooth them down for me with a rough brick. Also they scrub my skin to keep away the biting bugs. You will like it here, Umboo, and soon you will go to school and learn how to ...
— Umboo, the Elephant • Howard R. Garis
... in a narrow valley which was strewn with great bowlders, and on the sides of the hills grew a great many scrub pines. Through the center of ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... before, and now Aubrey may get some shooting out of George Rivers." After such good-nature my mouth is shut, though, ay di me, all the world and his wife are coming here on Monday evening, and unless I borrow of Blanche, Mrs. Ernescliffe's sister will "look like ane scrub."' ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... said of that superstitious monarch, Louis XI. of France, that he would never do any business on that day, and of our own Edward IV. that his coronation was postponed, because the date originally fixed was Childermas. In Cornwall no housewife would scour or scrub on Childermas, and in Northamptonshire it was considered very unlucky to begin any undertaking or even to do washing throughout the year on the day of the week on which the feast fell. Childermas was there called Dyzemas and a saying ran: "What is begun on ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... the storm, and gathering all the cut fuel she could find, piled it on her fire. The two spruce chunks that Ben had cut for their fireside seats were placed as back logs. Then she hunted for pine knots taken from the scrub pines that grew in scattering clumps among the spruce, and ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... was given a clean shirt; and away to bed with them! They jumped and, with their shirt-tails waving behind them, skipped about and smacked one another until father came along and stopped their game. Mother had still her floor to scrub; and Horieneke read out evening prayers while the ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... sanded all over, and then holystoned. The holystone is a large, soft stone, smooth on the bottom, with long ropes attached to each end, by which the crew keep it sliding fore and aft over the wet sanded decks. Smaller hand-stones, which the sailors call "prayer-books,'' are used to scrub in among the crevices and narrow places, where the large holystone will not go. An hour or two we were kept at this work, when the head-pump was manned, and all the sand washed off the decks and sides. Then came swabs and squilgees; and, after the decks were dry, each one went ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... grass, and the thorny scrub that usually covers the bunds of tanks. It is very carnivorous and destructive to poultry, game, &c., but will also, it is said, eat fish, crabs and insects. It breeds in May and June, and has usually four or five ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... rainless season they present an aspect indescribably desolate, and at the same time a formidable military obstacle to any invasion of Cape Colony on a large scale from the north. They are then mere wastes of sand and dead scrub, lifeless and waterless. The first fall of rain produces a transformation as rapid as any effected by nature. The vegetable life of the Karroos, which has only been suspended, not extinguished, is then released; the arid watercourses are filled in ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... a corral with an adobe wall that was ten feet high except where it had fallen down and been patched with boards. A scrub cow and three native horses were kept there. Two of the horses made the ill-matched team that hauled his mother and sister to church and town. The other was a fiery ragged little roan mare which he kept for his ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... his horse, and his men retreated with him. But the three knew well that it was no withdrawal. The mountaineers rode among some scrub that grew between the road and the cliff; and Whitley exclaimed ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... tree at the end of the path had hidden it from them, they came upon a clearing in the forest. It seemed to be a natural, or, at any rate, a very ancient clearing, since in it no stumps were visible, nor any scrub, or creepers, only tall grass and flowering plants. In the centre of this place, covering a quarter of it, perhaps, was a vast circular wall, fifty feet or more in height, and clothed with ferns. This wall, they noted, was built of huge blocks of stone, so huge indeed that ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... think of such a wretch, And learn to shun his vices, one and all. Though richer than a Jew, he was more poor Than is the meanest beggar. At the cost Of other men a glutton. At his own, A starveling. A mere scrub. And such a coward, A cozener and liar—but a coward, And would have been a ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 494. • Various
... Pool of Water. Started at seven o'clock, course 20 degrees west of south. For the first five miles we passed over a fine country, soil red, and in places a little sandy, with gums, grass, a little scrub, and in places a little spinifex. After this it became covered with spinifex until within five miles of the creek, where the mulga commenced, with plenty of grass, which continued to its banks, where we arrived after twenty-six miles, ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... poisoned by the natives, and most of the crew become drunken and disaffected. The captain neglects to discipline them, and finally the crew sail away with their ship and leave him (January 14, 1687), with thirty-six of his men, at Mindanao. They halt at Guimaras Island to "scrub" their ship and lay in water; then (February 10) sail northward past Panay. At Mindoro they encounter some Indians, from whom they gain information as to the commerce of Manila, which they intend to attack and pillage. On February 23, the ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... Tom shortly, "just as you like. If you feel yourself going, stoop down and pretend to fasten your shoe, and give a scrub to your cheeks before passing Miss Bruce. She'll spot you in a moment if you go in ...
— Tom and Some Other Girls - A Public School Story • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... that I am nearly eight, So I can fill the kettle, And sweep the room and clean the grate, And even scrub a little; Oh! I'm so very glad to be A little ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... met one of these familiar enough figures before, and she was vaguely stirred by his chantings in behalf of humanity. He adored the poor laborers, though he did not treat the office-boy well and he was not gallant to the scrub-woman. But his theories were as beautiful as music, and he intoned them with ringing oratory. Kedzie did not know what he was talking about, any more than she knew what Caruso was singing about when she turned him on in Mrs. Jambers's phonograph, but his melodies ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... that led northeast into the heart of the mountains. Big Flower was happily intact, and the nightcap also except for a missing string, but the outer layer of the other garments had paid toll to many an affectionate scrub-oak and manzanita, and the stockings that had stood the brunt were practically footless. Pio surveyed the damage ruefully, and rebuked himself for not having preserved his new property by wearing his own clothes outside. ...
— The Penance of Magdalena & Other Tales of the California Missions • J. Smeaton Chase
... to France and done distinguished work and there is no body of women in our country who have done more faithful and useful work than our V.A.D.'s, who nurse, cook and wash dishes, serve meals, scrub the floors, look after the linen and do everything for the comfort and welfare of our men, with a capacity, zeal and endurance beyond praise. About 60,000 women have helped in this way. Our nurses and V.A.D.'s have distinguished ...
— Women and War Work • Helen Fraser
... and I'd no more go back on them than I would on my own." Or, again: "Yes, I have seven children of my own. My husband died when Tim was born. The other three children belong to my sister, who died the year after my husband. I get on pretty well. I scrub in a factory every night from six to twelve, and I go out washing four days a week. So far the children have all gone through the eighth grade before they quit school," she concludes, beaming ...
— The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets • Jane Addams
... they scrub out churches. I've seen them do it. And they're as old and ugly—worse ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... By scrub and thorn in Ethandune That night the foe had lain; Whence ran across the heather grey The old stones of a Roman way; And in a wood not far away The ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... smooth potatoes of even size. Scrub them carefully and bake them in a hot oven. The time required is from 45 to 60 minutes, depending on the size of the potatoes and the temperature of the oven. When the potatoes are done, slash each one with a knife to let the ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... another word. He jumped a rough bush of scrub on the right-hand side, galloped over the ground, which was already hot with the coming fire, and followed along down the road by which Lenora had passed. When he came to the first bend, he could hear the roar of flames in ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... young benefactors had exercised all their ingenuity. Some of the women, of course, had been fit for nothing but manual labor, and these they had placed as scrub-women in hospitals or as servants in hotels or families. But in the case of the more intelligent or deft of finger no pains were being spared to fit them to take a good position, or, as the French would say, "situation," in the future life of ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... they went, and, when day broke, they were once more in the scrub pines and cedars, with a cold wind blowing and nipping at their ears and noses. But Boyd, who went far back on the trail, could discover no sign of Felton's band, and they ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... distributed throughout most of Coahuila. When this area became arid, these species disappeared from all of Coahuila except from the high mountains in the southeastern part. For example, Steller's Jay and the Scrub Jay are absent in the Sierra del Carmen of northwestern Coahuila but do occur in ...
— Birds from Coahuila, Mexico • Emil K. Urban
... 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 a ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... closes in the view, bringing bleakness and bitterness curiously home to the feelings. These valleys, torrent-tracks between the steep rocks of livid basalt or bright red sandstone, bare as a bone or thinly clothed with ilex and juniper scrub, are inexpressibly lonely and sad, especially at this time of year. You feel imprisoned among the rocks in a sort of catacomb open to the sky, where the shadows gather in the early afternoon, and only the light on the snow-peaks and on the ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... yellowish sort of flower, and sharp thorns studding its branches; it is a favourite resort for pig, and although it is difficult to beat on account of the thorns, tigers are not unfrequently found among the gloomy recesses of a good kair scrub. ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... come, Bell?" she asked wistfully; but Bell was cruel, and said she must attend to her cooking; adding for the special edification of the stranger that she had the floor to scrub and the fish to clean. In silence Hildegarde walked down the wharf; she was thoroughly upset, and turning to look back to the house, it did not restore her composure to see Obadiah and Ferguson standing on their hands on the piazza, waving their feet ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... defeat, for they had lost over a hundred men, the Matabele, who were afraid to return to Buluwayo except as victors, did nothing of the sort. They only cut down a quantity of reeds and scrub, and moved their camp nearly to the banks of the river, placing it in such a position that it could no longer be searched by the fire of the two white men. Here they sat themselves down sullenly, hoping to starve out the garrison or to find some other way of entering ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... goes to several big stockmen. They ship to San Antonio, Austin, New Orleans, also to El Paso. If you travel the stock-road between here and Marfa and Valentine you'll see dead cattle all along the line and stray cattle out in the scrub. The herds have been driven fast and far, and stragglers are ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... 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 any one I ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... that about a quarter of a million acres of this land so close to the city is now scrub oak and uncultivated waste, and that there are about a million adult workers in the city, the importance of the experiment is obvious; especially as we learn from the United States census that over ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... from sight we built a tiny fire in the scrub—for it was twilight, at which time keen eyes are needed to detect either smoke or fire, except at close range—and cooked our supper. That done, we smothered what few embers remained and laid us down to sleep. That wasn't much of a success, ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... lay belly down in a low clump of pine scrub at the top of a precipitous rocky pinnacle. Below them in the blistering noon lay the palace walls of the Lord of the Seven Seas, Descendant of the Sun and the Moon, Overlord of the Mountains and the Plains, Prince ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson
... said was true, and the following Saturday afternoon a somewhat patched-up first team played a scrub team. On the scrub, somewhat to the Rovers' surprise, were Brassy ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... over him; the third mate would keep him two hours on end, larnin' to rig out a sternsail boom, or grease a royal mast. He led a dog's life of it too, in the half-deck: last come, in course, has al'ays to go and fill the bread barge, scrub the planks, an' do all the dirty jobs. Them owners' 'prentices, sich as he had for messmates, is always worse to their own kind by far nor the "common sailors," as the long-shore folks calls a foremast-man. I couldn't help takin' pity on the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... He was on the committees at agricultural shows and sports, great at picnics and dances, beloved by school children at school feasts (I wonder if they call them feasts still), giver of extra or special prizes, mostly sovs. and half-sovs., for foot races, etc.; leading spirit for the scrub district in electioneering campaigns—they went as right as men could go in the politics of those days who watched and went the way Jack Denver went; header of subscription lists for burnt-out, flooded-out, sick, hurt, dead or killed or otherwise ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... salt marshes he followed them, through the rank sedge and past the glassy pools in which his own inverted image stalked beneath as he stalked above; on and on, until at last they had reached a belt of scrub pines, gnarled and gray, that fringed the foot of the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... 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
... The wattle-scrub at the end was very quiet; there was not a rustle, not a sound of a voice, not a sound of the affected little laugh that generally told ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... the bed, and giving a hard scrub to her eyes, stuffed her handkerchief back into her pocket with a determined air, as if the tears went with it. All the same, her voice sounded choky, and there were such bright drops glistening on Mrs. Hirst's eyelashes, ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... could not bear the goodness of this young girl, because it made her own daughters appear the more odious. The stepmother gave her the meanest work in the house to do; she had to scour the dishes, tables, etc., and to scrub the floors and clean out the bedrooms. The poor girl had to sleep in the garret, upon a wretched straw bed, while her sisters lay in fine rooms with inlaid floors, upon beds of the very newest fashion, and where they had looking-glasses so large that they ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... on him were trying. He had to scrub and keep the mess clean and tidy; to draw all the provisions and prepare them for cooking; then, to take them to the galley, and fetch them when cooked. That this last was no simple matter, such as any shore-going tail-coated waiter might undertake, was brought forcibly out one day during ...
— Blue Lights - Hot Work in the Soudan • R.M. Ballantyne
... nursed, and washed and ironed, combed old miss' and the children's hair and cut their finger and toe nails and mended the clothes. The womens' job was to cook, attend to the cows, knit all the socks for the men and boys, spin thread, card bats, weave cloth, quilt, sew, scrub and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... driven by coercion or sheer necessity to enlist, the poor whites, the outcasts of the South, a class the most degraded in public estimate,—a class which has the respect of neither the white man nor the negro. These people inhabit to a great extent the scrub-oak or black-jack forests, the second growth which has sprung up on exhausted plantations. Destitute of schools, churches, and newspapers, unable to read or write, without culture, generally steeped ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... which dries in patches at low-water, connects the east and west Wallaby Islands. On the south-west point of the latter are some sandhills 30 feet high; and on that side also is a dense scrub, in which the mutton birds burrow, so that it forms ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... clear and sun-coloured up there, clear-grey rocks partaking of the sky, tawny grass and scrub, browny-green spires of cypresses, and then the mist of grey-green olives fuming down to the lake-side. There was no shadow, only clear sun-substance built up to the sky, a bullock wagon moving slowly in the high sunlight, along the uppermost ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... rag and a scrubbing-brush are thrust into my hands. I touch them gingerly. I get a broom and for some time make sweeping a necessity, but the forewoman is watching me. I am afraid of her. There is no escape. I begin to scrub. My hands go into the brown, slimy water and come out brown and slimy. I slop the soap-suds around and move on to a fresh place. It appears there are a right and a wrong way of scrubbing. The ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... to light 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
... 'thrown back' from what he could earn by going to sea for mackerel early enough to return to work by half-past six in the morning. Besides running errands, he had to clean boots and knives and to scrub out and tidy up the bar, which in those days was attached to every Devon grocery. Then he could go home to breakfast. And if old Cloade was going up on land, shooting, Tony had to get up and wake him at half-past three and to cork bottles or ...
— A Poor Man's House • Stephen Sydney Reynolds
... rubbing, abrasion, scraping &c v.; confrication^, detrition, contrition^, affriction^, abrasion, arrosion^, limature^, frication^, rub; elbow grease; rosin; massage; roughness &c 256. rolling friction, sliding friction, starting friction. V. rub, scratch, scrape, scrub, slide, fray, rasp, graze, curry, scour, polish, rub out, wear down, gnaw; file, grind &c (reduce to powder) 330. set one's teeth on ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... her way through the brush and scrub cottonwood-trees that lined the opposite bank, she found herself upon the border of a field where the white, bursting cotton, with the dew upon it, gleamed for acres and acres like frosted ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... Belle's snapping eyes and brusque ways were beginning to interest him. "Oh, I forgot that you American working-women are all ladies. I am told that you speak of certain of your number as 'scrub-ladies' and 'washer-ladies.'" ...
— Without a Home • E. P. Roe
... answered, Allen closed the door of the saloon, dragged a small table and two chairs into the middle of the floor, and, having done this, and dismissed the boy and a hideous-looking girl, who was preparing to scrub the apartment, he bade us be seated, and then resumed the conversation, which was carried on in ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... in sight but rock. No moss. No lichens. Not even stringy grass or the tufty scrub bushes that seemed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... had finished their work for the day, and nothing now remained to be done except to disrobe, take a quick scrub down after their severe exercise, don their clothes and take their time in ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... comprehension before we should understand all about them. I must have been standing thus silent and quiet for some time, when, casting my eyes down on the earth, I thought I saw an object moving slowly among some brushwood or scrub at a little distance. I stood still a minute longer, and just as I was moving the creature came out of the scrub. It was a dingo, I had little doubt of that; I was on the point of lifting my gun to my shoulder to fire, when probably ...
— Peter Biddulph - The Story of an Australian Settler • W.H.G. Kingston
... bent sharply away from the river, revealing a scrub of low bush decorated with a collection of white garments, evidently set out to dry. His horse shied at the unusual sight, and furthermore took exception to the raucous sound of a man's voice chanting a dismal ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... Australians, New Zealand Colonists call their forest "bush." What in England might be called bush or brushwood is called "scrub" in the Colonies. ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... and the bird 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, when ...
— Hypatia - or, New Foes with an Old Face • Charles Kingsley
... got it. It's 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
... is warm, and the air keen and delicious. But the scenery would depress the most buoyant spirits. We climbed up the mountains during the night, and with the daylight the train was in the middle of the Great Karroo. Wherefore was this miserable land of stone and scrub created? Huge mounds of crumbling rock, fashioned by the rains into the most curious and unexpected shapes, rise from the gloomy desert of the plain. Yet, though the Karroo looks a hopeless wilderness, flocks of sheep at distant intervals—one sheep requires six hundred acres of ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... that day's journey. The beauty of the country exceeds all description. Ranges of mountains beyond belief fantastic in shape, and between them a rolling country, desolate and wild, and covered with gorgeous flowers among the 'scrub'. First we came to Hottentot's Holland (now called Somerset West), the loveliest little old Dutch village, with trees and little canals of bright clear mountain water, and groves of orange and pomegranate, and white houses, with incredible gable ends. We tried to stop ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... a narrow canal of about sixty feet in length, we finally brought up alongside a good firm bank of soil, on which there was room enough for us all to land. Our movements were effectually masked by a thin belt of scrub, which appeared to be all that intervened between us and the three or four hundred yelling and chanting natives who were now making the air ring and vibrate within a short hundred yards of us. At the same time I became aware that the agonising shrieks, ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... girl exclaimed. "An old maid, without the least style! and she makes butter too, and actually climbs up in a chair to scrub down her closets,—for Edward and I caught ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... consciences would suffer were they obliged to read or 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 ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... in a position where you get insulted by some little scrub who isn't fit for you to walk ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... was heard. Then he had a glimpse of a dun colored object flitting through the scrub ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... worrying things Every day recurrent brings; Hands to scrub and hair to brush, Search for playthings gone amiss, Many a wee complaint to hush, Many a little bump to kiss; Life seems one vain fleeting ...
— Graded Memory Selections • Various
... Blake in that ship, and he was alive—or had been—for he had cut his motor. McGuire screamed out for Professor Sykes, and there were others, too, who came running at his call. He tore recklessly through the scrub and undergrowth and gained at last the place where wreckage hung dangling from the trees. The fuselage of a plane, scarred and broken, was still held ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... it," proposed Fanny recklessly. "We didn't know we were going to have it. We can scrub along afterward the same as we always have. Let's divide it into four parts: one for the house—to fix it up—and one for each of us, to spend any way we like. ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... go large; for at that very moment there came the bugle-call for the working parties to get into the zeriba, as from the mimosa scrub came hundreds upon hundreds of "Osnum Digners" hard upon the heels of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... till it was too dark for me to make out my pursuers, some of whom were not more than three hundred yards behind me; then, while my horse was going at full gallop I leapt of? without checking him, a trick that most hunters can do. I chose the spot because I could make out that there was some low scrub close to the road. Stooping among this I ran forward. I was glad to hear that my horse was still galloping at the top of his speed, and, deprived of my weight, would probably get a good bit farther before he was taken, ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... I. "I'll tell you what I think. Yetmore has caught sight of the horses strolling down the road and has followed them, keeping away from the road himself for fear they should see him and take alarm. Dodging through the scrub-oak and cutting across corners, he has come near enough to them to speak to his own horse; the horse has stopped and Yetmore has caught him. That was where his tracks first showed in the road. Then he has jumped upon his horse and galloped after our ponies, which appear ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... ripping and tearing of the trees and vines. She felt the horse drop down through leafy branches and into the cool gravel of a stream's bottom. From ahead came a splashing of water, and she caught a glimpse of Dolly, dashing up the small bank and into a clump of scrub-oaks, against the trunks of which she was trying to ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... instinct, for her eyes were blinded with tears. She left the road where it turned south, at the corner of the Limberlost, climbed a snake fence and entered a path worn by her own feet. Dodging under willow and scrub oak branches she came at last to the faint outline of an old trail made in the days when the precious timber of the swamp was guarded by armed men. This path she followed until she reached a thick clump of bushes. From the debris in the end of a hollow ...
— A Girl Of The Limberlost • Gene Stratton Porter
... there, sir, just where that oak stands; there is something white in the scrub at its butt. Perhaps that may be ...
— Dick the Bank Boy - Or, A Missing Fortune • Frank V. Webster
... Presently Hazel could look away over an area of woodland undulating like a heavy ground swell at sea. Here and there ridges stood forth boldly above the general roll, and distantly she could descry a white-capped mountain range. They turned the end of a thick patch of pine scrub, and Bill pulled up in a small opening. From a case swinging at his belt he took out a pair of field glasses, and ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... It was a trick, you know, a game ... we would mix our hair like that, and make little Jacky Wetherall guess whose hair he had hold of. When he guessed right he had sugar. He was three. His mother used to lend him to us when she went out to scrub, and he never cried...." She went on like this, dwelling on scraps of her girlhood, for some time; then her voice went very faint to say:—"Phoebe was there then. Phoebe is back now—somehow—how is it?" Gwen saw she had talked enough, and took Irene away; and ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... 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 ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... help the actresses dress and the actors too. The dressing room's very coeducational in a halfway respectable way. And every once in a while Martin and I police up the whole place, me skittering about with dustcloth and wastebasket, he wielding the scrub-brush and mop with such silent grim efficiency that it always makes me nervous to get through and duck back into ...
— No Great Magic • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... jumped about a foot as a piece of shrapnel took him in the leg. Mac was absent for awhile down at the Casualty Clearing Station and had his leg fixed up; it wasn't bad. After he had been there awhile the Sergeant asked him to wash the floor; Mac refused, "Do you think I came out here to scrub floors?" says he; "I'm a fighting man." The Sergeant was going to have him pinched, but while he was away Mac sneaked out and came back to the battalion, absolutely refusing to go back, and Colonel Embury, our Colonel, who was a good sport, smoothed matters over and Mac stayed with the ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... it if yer want ter go. Why don't yer try it Ole? You are so keen about getting away, you ought not to mind a little water. So ye prefer to stay along with the rest of us. All right then, my hearties, let's hunt up something to work with and scrub this deck. That's the ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... they have to be one-man women, because the one man is so always a 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 ...
— 'Oh, Well, You Know How Women Are!' AND 'Isn't That Just Like a Man!' • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... is the bitter 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 ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... Federals, covered by a line of skirmishers, had formed up in the wood. Emerging from the covert with fixed bayonets and colours flying, their long line, overlapping the Confederate left, moved steadily across the three hundred yards of open ground. The shocks of corn, and some ragged patches of scrub timber, gave cover to the skirmishers, but in the closed ranks behind the accurate fire of the Southern riflemen made fearful ravages. Still the enemy pressed forward; the skirmishers darted from bush to bush; the regiments on the right swung round, enveloping the Confederate line; ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... while the eldest of his friends could not hold out against him more than two days in the strained relations following upon the amigo's sweeping him down the back with a toy broom employed by the German-American boy to scrub the scuppers. This was not so much an injury as an indignity, but it was resented as an indignity, in spite of many demure glances of propitiation from the amigo's ironical eyes and murmurs of inarticulate apology ...
— The Daughter of the Storage - And Other Things in Prose and Verse • William Dean Howells
... of brook that is, for every one knows the kind of country arbutus loves—hilly country, with slopes toward the north; bits of woodland, preferably with pine in it, to give shade, but not too deep shade; a scrub undergrowth of laurel and huckleberry and bay; and always, somewhere within sight or hearing, water. It is curious how arbutus, which never grows in wet places, yet seems to like the neighborhood of water. It loves the slopes above a brook or ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... in the same unrelaxing round of duties, and the third commenced in a similar way. The little thing had by this time become almost sick from such constant confinement and extra labour for one of her strength. She was set, on this day, to scrub down a pair of back stairs, a task to which she was unequal. Before she had got down to the third step, she accidentally upset the basin and flooded the whole stair-case—dashing the dirty-water in the face of Mrs. Tompkins who was ...
— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur
... small beasts, would be most productive, and the outer coat is an expanse of tall, waving, sunburnt grass, so unbroken, that from a distance it resembles the nap of yellow velvet. In the frequent Wadys, which carry off the surplus rain of the hills, scrub and thorn trees grow in dense thickets, and the grass is temptingly green. Yet the land lies fallow: water and fuel are scarce at a distance from the hills, and the wildest Bedouins dare not front ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
... day. The clothes and bed linen of all Whites and Blacks went into wash every Saturday. And "Niggers", whether they liked it or not, had to "scrub" themselves ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... skimpy rags of clothing, were setting upon an unclassifiable creature that snarled and fought back. It was erect and coarsely hairy—Parr saw that much before the enigma gave up the unequal fight and ran clumsily away into a mass of bright-flowered scrub. Execrations and a volley of sticks and ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... through the deepening dusk the acetylene lamps on a cluster of motor cars spread a blinding light across the scrub. The windows of Shotover House ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... has a 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 ...
— Stepping Heavenward • Mrs. E. Prentiss
... a thing," the other said. "They have to work; they wash and mend our clothes, and scrub the floors, and help the cooks, but that is all. After working for a certain time, according to the length of their sentence, they are allowed to live out of prison, and after a still further time are at liberty to settle down anywhere in Siberia ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... not have done this. WILKES. 'Garrick would have made the small-beer still smaller. He is now leaving the stage; but he will play Scrub all his life.' I knew that Johnson would let nobody attack Garrick but himself, as Garrick once said to me, and I had heard him praise his liberality; so to bring out his commendation of his celebrated pupil, I said, loudly, ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... it should be used very moderately. You should never lather and scrub your skin as if it were a kitchen floor, for the reason that, with the dirt, the alkali also washes and dissolves out a considerable amount of the natural oil of the skin, and leaves it harsh and dry. On this account, it is best not to use soap ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... can hear the long muffled roar of the whistle, dying to a melancholy wail that echoes into the woods; the woods, I say, for the farms are thinning out and the track plunges here and there into great stretches of bush,—tall tamerack and red scrub willow and with a tangled undergrowth of bush that has defied for two generations all attempts to clear it into ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... them from a distance at first; but the enemy had received quite as much punishment as they desired upon that occasion, and soon ceased the aggressive, being eager for a truce to communicate with the little rear-guard posted in the scrub by the river so as to ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... into the wood as the undergrowth of young oak scrub made it almost impenetrable; it stood up straight, and the great, swaying, huge, spreading boughs of the old oaks above came down and rested on and amongst the young oaks, like a roof upon pillars, and the leaves of both intermingled till they were like green ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... near me, the nucleus of a crowd which would not be long in collecting, and I was beginning to feel I was paying dearly for my virtuous resolution, when the front door burst violently open and we caught sight of the trembling form and shocked face of the scrub-woman. ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... Genoa, with huge black and dripping precipices overhanging it, so as almost to shut out the light of heaven. I never saw so curious a place in my life. It soon opened out, and we followed up the little stream which flowed through it. This was no easy work. The scrub was very dense, and the rocks huge. The spaniard "piked us intil the bane," and I assure you that we were hard set to make any headway at all. At last we came to a waterfall, the only one worthy of the name that I have yet seen. This "stuck us up," as they say here concerning ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... rocky, hilly, tree-less ground unfit for riding. I have noted that the three Heb. words "Year" (e.g. Kiryath-YearinCity of forest), "Choresh" (now Hirsh, a scrub), and "Pardes" ({Greek letters} a chase, a hunting-park opposed to , an orchard) are preserved in Arabic and are intelligible in Palestine. (Unexplored Syria, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton |
