"Sponging" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... good looks will not support you honestly. Go home and go to work, if it is only to be a bar-maid at the George Hotel; and when I see you have reformed, I do not say I will not do something for you, but just so long as you go round sponging your living and making eyes at men—and boys, too, for that matter—not a penny of my money shall you ever touch. I've said my say, and there comes the boy Allen for ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... stood staring at her dressing mate, and slowly, questioningly repeated, "Spoonge? spoonge? w'at is that spoonge?" And received for answer, "What is it? why, it's stealing." Semantha gave a cry. "Yes," continued the straightforward one, "it's stealing without secrecy; that's what sponging is." ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... youngest and her favorite, was about thirty, and called himself a barrister. As he had no briefs, however, it was currently reported that he lived by means of light literature, play, and judicious sponging upon his sister. The elder brother, Francis, was a ne'er-do-weel, and seldom appeared upon the scene. When he did appear, it was always a sign of ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... thought you would perhaps prefer to see her alone," said the surgeon, "for when I endeavored to bring her to, and was sponging her face and head to discover her injuries, her color came off! She was a white woman—stained and disguised as ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... something that would bring you down," Mrs. Candy said composedly and pleased; and in the same manner proceeded to strip off Matilda's clothes, put her in the bath-tub, and make thorough application of the hated element as she had said, from head to foot; scrubbing and dousing and sponging; till if Matilda had been in the sea she would not better have known how cold water felt all over her. It was done in five minutes, too; and then, after being well rubbed down, Matilda was directed to put on her clothes again and ...
— Opportunities • Susan Warner
... the hypnotist recovered his senses, his head ached severely, his back was against Denton's knees and Denton was sponging his face. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... must work—manhood demands it. He cannot possibly go on sponging upon your father ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... me. I examined her foot. Seeing it by daylight the trouble was not hard to diagnose. A long, jagged piece of slate was wedged in the frog of the foot. I easily wrenched it out, heated some water, and gave the hoof another sponging. It would be all right when shod once more. ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... magistrates in London and Middlesex thought themselves obliged by the duty of their office to take notice of him. This occasioned a warrant to be granted against him by a worshipful alderman of the City, upon which Mr. Wild being apprehended somewhere near Wood Street, he was carried into the Rose Sponging-house. There I myself saw him sitting in the kitchen at the fire, waiting the leisure of the magistrate ...
— Lives Of The Most Remarkable Criminals Who have been Condemned and Executed for Murder, the Highway, Housebreaking, Street Robberies, Coining or other offences • Arthur L. Hayward
... to hint that there was in his nature any ounce of calculation. He took whatever came, but he never plotted for it, and no man who was so much of an absorbent can ever have been so little of a parasite. He had a system of the universe, but he had no system of sponging—that was quite hand-to-mouth. He had fine gross easy senses, but it was not his good-natured appetite that wrought confusion. If he had loved us for our dinners we could have paid with our dinners, ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... but still vigorous, and in his small black eyes twinkled an unsounded depth of shrewdness. He had been the Colonel's slave from his young manhood to the close of the war; since then he had hung around Ellijay what time he was not sponging a livelihood from Sommerton Place under color of doing various light turns in the vegetable garden, and of attending to his ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... get at the real heart of people as you can never do if rich. People are your friends from pure friendship and love, not from sponging self-interestedness. It is worth being poor once or twice in a lifetime just to experience the blessing and heartrestfulness of a little genuine reality in the way of love and friendship. Not that it is impossible for opulence to have genuine friends, but rich people, I fear, ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... deal more of silent sponging and some knitting of his brows, either from thought or from pain, he said, "Then, as I understand, you cast in your lot with us, and give us the blessing of your presence and care of poor little Dora, to help to set Eustace in his proper place ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... learned to the full the legal value of the unantagonistic mind. After this he turned a light on the case from the other side, giving it an entirely different appearance, holding up the slateful of charges against Danvers, and sponging them carefully off one by one, until I was amazed ...
— Nancy Stair - A Novel • Elinor Macartney Lane
... Dick Steele when he set up his coach and fine house in Bloomsbury: they began to forgive him when the bailiffs were after him, and abused Mr. Addison for selling Dick's country-house. And yet Dick in the sponging-house, or Dick in the Park, with his four mares and plated harness, was exactly the same gentle, kindly, improvident, jovial Dick Steele: and yet Mr. Addison was perfectly right in getting the money which was his, and not giving up the amount of his just claim, to be spent ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... rain; the far-traveling, vapor-born rain; the impartial, undiscriminating, unstinted rain; equable, bounteous, myriad-eyed, searching out every plant and every spear of grass, finding every hidden thing that needs water, falling upon the just and upon the unjust, sponging off every leaf of every tree in the forest and every growth in the fields; music to the ear, a perfume to the smell, an enchantment to the eye; healing the earth, cleansing the air, renewing the fountains; honey to the bee, manna to the herds, and life to all creatures,—what spectacle so ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... plant grows best in pots of turfy loam and leaf-mould, to which has been added a little old mortar. Good drainage is essential. Water freely in summer, and keep just moist in winter. Keep the foliage clean by sponging. Give plenty of light, and during warm weather turn the ...
— Gardening for the Million • Alfred Pink
... trust, dear Nell, that you are all well at Brookroyd, and that your visiting stirs are pretty nearly over. I compassionate you from my heart for all the trouble to which you must be put, and I am rather ashamed of people coming sponging in that fashion one after another; get away from ...
— Charlotte Bronte and Her Circle • Clement K. Shorter
... doctor for the bilious fever. He wants plenty of cold lemonade, cold sponging, and ice to suck when the fever is on him. When the chills intervene he wants blanketing, hot bottles at his feet, and hot tea, or something stronger. In the rest between the attacks of fever and chill, he wants calomel and Peruvian bark, and if these delirious spells go ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... their return. Many of the others preferred to die of hunger and thirst. When the ransomed natives departed with their families, the Governor had them pursued, reparked, and subjected to a repetition of this sponging process, and again a third time, so admirably did it work. This strikes Las Casas as a refinement of cruelty, which can be attributed only to the fact that these Germans were Lutheran heretics, and never ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... conversing upon the topic for some time, Mr. De Younge being meanwhile engaged in sponging and cleaning some coats he had purchased the day before; in so doing, he was obliged to remove the paper he had picked up from the floor, and it occurred to him to ask Mr. Walters to read it; he therefore handed it ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... very elaborate bathing and dressing; though not a very long one, for all Mrs. Lindsay's acts were energetic. Now, without any hint as to the reason, she was directed to come to her grandmother an hour before the breakfast time, to go through then the course of cold-water sponging and hair-gloving that Mrs. Lindsay was accustomed to administer at eleven. Ellen heard in silence, and obeyed, but made up her hour by rising earlier than usual, so as to have it before going to her grandmother. It was a little difficult at first, but she soon got into the habit of it, though ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... upstairs, and the mother stood open-eyed while the squire's restless look gathered in the details of the room, the youth's face, as he lay back on his pillows, whiter than they, exhausted and yet refreshed by the sponging with vinegar and water which the mother had just been administering to him; the bed, the gaps in the worm-eaten boards, the spots in the roof where the plaster bulged inward, as though a snake would bring it ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... an extension within the last two centuries, that it may almost be pronounced the distinctive feature of modern times. It existed, undoubtedly, in ancient days,—for its correlative, Debt, existed; and we know, that, among the Jews, Moses enacted a sponging law, which was to be carried into effect every fifty years; that Solon, among the Greeks, began his administration with the Seisachtheia, or relief-laws, designed to rescue the poor borrowers from their ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... Let me tell you something, Dan: a woman that will stoop to the petty leg-pulling, sponging, grafting that she does to save two bits or less has got a thief's make-up. Her mania for money, for getting, for saving it, is a matter of ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... caused him to revel in the sight of human suffering. Therefore, after the first qualm of reluctance, I felt no compunction in ordering the gunners to ply their weapons upon the advancing enemy with all the skill at their command. And right willingly did the men obey my order, sponging, loading, priming, pointing, and firing with the fell determination of men who knew that they must slay or themselves be slain; aiming so carefully that every shot was made to tell with disastrous effect; so that the ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... on the Eureka, and of the wooden airpipes that were being used to ventilate deep-sinkings. There was nothing Ned did not know, and could not make entertaining. One was forced, almost against one's will, to listen to him; and on this particular evening, when he was neither sponging, nor acting the Big Gun, Mahony toned down his first sweeping judgment of his young relative. Ned was all talk; and what impressed one so unfavourably—his grumbling, his extravagant boastfulness—was ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... sheer wickedness. Then her husband finds her out,—poor Rawdon! who with all his faults and thickheaded stupidity, has become absolutely entranced by the wiles of his little wife. He is carried off to a sponging-house, in order that he may be out of the way, and, on escaping unexpectedly from thraldom, finds the lord in his wife's drawing-room. Whereupon he thrashes the old lord, nearly killing him; takes ...
— Thackeray • Anthony Trollope
... and the pugilists, who had, by dint of sponging, been made somewhat cleaner, rose with mechanical promptitude at the sound, Cashel had hardly advanced two steps when, though his adversary seemed far out of his reach, he struck him on the forehead with such force as to stagger him, and then jumped back laughing. Paradise ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... the negress. She rose and emptied the remains from her plate into a tin pail, sponging the plate with a piece ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... news of the great victories of Prussia, he wrote to a friend, "Germany is to stand on her feet henceforth, and face all manner of Napoleons and hungry, sponging dogs, with clear steel in her hand and an honest purpose in her heart. This seems to me the best news we or Europe have heard for the last ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume X • John Lord
... baths in winter and find them severe, should precede the sponging in cold water with a quick sponging off with tepid water, and they should always take these ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... absorbing interest, and had the best of care—too much, really. But Jake's ardour waned about the third day; then the recurrent necessity for long celebrations at Medora, and the ancient allurements of idle hours spent lying on the tops of sunny buttes and of days spent sponging on the hospitality of distant ranches, swept away the last pretence of attention to his poultry-farm. The Turkeys were utterly neglected—left to forage for themselves; and each time that Jake returned to his uninviting shanty, after a few days' absence, ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... the heroic romance, with its high-flown language and marvellous adventures, Richardson's novel of sentiment probably held more attraction than Fielding's novel of manners. Fielding, on his broad canvas, paints the life of his day on the highway, in coaches, taverns, sponging-houses or at Vauxhall masquerades. Every class of society is represented, from the vagabond to the noble lord. Richardson, in describing the shifts and subterfuges of Mr. B—and the elaborate intrigue of Lovelace, moves within a narrow circle, devoting himself, not to the portrayal ...
— The Tale of Terror • Edith Birkhead
... of furniture, such as chair seats, often becomes loose and the threads of cane pull out. This can be prevented by sponging with hot water, or by applying steaming cloths to the cane. This process also tightens the shreds of cane and does not injure ordinary furniture. If the article is highly polished, care should be taken to ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... clown ran on with much good advice while he was sponging and pressing Phil's clothes. When he had finished, the suit looked as if it had just ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... whitewashed, and the windows painted over thinly with white paint. A thermometer should be suspended in every house. It is very essential that the floors of all these buildings should be washed every day before the work-people leave. In case any nitro-glycerine is spilt upon the floors, after sponging it up as far as possible, the floor should be washed with an alcoholic solution of soda or potash to decompose the nitro-glycerine, which it does according to ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... ribbons as soon as removed, adding buttons and taking up dropped stitches when needed,—all these little attentions if given promptly will keep a wardrobe fresh and in good order. New braid on the bottom of skirts, sponging and pressing, little alterations and addition of new trimming to collar and cuffs, will help to preserve the original freshness of the gown and cause the wearer to appear ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... of the Bahamas have made frequent complaint to the governor about the conduct of the Spanish authorities in Cuba. In August this year the Governor of the Bahamas sent a memorial to the Captain-General of Cuba about the impediments to the Bahama sponging trade caused by the arbitrary acts of the Spaniards. No notice has been taken of this. It has not even been acknowledged. In 1870 complaints were made to Sir James Walker (my predecessor) that James Fraser and ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... true: if anyone stays too long, sponging on the monks, he is asked to go. Judge for yourself, if the proletariat were allowed to stay on here as long as they liked there would never be a room vacant, and they would eat up the whole monastery. That's true. But the monks make an exception for me, ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... sponging," said Billy; "but maybe I can get even some day, and I sure do want a smoke. You see I was frisked. I ain't got nothin'—they didn't leave me ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Alexandria, and New Orleans did well this day. The guns themselves were something ancient, growing obsolete; but those striplings about them, beardless, powder-grimed, bare of arm and chest, silent and swift and steady of eye and hand, sponging, ramming, priming, aiming, firing, showed in the van of Time a brood of Mars, a band of whom foe-quelling Hector might say "They will ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... the fever by sponging the body with tepid water, and relieve the pain in the throat by ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... unknown sounds. It had already collected round itself an army of the worst part of the native population, informers, and false witnesses, and common barrators, and agents of chicane, and, above all, a banditti of bailiffs' followers, compared with whom the retainers of the worst English sponging-houses, in the worst times, might be considered as upright and tender-hearted. Many natives, highly considered among their countrymen, were seized, hurried up to Calcutta, flung into the common jail, not for any crime even imputed, ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... meals and kept things tidy about the houses; and then, in accordance with a good old custom handed down from generation to generation, the first thing every body did on getting out of bed was to take a bath. Such a washing and scrubbing and sponging off and rubbing down as went on in every house, you can imagine. It made no difference what kind of work one was going about,—plastering, brick-laying, or digging of ditches,—like a sensible fellow, he went fresh and clean to it ...
— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning
... I opened my eyes, and although I did not observe it, the old woman was standing at the table in very light attire, sponging her nose over ...
— Japhet, In Search Of A Father • Frederick Marryat
... Blossom, of the Higginsville Thunderbolt and Battle Cry of Freedom, is down here again sponging at ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... "Thurlow Weed patched up the New York appointments and left this morning. Greeley arrived about the same time and has been sponging Weed's slate at an awful rate."—Ibid., ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... say to folks, in time. She was too easy, she knew that, always had been. Look how long she had put up with Mrs. Hewitt's snooping around. And then in the end she had got cold feet and had had to sick 'Gene on to her, to tell her they didn't want her sitting around all the time and sponging off them at meal-times. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... emphasised the deathly whiteness of his face on which the candlelight fell; his mouth was open, like a dead man's. Mistress Margaret was kneeling by his left hand, holding it over a basin and delicately sponging it; and the whole air was fragrant and aromatic with some ointment in the water; a long bandage or two lay on the ground beside the basin. The evening light over the opposite roofs through the window beyond mingled with the light of the tapers, ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... eveness of tint on paper it should be first moistened on the back by sponging, and blotting off with bibulous paper. It should then be pinned on a board, the moist side downwards, so that two of its edges—the right and lower ones—project a little over those of the board. Incline the board twenty ...
— The History and Practice of the Art of Photography • Henry H. Snelling
... the Southern planter—was really the soulless and mercenary object of the craven Northerners. Let the common people of England look to this. Let the improvident literary hack, the starved impecunious Grub Street debtor, the newspaper frequenter of sponging- houses, remember this in their criticisms of the ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... tendencies of the Prince and his mother which had conquered the Hickses. There was fascination in the thought that, among the rabble of vulgar uneducated royalties who overran Europe from Biarritz to the Engadine, gambling, tangoing, and sponging on no less vulgar plebeians, they, the unobtrusive and self-respecting Hickses, should have had the luck to meet this cultivated pair, who joined them in gentle ridicule of their own frivolous kinsfolk, and whose tastes were ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... his head, and for a moment or two watched in silence the sponging of our Major's scalp. "I've known this here ship in the variousest kinds o' weathers," he announced at length, with quiet conviction, "but they was fool's-play one and all compared with ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... been without grub for sixty hours. That is literally true. I was ashamed of sponging on Paunchy, and could not bring myself to come back to the saloon where he would willingly have fed me. I did get a job for two days as a deckhand on an Erie ferryboat, but they found out I did not belong to the union. I had two ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... it is not necessary to leave the patient to the unaided efforts of nature. By cool sponging of the surface, persistently and thoroughly applied; by large, cool compresses placed over the abdomen and chest, or even the whole front of the body, and changed as often as warm, or every three to five minutes; by frequently repeated cool packs; by cold water drinking; by ice-packs ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 455, September 20, 1884 • Various
... so much as a sponging down or a mouthful of wine Almo was faced by a seventh fresh swordsman in complete armor. This time there were no caterwaulings or groans. Even the upper gallery had recognized Almo or been told who he was, even the populace had remembered or had been ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... The sponging over, the old man Pascoe handed her a bandage and, at a sign from her, lifted my shoulders a little while she passed it under my back. To do this her two arms must needs go around my body under the shirt: and I fancy that the sight ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... British crew. Yet, from all that may be learned from candid persons who have been in sea-fights, there can be but little doubt that on board of all ships, of whatever nation, in time of action, no very small number of the men are exceedingly nervous, to say the least, at the guns; ramming and sponging at a venture. And what special patriotic interest could an impressed man, for instance, take in a fight, into which he had been dragged from the arms of his wife? Or is it to be wondered at that impressed English seamen have not scrupled, in time of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... places the snow is sardonic. Sponging out the world of the outliers, it gives no foothold on another sphere in return. It makes of the earth a firmament under foot; it leaves us clawing and stumbling in space in an inimical fifth element whose evil outdoes its strangeness and beauty, There Nature, ...
— Waifs and Strays - Part 1 • O. Henry
... at Son, he set out for the Settite River, he and his wife crossing the Atbara River on a raft formed of his large circular sponging bath supported by eight inflated skins secured to ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... themselves, nor die, and Orlando with all his strength and prowess could not long keep off the constable. Evil days gloomed at no very great distance before him, and the fear of a sponging-house and debtors' prison compelled him to turn his handsome person to account. Had he not broken a hundred hearts already? had he not charmed a thousand pairs of beaming eyes? was there not one owner of one pair who was also ...
— The Wits and Beaux of Society - Volume 1 • Grace Wharton and Philip Wharton
... mortality of 50 to 70 per cent has been practically abolished. Formerly the most vigorous treatment was practiced by bleeding, purging, the increase of peristalsis by eserin or pilocarpin, enemas, cold in the head, counterirritants, aconite, tartar emetic, sponging, wet-sheet packing, etc. The gross mortality, however, was not materially reduced, and nearly all that were attacked within the first ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... bath-rooms, that even the most ordinary apartment or flat has now, bathing is not a matter of trouble and bother, but is, instead, an invigorating pleasure. I believe firmly in the need of the daily bath. Not the thorough scrubbing, mind you, but the quick sponging and the plunge. Let the thorough scrubbing be at least twice during the week, and the five-minute plunges on other days. Certain it is that one is much refreshed by the dipping luxury, and still more certain is the fact that in no other way can the flesh be kept healthy ...
— The Woman Beautiful - or, The Art of Beauty Culture • Helen Follett Stevans
... were to some extent the prejudices of Thackeray. That he should have shared Gilbert a Beckett's dislike of Jews was perhaps to be accounted for by his having in his youth been detained on two occasions in "sponging-houses," though through no fault of his own; and visiting the sins of the lowest upon the whole race, as is the orthodox practice, he displayed towards them something of Alonzo Cano's ill-will and more than ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... Roger, you are trying religiously to cure yourself, and only very occasionally must the craving so far overcome you that you actually endeavour to secure alcoholic refreshment, as Sir James calls it. No promiscuous sponging, my boy, but a sponge now and then at considerable ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... well trained by giving the words of command, it will be expedient to exercise them without giving the several detailed commands, by directing them to "load and fire!" At this command the different individuals should, each in proper order of time, silently perform his prescribed duties of sponging, loading, running out, training, and pointing, the Captain of the gun regulating the elevation and depression, by raising or lowering his hand, and by holding it horizontally and steady when the gun is "well;" and in pointing, by moving ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... eyes opened. In one of the corners sat Morrison on the knee of an attendant, who was sponging the blood from his face, whilst another flapped a towel before him. She took a deep breath as he rose slowly to his feet and came forward to meet his man. Directly the shuffling sound of feet began again, she closed her eyes once more, holding with ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... Granvilles, Aberdeen, Montrond, &c. The Duc de Dino, who came here to amuse himself, has been arrested, and Montrond and Vaudreuil begged Laval to put him on his list of attaches at the Foreign Office, which would release him from the sponging-house. He was afraid and made difficulties; they were excessively provoked, but at last induced him to speak to Lord Aberdeen about it, which he said he would do after dinner. In the meantime Montrond got me to tell the story to Aberdeen, which I did, and got him to encourage ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... airy, sunshiny room, which should be heated to 70 deg. F., and from which all the unnecessary movables should be taken out before the entrance of the patient. A flannel nightgown and light bed clothing are desirable. The fever is best overcome by cold sponging, which at the same time diminishes the nervous symptoms, such as restlessness and delirium. The body is sponged—part at a time—with water at the temperature of about 70 deg. F., after placing a single thickness of old cotton or linen wet with ice ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... washing, which, however, appeared to her so very unusual an operation, that I had to perform it for her myself. Sweet oil and laudanum, and raw cotton, being then applied to her ear and neck, she professed herself much relieved, but I believe in my heart that the warm water sponging had done her more good than anything else. I was sorry not to ascertain what leaves she had applied to her ear. These simple remedies resorted to by savages, and people as ignorant, are generally approved by ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... one could understand. His dull eyes were shining, his parchment face was quivering with excitement, and his strange musical call rang out above all the hubbub. The two men were hurried to their corners, one second sponging them down and the other flapping a towel in front of their face; whilst they, with arms hanging down and legs extended, tried to draw all the air they could into their lungs in ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... honest outlaw, a merry robber of the rich, and ended stamped into slime. Maurice Blum started out as an anarchist of principle, a father of the poor; he ended a greasy spy and tale-bearer that both sides used and despised. Harry Burke started his free money movement sincerely enough; now he's sponging on a half-starved sister for endless brandies and sodas. Lord Amber went into wild society in a sort of chivalry; now he's paying blackmail to the lowest vultures in London. Captain Barillon was the great gentleman-apache before your time; he died in a madhouse, screaming with fear of the "narks" ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... said to himself, sponging his neck, feeling every ounce of his strength dissolve in perspiration; a feverish agitation still prevented him from remaining in one spot; once more he walked up and down, trying every chair in the room in turn. Wearied of the struggle, at last he fell against his bureau and leaning ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... adept on whom his mantle had fallen; but the dungeons of the Bastille were yawning for their prey, and Aluys and his mother decamped with all convenient expedition. They travelled about the Continent for several years, sponging upon credulous rich men, and now and then performing successful transmutations by the aid of double-bottomed crucibles and the like. In the year 1726, Aluys, without his mother, who appears to have died in the interval, was at Vienna, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... Amelia, his wife, is lovely, chaste, and constant. Captain Booth—Fielding himself—is errant, guilty, generous, and repentant. We have besides in it many varieties of English life,—lords, clergymen, officers; Vauxhall and the masquerade; the sponging-house and its inmates, debtors and criminals,—all as Fielding saw and ...
— English Literature, Considered as an Interpreter of English History - Designed as a Manual of Instruction • Henry Coppee
... the bank precipitous, and he was still invisible. At length, after much tugging and counter-tugging, he began to show; eagerly I gazed into the water to examine my new acquaintance, when I made out something below, in shape between a coach-wheel and a sponging-bath; in a few moments more I brought to the surface an enormous turtle, well hooked. I felt like the old lady who won an elephant in a lottery: that I had him was certain, but what was I to do with my prize? It was ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... of kindness which would have dropped under your table unnoticed. So this day, when he came to see how the workmen were getting on, he found me in the deserted schoolroom, looking at my faded summer bonnet and some old ribbons I had been sponging out, and half-worn-out gloves —a sort of rag-fair spread out on the deal table. I was in a regular passion with only looking at that shabbiness. He said he was so glad to hear I was going to this festival with the Donaldsons; old Betty, our servant, had told ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... until he had brought them to a pitch of unsurpassable perfection in that particular direction. Then he as sedulously drilled them in tacking, veering, and other manoeuvres. Finally, he exercised them at the guns, putting them through all the actions of loading, aiming, firing, and sponging out their weapons—but without much expenditure of his precious ammunition—until there was probably no smarter or capable crew afloat than that of the Nonsuch. It must not be supposed that all this was accomplished without developing a certain amount of friction. The ship had not been ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... with a large sponging bath, which was one of the household gods of the expedition. This was now full of pure rain water. The value of this old friend was incalculable. In former years I had crossed the Atbara river in this same bath, lashed upon an angareb ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... left the window, he put down his book, got his hat and coat from the hall, and went out through the kitchen where Charlotte was sponging bread. ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... know the answer either? Wasn't that the biggest joke on me! And really, Miss Sanders, I beg your pardon for asking. It popped out before I could gather my wits. I am scared to death in that class, though of course that is no excuse for sponging. I'm glad you didn't know it enough to ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... later, on her emerging from that lady's private sitting-room, her eyes were mere swollen slits in her face. Instead, however, of sponging them in cold water and bravely joining her friends, Laura was still foolish enough to hide and have her cry out. So that when the bell rang, she was obliged to go in to public prayers looking a prodigious fright, and thereby advertising ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... sawars (cavaliers), who, though many of them are not worth a rupee, conceive it derogatory to their gentility and Pathan blood to apply themselves to any honest industry, and obtain for the most part a precarious livelihood by sponging on the industrious tradesmen and farmers, on whom they levy a sort of blackmail, or as hangers-on to the wealthy and noble families yet remaining in the province. These men have no visible means of maintenance, and no visible occupation except that of lounging up and down with their ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... should be given good attention, for an active skin helps to keep the blood pure and the circulation normal. Take a vigorous dry rubbing at least once a day, and twice a day would be better. A quick sponging off with cool water followed with vigorous dry rubbing is good, but the rubbing is of greater importance than the sponging. An olive oil rub is often soothing and may be taken ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... born, and the wonderful scene when Sir Pitt proposes marriage to the little green-eyed governess and she is scared into confessing her great secret, and the most famous scene of all, when Rawdon Crawley is released from the sponging-house and finds Lord Steyne with Rebecca alone. It is but a single page. The words spoken are short, brief, plain—not five sentences pass—"I am innocent," said she—"Make way, let me pass," cried My Lord—"You lie, you coward and villain!" said Rawdon. There is in all fiction ...
— Studies in Early Victorian Literature • Frederic Harrison
... doctor, "you couldn't have borne this so patiently.—Now, hold up the bucket, Ned. That's the way. I dare say the sponging feels comforting and takes off ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... walk through the wood? that is a good joke. Why, it is like walking through a river, and the young wood slapping your eyes, for you can't see every twig by this light, and the leaves sponging your face and shoulders: and the briers would soon strip your gown into ribbons, and make your little ankles bleed. No, you are a lady; you stay where you are, and let us men work it. We shan't find him yet awhile. I must get near the ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... Cool sponging in the morning, if there is proper reaction, is often of benefit. Iron may be indicated; bitter tonics may be indicated. Digitalis and strychnin are often of advantage. Caffein may be used as a drug as well as ...
— DISTURBANCES OF THE HEART • OLIVER T. OSBORNE, A.M., M.D.
... it was, to the congregation without seeking to get out of doing his share of the State service. The hours of obligatory work would be so short and the work so light that he would have abundance of leisure to prepare his orations without sponging ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... a yard of real cushion lace, to trim the ruffles for Dolly's sleeves, for which she had bartered the over yard of cloth and two dozen fresh eggs. Then even busier times set in. Mahala Green had already arrived, for she was dressmaker as well as tailoress, and was sponging and pressing over the black paduasoy that had once been dove-coloured and was Hannah's sole piece of wedding finery, handed down from her grandmother's wardrobe at that. A dark green grosgrain petticoat and white lawn ruffles made a sufficiently picturesque attire for Hannah, whose ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... herself about the suite, clearing away the breakfast, sponging off the oilcloth table-spread, making the bed, pottering about with a broom or duster or cleaning rag. Towards ten o'clock she opened the windows to air the rooms, then put on her drab jacket, her little round ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... put under the arms, in the folds of neck, etc., and the shirt is slipped on. Next the band, diaper, and stockings are removed and after first oiling the groin and the folds of the thighs and the buttocks, the same sponging, drying, and powdering is done here as on ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... Marshlands to great advantage, and there are many reasons for the flitting. I ought to be at head-quarters, and besides there are the Sundays. We are too many now for picnicking in the class-room, or sponging ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bankruptcy with cargoes of furs that in four years amounted to half a million of modern money. In ten years he had brought half a million dollars worth of furs to the English company.[1] Yet he was a poor man, threatened with the sponging-house by clamorous creditors and in the power of avaricious statesmen, who used him as a tool for their own schemes. La Chesnaye had saved his furs; but the half of the cargo that was the share of Radisson and Groseillers ...
— Pathfinders of the West • A. C. Laut
... going home," replied Phil. "I'm going to stay with Mr. Herdic, and he has promised to take Thad and me to Key West and the sponging-grounds before we return home, or before Thad does, for I never expect ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... to drowse into a kind of half-sleep, in spite of his too obvious and audible suffering. She sat beside him, sponging and fanning him, listening to his shallow, jerky, wheezy respiration, watching for the subtle something in the stifling room that should announce a change of wind, thinking of Mr Bentley's coming, and many other things. The weary nurse ...
— Sisters • Ada Cambridge
... even a wash cloth, dipping the sponge into the cold water, then pressing out enough of the water so that there will be no excess of water to run over the surface of the body from the sponge. Begin by sponging face, neck, shoulders, arms and chest, then wipe these parts dry, subject them to vigorous friction with the crash towel until the arms, shoulders and chest particularly glow with the warmth of the reaction. While the upper half of ...
— The Biology, Physiology and Sociology of Reproduction - Also Sexual Hygiene with Special Reference to the Male • Winfield S. Hall
... his feet directly, and after sponging himself with a great show of dexterity began squaring again. The second greatest surprise I have ever had in my life was seeing him on his back again, looking up at me ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... patient in too hot a room; fresh air is of great value. Do not leave her for nine days in an unchanged bed. The necessary sponging and changing should be done daily. Cleanliness means comfort here, and comfort health. It is not early sponging and washing, but a nine days' steaming in unchanged bedclothes which causes chills. After cool sponging, a gentle rubbing under the bedclothes with ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... thought delicate; and therefore, with his one purpose before him, he carefully studied physiology, and made himself a code of rules which he obeyed to the end of his life, in especial inhaling large quantities of air, sponging the whole body with cold water, and taking daily exercise by walking. He was a man of great vivacity and acuteness, with the poetical spirit that accompanies strong enthusiasm, and with a fastidious delicacy and refinement ...
— Pioneers and Founders - or, Recent Workers in the Mission field • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... order, and a cereal with cream. The mysterious girl hidden in his stateroom was no longer an adventuress, sponging on his idiotic generosity: she was an exquisite, almost a sacred, charge. As he ate his breakfast in the dining-car he saw a man he knew sitting directly opposite him at the next table. Their eyes ...
— The Lion's Mouse • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... some months. Flannel shirt in winter. Balsam copaiva. Gum kino, bitters, chalybeates, friction over the whole skin with flannel morning and night. Partial cold bath, by sprinkling the loins and thighs, or sponging them with cold water. Mucilage, as isinglass boiled in milk; blanc mange, hartshorn jelly, are recommended by some. Tincture of cantharides sometimes seems of service given from ten to twenty drops or more, three or four times a day. ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... wide; the country, flat and uninteresting, being the usual scattered thorn bushes and arid plains, the only actual timber being confined to the borders of the river. Course, always south with few turns. My sponging-bath makes a good pinnace for going ashore from the vessel. At 4.20 P.M. one of the noggurs carried away her yard—the same boat that met with the accident at our departure; hove to, and closed with ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... the orifice of the lacrimal duct on the floor of the nasal chamber and close to its anterior outlet will be found blocked by a portion of dry mucopurulent matter, on the removal of which tears may begin to escape. This implies an inflammation of the canal, which may be helped by occasional sponging out of the nose with warm water, and the application of the same on the face. Another remedy is to feed warm mashes of wheat bran from a nosebag, so that the relaxing effects of the water vapor ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... by an internal bath, rational diet, judicious fasting, scientific manipulation or some other simple yet powerful remedy of natural healing. To permit a patient to perish in a burning fever, depending solely upon the efficacy of prayers, formulas and mental attitude, when wet packs and cold sponging would in a few minutes reduce the temperature below the danger point, is manslaughter, even though it be done in the ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... sponging on them," grunted Iky, who always had an eye to the main chance. "You know what I would do if the pony ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... in hot weather, is very useful; but the water should be very little cooler than the skin of the child. When the constitution is delicate, the water should be slightly warmed. Simply sponging the body, freely, in a tub, answers the same purpose as a regular bath. In very warm weather, this should be done two or three times a day, always waiting two or three hours after ...
— A Treatise on Domestic Economy - For the Use of Young Ladies at Home and at School • Catherine Esther Beecher
... some mimosas by day. On the 15th of September the entire male population of Sofi turned out to assist us across the river. I had arranged a raft by attaching eight inflated skins to the bedstead, upon which I lashed our large circular sponging bath. Four hippopotami hunters were harnessed as tug steamers. By evening all our party, with the baggage, had effected the crossing without accident—all but Achmet, Mahomet's mother's brother's cousin's sister's ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... done? In the pauses of sponging and towelling himself, the Commandant asked the question again and again. Could he go to Mrs. Treacher and borrow back the four shillings he had given her last night? Fish, new-laid eggs, fresh butter, marmalade, ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... "Well, get that sponging idea out of your head, Phonzie. There's always plenty for two in my cupboard. Like I says the other night, what's the use being able to afford my little flat if I can't get some ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... rose, with a shut mouth, and went across to the bathroom. There he started. The quaint figure of Gwen stood at the bowl, her back was towards him; she was sponging her face gingerly. Her hair, all blowsed from the pillow, was tied in a stiff little pigtail, standing out from her slender, childish neck. Her arms were bare to the shoulder. She wore a bodiced petticoat of pink flannelette, which hardly reached ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... then let it cool until the leather can be taken in the hand without burning; use the glove to sponge off the ribbon; if the ribbon is very dirty, dip it into water and draw through the fingers a few times before sponging. After cleaning, lay a piece of paper over the ribbon and iron; paper is better than cloth. The ribbon will ...
— The Whitehouse Cookbook (1887) - The Whole Comprising A Comprehensive Cyclopedia Of Information For - The Home • Mrs. F.L. Gillette
... was known to every sponging-house, and to every bailiff that, blowing in pursuit, walked the London streets. A fine-hearted, warm-blooded character, without an atom of prudence, self-control, reticence, or forethought; quite as destitute ...
— The Poetical Works of Addison; Gay's Fables; and Somerville's Chase • Joseph Addison, John Gay, William Sommerville
... did they get it? From your Uncle William, of course. His work has kept them, hasn't it? And you? We're sponging on your Uncle William, and I hate to think we're sponging on him. You're very proud about not letting me go out to work, but you're not so proud about letting Uncle William ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... was standing at the side window of the nursery looking away across the roofs. The fat old gentleman at the gray-haired house was sponging off the rubber-plant, and waving the long green leaves at her in greeting. Gwendolyn feigned not to see. Her lips were firmly set. A scarlet spot of determination burned round either dimple. Her gray eyes smouldered darkly—with a ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... The means taken to depress the vital powers were as varied as the ingenuity of the vivisectors could devise. Sometimes it was accomplished by skinning the animal alive, a par of the body at a time, and then roughly "sponging" the denuded surface. Sometimes it was secured by crushing the dog's paws, first one and then the other. Now and then the dog's feet were burnt, or the intestines exposed and roughly manipulated; the tail was crushed, the limbs amputated, the stomach cut out. ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... threatening serious head affection. We told him this, and enjoined absolute discontinuance of work, bed at eleven, light supper (he had all his life made that a principal meal), thinning the hair of the head, a warm sponging-bath at bed time, &c. To all our commands he readily promised obedience, not forgetting the discontinuance of neck rubbing, to which he had unfortunately been prevailed to submit some days before. For fully an hour we talked together on these and other subjects, and ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... brings you to the gate, which is well defended by a gang of picturesque beggars, who are old enough to have sat for Murillo, and revoltingly pitiable enough to be millionaires by this time, if Castilians had the cowardly habit of sponging out disagreeable impressions with pennies. At the first charge we rushed in panic into a tobacco-shop and filled our pockets with maravedis, and thereafter faced the ragged battalion ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... did not like the appearance of that young man; not that he looked especially vicious, but there was a sort of useless, lazy, sponging look to him. Baines set him down as the sort of young man who would play Kelly pool with money his mother earned by doing laundry, and, in addition, catalogued him as a "saphead." He ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... great dark arches of the staircase, with a glimmering light below, and through the throne-room with the nurse. When I came in I saw Hugh sitting up in bed; they had put a chair beside him, covered with cushions, for him to lean against. He was pale and breathing very fast, with the nurse sponging his brow. Canon Sharrock was standing at the foot of the bed, with his stole on, reading the last prayers from a little book. When I entered, Hugh fixed his eyes on me with a strange smile, with something triumphant in it, and said in a clear, natural voice, "Arthur, ...
— Hugh - Memoirs of a Brother • Arthur Christopher Benson
... yielded, and lay looking at his new attendant, till he dozed off into unconsciousness. Waking then after a while, hot and restless, his nurse brought water and a sponge and began sponging his face and neck and hands; gently and soothingly; and kept up the exercise until restlessness abated, breaths of satisfied content came at easy intervals; and finally Mr. Copley slumbered off peacefully, and knew no more. ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... and was either had to Newgate, or else incarcerated in the lodgings of a King's Messenger till his examinations were over, and he was either committed or Enlarged. These Messengers kept, in those days, a kind of Sponging Houses for High Treason, where Gentlemen Traitors who were not in very great peril lived, as it were, at an ordinary, and paid much dearer for their meat and lodging than though they had been at some bailiffs lock-up in Cursitor Street, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 2 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... skin with an aniline pencil. The skin of the prepuce is slit and removed up to the aniline line. The mucous membrane is next cut away, leaving only a free edge of about one-eighth of an inch in width. Any bleeding which occurs should be entirely arrested, and asepsis must be insured by frequent sponging with carbolic or sublimate solution. Numerous coarse-hair stitches are then inserted, so as to bring accurately together the fresh-cut edges of the skin and mucous membrane, and subsequently, after a further sponging and drying, a piece of gauze two layers of thickness, and wide enough ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... materials are particularly liable to smoulder after the gun has been fired, hence the necessity of well sponging the piece. Even with this precaution accidents often occurred owing to a cartridge being ignited by the still glowing debris of the previous round. In order to prevent this, bags of non-smouldering material, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... people ate what they could get, but always had their fill, drank till they were drunk, and carried off what they could, praising and blessing their genial host; and their host too when he was out humour blessed his guests—for a pack of sponging toadies, but he was bored when he was without them. Piotr Andreitch's wife was a meek-spirited creature; he had taken her from a neighbouring family by his father's choice and command; her name was Anna Pavlovna. She never interfered in anything, welcomed guests cordially, and readily paid visits ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... the health of Serpolette was drunk, and then fearing to look as if she were sponging, Kate insisted on likewise standing treat. Fortunately, when the second round had been drunk, closing time was announced by the man in the shirtsleeves, and bidding her friends good-bye, Kate stood in the street trying to think ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... end of a month Jaguars were steady at 1-1/16; and I had received a report from the mine to the effect that down below they were simply hacking gold out as fast as they could hack, and up at the top were very busy rinsing and washing and sponging and drying it. The next month the situation was the same: Jaguars in London very steady at 1-1/16, Jaguar diggers in West Africa very steady at gold-digging. And at the end of the third month I realized not only that I ...
— Once a Week • Alan Alexander Milne
... others—what has been your fortune when compared with this?—the fortune, thanks to which you were brought up as a boy in the depths of indigence, in close attendance upon the school along with your father, pounding up the ink, sponging down the forms, sweeping the attendants' room,[n] occupying the position of a menial, not of a free-born boy! {259} Then, when you became a man, you used to read out the books[n] to your mother at her initiations, and help her in the ...
— The Public Orations of Demosthenes, volume 2 • Demosthenes |
