Nor can one express the love with which he would be received in all those provinces which have suffered so much from these foreign
scourings, with what thirst for revenge, with what stubborn faith, with what devotion, with what tears.
Most of the gilding was worn off by the frequent
scourings which it had undergone beneath the hands of a black slave.
The miserable companion of thieves and ruffians, the fallen outcast of low haunts, the associate of the
scourings of the jails and hulks, living within the shadow of the gallows itself,--even this degraded being felt too proud to betray a feeble gleam of the womanly feeling which she thought a weakness, but which alone connected her with that humanity, of which her wasting life had obliterated so many, many traces when a very child.
and how often was he thrown into complete dismay by some rushing blast, howling among the trees, in the idea that it was the Galloping Hessian on one of his nightly
scourings!
In all his
scourings of the letters and diaries, Bradley has found no evidence of an adult crisis of faith or struggle with belief, as there surely would be if this onetime choirboy ever drifted towards serious doubt.
Other remains include early patch workings and
scourings, ironstone, settlement sites and elements of the Dowlais Free Drainage System, an arrangement of leats and reservoirs which channelled water to power the ironworks.
Yet in the ensuing span of years, most of the gilt has now been "worn off by the frequent
scourings which it had undergone, beneath the hands of a black slave" (6:136).
In Travels through France and Italy, for instance, he claims that "I am not one of those who implicitly believe in all the dogmata of physic," and describes how, by plunging into the sea off Boulogne, "my stitches and fever vanished the very first day; and by a daily repetition of the bath, I have diminished my cough, strengthened my body, and recovered my spirits." (11) In Humphry Clinker, essaying the waters at Bath, Matthew Bramble (surely ventriloquizing Smollett's own view here) expresses his disgust upon discovering that "there is, or may be, some regurgitation from the bath into the cistern of the pump," and that "it is very far from being clear to me, that the patients in the Pump-room don't swallow the
scourings of the bathers" (45).
I could see no purpose in it, nor the sense of forcing my feet into those boots, the clothes that fisted up between my legs, the baths, the bath brushes, the combings,
scourings, parings: I could not see it!
pith, placenta, the orts, the
scourings, the skimmed solids, skin rotted
If the spotlight of historical or political interest falls on Vietnamese males, they are government officials, generals, village chiefs and elders; among younger Vietnamese men, we find privileged students, influential draft-dodgers, many of them vanished from the country itself, living abroad; those remaining are cripples, beggars, urban
scourings; pimps, hustlers, cowboys.
While
scourings would have occurred episodically, the corrosion would have proceeded at a regular pace.