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noun
Scavenger  n.  A person whose employment is to clean the streets of a city, by scraping or sweeping, and carrying off the filth. The name is also applied to any animal which devours refuse, carrion, or anything injurious to health.
Scavenger beetle (Zool.), any beetle which feeds on decaying substances, as the carrion beetle.
Scavenger crab (Zool.), any crab which feeds on dead animals, as the spider crab.
Scavenger's daughter, an instrument of torture invented by Sir W. Skevington, which so compressed the body as to force the blood to flow from the nostrils, and sometimes from the hands and feet.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Scavenger" Quotes from Famous Books



... The Colony under the Rule of Charles the First and Second A.D. 1625-A.D. 1685, based upon manuscripts and documents of the period. Joel Munsell's Sons, Albany, 1886. Mr. Neill has been, with some justice, called the scavenger of Virginia history. In Virginia Carolorum he has gathered many papers and documents which are bitterly hostile to the colony, and represent it in a light far from attractive. As, however, it is the duty of the historian to present truth, no matter whether ...
— Patrician and Plebeian - Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion • Thomas J. Wertenbaker

... is wonderfully fitted by nature for the part it has to fill as "scavenger" abroad, this being the name they often go by. It is large and strong, so that the carcase of a horse or a buffalo is not too much for it to attack. Its legs are strong, but not armed with sharp claws like those of birds that feed on living ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")

... table I told the story of the spider and the fly with undisguised hostility to the spider. "That," said Robert, home from the front—"that is simply a sentimental point of view. My sympathies as a practical person are all with the spider. He is the friend of man, the devourer of insects, the scavenger of the gardens. He helps in the great task of keeping the equilibrium of nature. Moreover," said he, "I have seen you kill greenflies yourself. You killed them because you knew they were a nuisance. Why should you ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)

... evolutions in the air, wheeling round and round without closing their wings, in large flocks, above the watery region we had left. The black vulture (Cathartes atratus), which closely resembles the well-known turkey buzzard in habits and appearance, performs, like it, the duty of scavenger, and is protected therefore by the inhabitants of all parts of the country. It may be distinguished from the latter by the form of the feathers on the neck, which descend from the back of the head towards ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... to a tea-party by one of our rich upstarts, who, from a scavenger, is, by the Revolution and by Bonaparte, transformed into a Legislator, Commander of the Legion of Honour, and possessor of wealth amounting to eighteen millions of livres. In this house I saw for the first time the famous ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton

... of wars, Fanning from Odin's hall with airs ice-cold Of doom the foes of Odin. 'Man nor child,' He sware,'henceforth shall tread Northumbrian soil, Nor hart nor hind: I spare the creeping worm: My scavenger is he,' The Mercian realm Rose at his call, innumerable mass Of warriors iron-armed. East Anglia sent Her hosts in aid. Apostate Ethelwald, Though Oswy's nephew, joined the hostile league, And thirty chiefs beside that ruled by right Princedom or province. Mightier far than these Old ...
— Legends of the Saxon Saints • Aubrey de Vere

... To work interminably and without apparent progress. Often used transitively with 'over' or 'through'. "The file scavenger has been groveling through the /usr directories for 10 minutes now." Compare {grind} and {crunch}. Emphatic form: 'grovel obscenely'. 2. To examine minutely or in complete detail. "The compiler grovels over the ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0

... yourself a chief, do you—eh?" he said sternly. "What kind of a chief can you be, to come sneaking about in the dark like this, trying to steal our buffalo-meat! Are you not ashamed of yourself? A pretty chief, truly; you are like the scavenger-beetle, and think of yourself only; you have not the heart of a chief. Why don't you kill your own beef? You must have a stone in your chest, and ...
— Black Ivory • R.M. Ballantyne

... our necessity; and that these compositions are no more to be taken as examples of our merits than the verses which the dustman leaves at his lordship's door, "as a provocative of the expected annual gratuity," are to be considered as measuring his, the scavenger's, valuable services—nevertheless the author's and the scavenger's "effusions may fairly be classed, for their intrinsic worth, no less ...
— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... by the proprietors of a menagerie, in New York. "The proprietors wish it to be understood, that people of color are not permitted to enter, except when in attendance upon children and families." For two shillings, any white scavenger would be freely admitted, and so would negroes, provided they came in a capacity that marked their dependence—their presence is offensive, only when they come as independent ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... Fanny. She found comfort in a look, a cry, a whistle. The smiles of strange men upon the road whom she would never see again became her social intercourse. The lost smiles of kind Americans, the lost, mocking whistles of Frenchmen, the scream of a nigger, the twittering surprise of a Chinese scavenger. ...
— The Happy Foreigner • Enid Bagnold

... shepherds who possess collies, such proud, useful servants and friends, that no bribe would induce them to part with them. But what old favourite dog or even bird is there that any one would part with? Man, be he scavenger or duke, is very similar in this species ...
— Heads and Tales • Various

... another, fringed with mud on account of the weather, the whole mounted on two thick legs with heavy feet which were ill-covered by ragged stockings and shoes from whose cracks the water oozed upon the floor. Above the mound of rags rose a head like those that Charlet has given to his scavenger-women, caparisoned with a filthy bandanna handkerchief slit ...
— The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac

... satin and velvet scraps, and bits of lace and ribbon and jet as to make her the envy of all her playmates. She used to crawl about the floor of the shop workroom and under the table and chairs like a little scavenger. ...
— One Basket • Edna Ferber

... apprehension. Through his brain ran a persistent and doleful chant to which he involuntarily set two words, repeated over and over again in horrible monotony: "Ska knows! Ska knows!" until, shaking himself in anger, he picked up a rock and hurled it at the grim scavenger. ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... of weed seeds in general, and knotgrass in particular? Avian Rat, indeed! rather Avian Scavenger, who draws his hard-earned pay in corn. Can you grudge him a few paltry millions? Would you exterminate him because in your blindness you only note the debit side? There is a Power behind the sparrow. It is Nature herself, and against Her fixed ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English

... scavenger at the palace-gate Who, his left heel being lame, Obtained as a most special grace, That his ...
— Biographies of Distinguished Scientific Men • Francois Arago

... your ears, George, or I shall find a word to scorch you. You are the poorest thing in Nature's bag of samples. A well-bred woodlouse wouldn't employ you for a scavenger. If you shrank to your soul's dimensions you might wander lost for a century on the point of a cambric needle. You are the last rarefied essence of the contemptible—the final word of ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray

... more than once attracted Amrah by its wide gaping. A stone of large dimensions stood near its mouth. The sun looked into it through the hottest hours of the day, and altogether it seemed uninhabitable by anything living, unless, perchance, by some wild dogs returning from scavenger duty down in Gehenna. Thence, however, and greatly to her surprise, the patient Egyptian beheld two women come, one half supporting, half leading, the other. They were both white-haired; both looked old; but their garments were not rent, and they gazed about them as if the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... been thrown over the wall during the night. Its little arm was crunched and stript of flesh, and it was whining inarticulately—it died almost immediately. A man came to see me, who for a long time used to heap up merit for himself in heaven by acting as a city scavenger. Early every morning he went round the city picking up dead dogs and dead cats in order to bury them decently—who could tell, perhaps the soul of his grandfather had found habitation in that cat? While he was doing this pious ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison

... however, to enter our protest once more against this preposterous system of 'Resolutions,' in which, as it were in echo to every niaiserie of every hired pen in the country, the House degrades itself to the work of the common scavenger, orders at immense expense an investigation into some subject where all well informed persons are fully advised, and at a cost of the national treasure, etc., etc., etc. to the ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale

... fair, and rich, rained upon by the genial showers from the clouds which, attracted by the Frenchman's Cap, Wyld's Crag, or the lofty peaks of the Wellington and Dromedary range, pour down upon the sheltered valleys their fertilizing streams. No parching hot wind—the scavenger, if the torment, of the continent—blows upon her crops and corn. The cool south breeze ripples gently the blue waters of the Derwent, and fans the curtains of the open windows of the city which nestles in the broad shadow of Mount Wellington. The hot wind, born amid the burning sand of the interior ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... Chaussee d'Antin. One of those night-birds who wonder round with a basket on their back and crook in hand, and were, during the Revolution, facetiously called the Committee of Research, was standing by the curbstone where the two men now stopped. This scavenger had a shriveled face worthy of those immortalized by Charlet in his caricatures of the ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac

... a very excellent scavenger for either removing the harmful gases, or causing them to enter into solution with the metal in such a way as to largely obviate their harmful effects. Chrome-vanadium steels have been claimed, by many steel manufacturers and users, to be preferable to nickel-chrome ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin

... she's right. I myself should prefer a scavenger's existence, on the whole. But have you thought any further of ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing

... public funds wherewith to indulge their licentious tastes. President Bagshaw had converted Buckingham Palace into a barracks, where he sat day in, day out, with boon companions. Entrance was forbidden to none. The dirtiest scavenger might there at any moment shake the hand of the people's ...
— The King's Men - A Tale of To-morrow • Robert Grant, John Boyle O'Reilly, J. S. Dale, and John T.

... where the commissioners are required to stay in the city hall every day, business men do not hold those positions, although the salaries are higher than the proposed salaries of the Des Moines commissioners. One commissioner was formerly a city scavenger, another a blacksmith, justice of the peace and alderman, a third a railway conductor, fourth a dry-goods merchant, and the mayor, a retired capitalist. Mr. Pollock of Kansas City says of the Des Moines commission, "The commission ...
— Elements of Debating • Leverett S. Lyon

... disgusting alcoholic liquors; if you wish to go to the theatre and listen to Mephistopheles, to the devil, to Marguerite, the dissolute hussy, and Doctor Faust, her foul accomplice; if you wish to gorge yourselves upon the oyster, scavenger of the sea, and the pig, scavenger of the earth—a scavenger that there is some question of making use of in the streets of Chicago (laughter); it you wish, I say, to do the work of the devil, and eat the meats of the devil, ...
— Modern Saints and Seers • Jean Finot

... A noted American scavenger is the peccary, a species of wild hog, whose home ranges from Texas to the Pampas of South America. He is a devourer of creatures more obnoxious than himself. He moves with great rapidity, is always on the alert, and stops at nothing from mountains to a flowing river. ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon

... widow's ear, It may, b'ing destin'd to assert 875 Her sex's honour, reach her heart: And as such homely treats (they say) Portend good fortune, so this may. VESPASIAN being daub'd with dirt, Was destin'd to the empire for't; 880 And from a Scavenger did come To be a mighty Prince in Rome And why may not this foul address Presage in love the same success Then let us straight, to cleanse our wounds, 885 Advance in quest of nearest ponds, And after (as we first design'd) Swear ...
— Hudibras • Samuel Butler

... it, if necessary; the children must always be in their best bibs and tuckers and appear as Little Lord Fauntleroys; and no one, at any time, or any circumstance, must ever appear to be dirty, except the scavenger who comes to remove the accumulated debris of the kitchen, and the man who occasionally ...
— Quit Your Worrying! • George Wharton James

... of camp life the Russian soldier as the doughboy saw him was very unsatisfactory. Many a Yank has itched to get his hands on the Russian Archangelite soldier, especially some of our hard old sergeants who wanted to put them on police and scavenger details to see them work. In this reluctance to work, their refusal sometimes even when the doughboy pitched into the hateful job and set them a good example, they were only like the civilian males whose aversion to certain kinds of work has been mentioned before. When some ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore

... stepped out of the cab and looked about me. It was stuck on like a swallow's nest to the end of a great row of commonplace houses, nearly a quarter of a mile in length, but itself was not the work of one of those wretched builders who care no more for beauty in what they build than a scavenger in the heap of mud he scrapes from the street. It had been built by a painter for himself, in the Tudor style; and though Percivale says the idea is not very well carried ...
— The Vicar's Daughter • George MacDonald

... next day came, as soon as the scavenger of the Sun sweeps the last traces of the Shades from the streets and squares of Heaven, the magicians returned, and no sooner had they the ring in their hands than they instantly vanished, and not a trace of them ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile

... compared with the hardship, hunger and harsh cruelty inflicted upon the Confederate private soldiers imprisoned at Camps Morton and Douglass and at Rock Island. These men would often actually pick up and devour the scraps thrown out of the scavenger carts. Some of them froze to death—insufficient fuel was furnished, when it was furnished at all, and the clothing sent them by friends was rarely given them. The men of my regiment told me of treatment, inflicted ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke

... 1658, that 'it had the approbation of our late learned and eloquent King,' the martyred Charles I. Living in, or at the corner of Chancery Lane, Walton is known to have held parochial office: he was even elected 'scavenger.' He had the misfortune to lose seven children—of whom the last died in 1641—his wife, and his mother- in-law. In 1644 he left Chancery Lane, and probably retired from trade. He was, of course, a Royalist. Speaking of the entry of the Scots, who came, as one of them said, ...
— Andrew Lang's Introduction to The Compleat Angler • Andrew Lang

... awe; sacrifices, living and dead, were offered to her from time to time, and sometimes a cripple or two was knocked on the head and left by the water's edge for her pleasure. She was indeed a veritable scavenger of crime for the neighbouring villages about, and earned some sort of respect, for, ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace

... season of national abasement, infatuation, folly, and vice, any portent could surprise, sober men would be utterly confounded by an article current in all our newspapers, that the loathsome Thomas Paine, a drunken atheist and the scavenger of faction, is invited to return in a national ship to America by the first magistrate of a free people. A measure so enormously preposterous we cannot yet believe has been adopted, and it would demand firmer nerves than those possessed by Mr. Jefferson ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various

... slips of paper and had them stuck everywhere and anywhere with the design that one and all should call him by it. And this in order that it might exercise a good influence upon his bringing up. Even water-coolies and scavenger-coolies indiscriminately address him by his name; and how much more such as we? So late, in fact, as yesterday Mrs. Lin gave him but once the title of 'Sir,' and our old mistress called even her to task. This is one side of the question. In the next place, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin

... various bacteria are incidental. The tubercular bacillus is never able to gain a foothold in healthy lungs, but after degeneration of lung-tissue has taken place the lungs furnish a splendid home for this bacillus. The tubercular bacillus is a scavenger and therefore does not thrive in healthy bodies. It is the result ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... like the houses in the old town of Edinburgh, or many houses in Paris. There are few street doors; the entrance halls are, for the most part, looked upon as public property; and any moderately enterprising scavenger might make a fine fortune by now and then clearing them out. As it is impossible for coaches to penetrate into these streets, there are sedan chairs, gilded and otherwise, for hire in divers places. A great many private chairs are also kept among the nobility ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens

... addressing audiences in England or writing for English readers, are very striking. Thus Mr. Birrell said at Skipton in November 1911 that he had been told that in the great Unionist City of Belfast there was only one Roman Catholic in the employment of the Corporation, and he was a scavenger. (It will be observed that here, as in many of his speeches, he carefully used the expression "he had been told"—so that what he said may be literally true, even though when he heard the statement he knew that it was false.) And Stephen Gwynn, M.P., in his "Case for Home ...
— Is Ulster Right? • Anonymous

... sloping ceiling, a blackened floor, a shapeless mattress heaped with rags, a deal box, a rusty stove resting upon two bricks, supporting in its turn an ancient frying-pan, a chipped saucer, and a battered tin can from which, when the scavenger business was good, old Marg served afternoon tea—such were her home and ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various

... late English banker, though the richest private citizen in the world, and perhaps master of scores of English servants, who sued for the smallest crumbs of his favor, was, as a subject of the government, inferior to the veriest scavenger among them. Suppose an Englishman, of the Established Church, were by law deprived of power to own the soil, made ineligible to office, and deprived unconditionally of the electoral franchise, would Englishmen think it a misapplication of language, if it were said, "The government rules over ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... to ho-boy is but a step, and for that matter the English used the terms interchangeably. But—and mark you, the leap paralyzes one—crossing the Western Ocean, in New York City, hautboy, or ho-boy, becomes the name by which the night-scavenger is known. In a way one understands its being born of the contempt for wandering players and musical fellows. But see the beauty of it! the burn and the brand! The night-scavenger, the pariah, the miserable, the despised, the man without caste! And in its next incarnation, consistently and ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London

... good opportunity of learning something of what the duties of the office were. The Beadle combined in his office a number of duties, including one which he must have felt a little infra dig—I mean the office of scavenger! The following is the ...
— Fragments of Two Centuries - Glimpses of Country Life when George III. was King • Alfred Kingston

... think they ought all to get the same wages!' cried Harlow. 'Do you think it's right that a scavenger should get as ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell

... that 'James's Court, till the building of the New Town, was inhabited by a select set of gentlemen. They kept a clerk to record their names and their proceedings, had a scavenger of their own, and had balls and assemblies among themselves.' Paoli was Boswell's guest there in 1771. Traditions of Edinburgh, i. 219. It was burnt down in 1857. Murray's Guide to Scotland, ed. 1883, p.49. Johnson wrote:—'Boswell has very handsome and spacious rooms, ...
— Life Of Johnson, Volume 5 • Boswell

... intercourse with the divines of the faculty. The common idea of his Reformation was expressed by Kaulbach in a drawing which represented the four chief reformers riding on one horse, pursued by a scavenger with the unmistakable features of their historian. He was received with civility at Rome, if not with cordiality. The pope sent to Cesena for a manuscript which it was reported that he wished to consult; and his days were spent profitably ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... melancholy days in which London wears the appearance of a huge scavenger's cart. A lurid fog and mizzling rain, which had been incessant for the previous twenty-four hours; sloppy pavements, and kennels down which the muddy torrents hastened to precipitate themselves in ...
— Newton Forster - The Merchant Service • Captain Frederick Marryat

... pushed on, to ride out into an opening all at once—a place which had probably been a garden surrounded by buildings, now fast crumbling into dust, and here upon one side, not a dozen yards away, lay the attraction which had drawn the scavenger birds together, at least a hundred more that they had not previously seen dotting the ruins ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn

... who will reign?" He answered: "Mamma, I have taken this illness because there is a young girl, the daughter of the merchant who lives opposite, who is so beautiful that she has enamored me." The queen said: "Yes, my son, I shall marry you to her. Were she the daughter of a scavenger, you shall marry her." "You would do a good thing. Now let us send for the merchant." They sent a servant to the merchant's house. "Her Majesty wishes you at the palace!" "What does she want?" "She must speak with you." The merchant went to the ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane

... nothing; I may not claim equality with the scavenger of the Western streets; or with the donkey-boys of the Eastern bazaar. Here I am served with fear and servility, being a man of riches; across the waters, I may sun myself in the smiles of women as long as I have no desire to wed." He suddenly seized the woman, holding her in a grip of iron which ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest

... other. Take the job, the first that comes in your way, and stick to it till something better turns up. Don't be afraid of it whatever it is; don't imagine anything will hurt you or lower your dignity in the slightest so long as it is honest. Even if they make you a street-scavenger, remember that is better than loafing. In one year, or two, or three, you will be perfectly at home in the new life, and able to see, according to your abilities, the path that offers you the best prospect of the greatest success. During ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay

... one of the dishes they most enjoyed was cooked "mathametlo," a large frog, which, during a period of drought, takes refuge in a hole in the root of certain bushes, and over the orifice a large variety of spider weaves its web. The scavenger-beetle, which keeps the Kuruman villages sweet and clean, rolls the dirt into a ball, and carries it, like Atlas, ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... if I had, is a scavenger's hand fit to touch hers?" thundered Blanchard. "I thought you was a man to swear by, and follow through thick an' thin," he continued, "but you ban't. You'm a mean, ill-minded sawl, as would trample on your awn flesh an' blood, if ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts

... her. "Mother of whelps! Louse-ridden scavenger of sweepings! What part hast thou ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy

... species of wood-dog is the white. They are low on the legs, of a dingy white colour, and much smaller than the other two. They neither attack cattle nor game, though fond of hunting rabbits. This dog is, in fact, a scavenger, living upon the carcases of dead sheep and animals, which are found picked clean in the night. For this purpose it haunts the neighbourhood of habitations, and prowls in the evening over heaps of refuse, scampering away at the least alarm, for it ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies

... ramparts of Mequinez the city of walls. And toiling in the darkness over the barren plain and the belt of carrion that lies in front of the town, through the heat and fumes of the fetid place, and amid the furious barks of the scavenger dogs which prowl in the night around it, they came in the grey of morning to the city gate over the stream called the Father of Tortoises. The gate was closed, and the night police that kept it were snoring in their rags under the arch ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... of torture, invented by Sir William Skevington, lieutenant of the Tower in the reign of Henry VIII. "Scavenger" is a ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer

... scavenger, and the wise men taught the people to respect him as a means of preserving the race undiminished. The common people have always a profound contempt for the beings who do their dirty work, and contempt with them goes before enmity. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various

... being removed periodically. The next improvement was the provision of a movable receptacle. Of this type the simplest arrangement is a box placed under the seat, which is taken out, the contents emptied into the scavenger's cart, and the box replaced. The difficulty of cleansing the angles of the boxes led to the adoption of oval or round pails. The pail is placed under the seat, and removed at stated intervals, or when full, and replaced ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 421, January 26, 1884 • Various

... Saturn:— "Tripe is the most nourishing author I know. To adapt Dickens's famous phrase, there is a juiciness in his work which would enchant a scavenger." ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 152, February 21st, 1917 • Various

... he said. "I'm not proud, and it is really a treat to see civilized food again. I'll willingly act as your scavenger, Miss Norah." ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce

... was a wild new urgency. Quickly he searched and he found, across all the great ledge, sinews from the gorging which the sun had not yet touched. Some among the tribe stared with immobile contempt, thinking Gral the scavenger was yet hungry. But Gral gathered quickly, and departed, and was soon at the far place by the great bole, where he retrieved his stone and ...
— The Beginning • Henry Hasse

... beneath such grace and high-bred leisure that Nature hides in her creatures the occupation of scavenger and carrion-eater! ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs

... right," objected Somerset, "the thing was a fiasco. A scavenger's barrow and some copies of the Weekly Budget—these were ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... hands his "bien aimee" into a restaurateur's of the lowest order and supplies her with fruits and wine, with the grace and foppery of a Parisian "petit maitre," and with the gravity of a "philosophe."—"Madame," says a scavenger in the streets of Paris, laying his hand on his heart, and making a low bow to an old woman cleaning shoes at the door of an inn, "J'espere que vous vous portez bien."—"Monsieur," she replies, dropping a curtsey with an air of gratitude and profound respect, "Vous me faites d'honneur; ...
— Travels in France during the years 1814-1815 • Archibald Alison

... James's-street, or a squib in a weekly newspaper—a power which exposed to relentless ridicule, before the most susceptible and numerous tribunal, the loftiest names in rank, in wisdom, and in genius—and which could not have deprived a beggar of his obol or a scavenger of his office: THE POWER OF ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Tall factory chimneys do not disfigure its silhouette or blacken its walls. Handsome equipages enliven the streets. But the municipality, like certain saints of old, seem to have taken vows of perpetual uncleanliness. Alike the scavenger's broom and the dust-cart appear to ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... of Warren's inestimable Jet blacking." Not like many others in London, who will run you down and leave you to your fate, the heir of his fader's whimsicalities stopped short in the inauspicious set-out of his rapid career; and "dirty end," he exclaimed, "to the scavenger that didn't think of the gentleman's boots!" And at the same time the mother of this hopeful representative of the Mac Dermott family, made her appearance with the genuine warmth of Irish hospitality; and inviting the two strangers ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan

... various traditions, and go forth comforted to their workaday pursuits. I envy them. I enter this exquisite Torture Chamber, and I shriek at the first twinge of the thumbscrew and faint at the preliminary embraces of the scavenger's daughter. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... in his relations to man; for by almost all nations he is regarded with hatred, and every man's hand is against him. He is protected neither by custom nor superstition; the sentimentalist cares nothing for him as an object of poetical regard, and the utilitarian is blind to his services as a scavenger. The farmer considers him as the very ringleader of mischief, and uses all means he can invent for his destruction; the friend of the singing-birds bears him a grudge as the destroyer of their eggs and young; and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various

... arouses any sympathetic enthusiasm, and probably no one is sorry when towards the end of the story Sloppy seizes hold of the mean little creature, carries him out of the house, and deposits him in a scavenger's cart ...
— Charles Dickens and Music • James T. Lightwood

... understood in Europe, which bar the progress of Indian sanitary reform. The sweepers cannot be readily coerced because no Hindoo or Musalman would do their work to save his life, nor will he pollute himself even by beating the refractory scavenger. A strike of sweepers on the occasion of a great fair, or of a cholera epidemic, is a most dangerous calamity. The vested rights described in the text are so fully recognized in practice that they are frequently the subject of ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... that lovely avernus, its mouth, by the currents of the delicate ciliae which clothe every tentacle. The fact is, that the Madrepore, like those glorious sea-anemones whose living flowers stud every pool, is by profession a scavenger and a feeder on carrion; and being as useful as he is beautiful, really comes under the rule which he seems at first to break, that ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley

... policemen go searching, scouring and hustling the intestines in the greatest possible haste, in order to remove an obstruction about three hundred inches distant from where these "forcers" had entered the intestinal sewer. With mercury as a scavenger the work is pretty thoroughly done, though extra care has to be taken that some of the teeth may remain after the victim survives the additional intestinal inflammation occasioned by ...
— Intestinal Ills • Alcinous Burton Jamison

... strictly watched, was never allowed outside—so that all the happy garbage-can moments occurred while these receptacles of joy were indoors. One night in March, however, as they were set out a-row for the early scavenger, the Royal Analostan saw her chance, slipped out of the door, and ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton

... sense of the terrifying effect produced by one's first experience of the night orgies of Oriental dogs, it curdles your blood to recall it. Seen by daytime, the dogs are harmless enough, as they go about their scavenger work among the heaps of refuse and filth. But by night they are howling demons, stampeding about the streets in mad groups, barking to and at each other, whining piteously one moment, roaring ...
— The Book of Delight and Other Papers • Israel Abrahams

... must be thrown away are not thrown into the streets: they are collected in carts and carried away. You think that the streets of cities are kept clean by the rain? Not so: if we had only the rain as a scavenger we should be in ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant

... the houses. All were dustier, dirtier, and emptier than is ever the case by night or day, because this was neither one nor the other, though the sun was up to make the most of dust, dirt, and emptiness. It was before even the cleansing hour of the scavenger and the water-cart. A dead cat was sprawling horribly in one deserted reach of wood-paving. And a motor-car at full speed in a thoroughfare calling itself King's Road, which Pocket was about to cross, had at all events the excuse of a visible ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung

... for suspense and trouble was work, and good for all would come of his remedy. He toiled long hours in the oat harvest. He sowed seed which promised a thousand bushels of turnips. Land foul with weeds, or only half subdued, he sowed with that best of scavenger crops, buckwheat, which was to be plowed under as soon as in blossom. The vegetable and fruit gardens gave him much occupation, also, and the table fairly groaned under the over-abundant supply, while Abram was almost daily despatched to the landing or to neighboring markets with ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... vacancy—was within call, within touch; he stayed there as to be in it again, high above it though he was still perched; he watched as for some comforting common fact, some vulgar human note, the passage of a scavenger or a thief, some night-bird however base. He would have blessed that sign of life; he would have welcomed positively the slow approach of his friend the policeman, whom he had hitherto only sought to avoid, and was not sure that if the patrol had come into sight he mightn't have felt the impulse ...
— The Jolly Corner • Henry James

... Vendidad is taken up with the praises of agriculture, injunctions as to the care and pity due to the dog, the guardian of the home and flock, the hunter and the scavenger. It includes an elaborate code of ceremonial purification, resembling on this point the Leviticus of the Bible, and it prescribes also the gradations of penance for sins ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various

... for some of the town men are not nice at all; but the East Coast men are so simple and fine, but then, you know, they are so poor. Our dear Mr. Fullerton told me that in very bad weather the best men cannot earn so much as a scavenger can on shore." ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman

... text a "Mihtar"a prince, a sweeper, a scavenger, the Pers. "Mihtar," still used in Hindostani. [In Quatremere's Histoire des Sultans Mamlouks "Mihtar" occurs also in the sense of superintendent, of head-equerry, and of chief of a military band. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton

... "You, my dove, because of your faithfulness, shall be my favorite pet, and no longer shall you be a messenger." Then he turned to the crow, and said, "You, foul bird, shall forever remain black; you shall forever be a scavenger, and every one ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... "The matulator, the scavenger, my lord. I did not know that he belonged to these horrible people, or I should not have admitted him. He came with his broom to brush out the litter of the birds. His eyes fell upon the Venus, and in an instant he had rushed upon her ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle

... I was reaching out my hand to take that of the babou, in compliance with Bhima's introduction, an enormous adjutant—one of the great pouched cranes (arghilahs) that stalk about Calcutta under protection of the law, and do much of the scavenger-work of the city—walked directly between us, eyeing each of us with his red round eyes in a manner so ludicrous that we all broke forth in a fit of laughter that lasted for several minutes, while the ungainly bird stalked away with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... When they returned from pilgrimage the boy that was Her husband had died, and I saw Her again in the bullock-cart. By God, these Hindus are fools! What was it to me whether She was Hindu or Jain—scavenger, leper, or whole? I would have married Her and made Her a home by the ford. The Seventh of the Nine Bars says that a man may not marry one of the idolaters? Is that truth? Both Shiahs and Sunnis say that a Musalman may ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling

... as the bazaar the main street goes winding roughly parallel with the waterfront. Trees arch over it like a cathedral roof, and through the huge branches the sun turns everything beneath to gold, so that even the impious sacred monkeys achieve vicarious beauty, and the scavenger mongrel dogs scratch, sleep, and are ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy

... the wild surroundings. Nor does the smoldering camp-fire lessen the loneliness. Its very light deepens the surrounding dark, and its only use, after the evening meal is cooked, is merely to dispel the savage attack of the voracious mosquito and put the fear of man into the hearts of the prairie scavenger, the coyote, whose dismal howl awakens the echoes of the night at painfully certain intervals, and often drives sleep from the eyes of ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum

... and true, infinitely capable and knowledgeable, had starved, or failed to make a scavenger's wage, Beeching had tumbled into possession of a couple of hundred thousand dollars, and, after having sampled most methods of "burning" money known to the northland, still had fully half this sum to ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson

... of the Parisian scavenger who recently discovered a crocodile in a dustbin encourages me to write to you on a similar subject. I note with profound dismay the proposal to turn Hyde Park into a Zoological Garden. At least this is not an unfair deduction from the scheme to instal a huge ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 28th, 1920 • Various

... was an Italian, but he is much more than that today. After six centuries Dante belongs to all those and only those who can read him with appreciation and pleasure. Our scavenger is an Italian, and he reads Dante just as so many of the Anglo Saxon proletair read Shakespeare. So Dante belongs to this garbage man, not because he is Italian, but because he sincerely loves the Divina Commedia. A waiter, ...
— Vignettes of San Francisco • Almira Bailey

... relieved only by black beak and feet, and black, beady eye. These little birds abound in the pack-ice, but the blue-grey southern fulmar and the Antarctic petrel were also to be seen, and that unwholesome scavenger, the giant petrel, frequently lumbered by; while the skua gull, most pugnacious of bullies, occasionally flapped past, on his way to make some less formidable bird disgorge his ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley

... the vulture is a privileged bird. He is looked upon as a cheap and useful scavenger, clearing away the carcasses of dead animals, that would otherwise pollute the atmosphere. This is a matter of much importance in hot countries; and it is only in such countries that vultures are commonly found. What a beautiful illustration of the completeness of Nature's laws! As you get ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... the hackneyed metaphor, I value the several actors in the great drama of life, simply as they act their parts. I can look on a worthless fellow of a duke with unqualified contempt, and can regard an honest scavenger with sincere respect. As you, Sir, go through your role with such distinguished merit, permit me to make one in the chorus of universal applause, and assure you that ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham

... boiling-point to make good tea of, whilst, as for the provisions, such as got not too high, were so swathed in layers of questionable dust and grit as to be repulsive. Keeping even passably tidy was impossible, and in personal cleanliness a London scavenger could give a traveller by rail from Cairo to Assouan many points. It was at Wady Halfa that I got booked in the way-bill for Dakhala, or Atbara Camp, 390 miles away. The construction of the Halfa-Atbara line was, as I have said before, a masterpiece of military strategy, the credit for which ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh

... although protected by law as a scavenger, is held as unclean by the Mexicans, who would almost starve rather than eat it; and the suggestion, taken seriously and indignantly resented by Mme. Bazaine, created quite a ripple of disturbance in ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson

... went on, "the most painful point! Communicate! But let us consider, it is certain that I shall be base in proposing to Christ that He should descend like a scavenger into my ditch; but if I wait till it is empty, I shall never be in a state to receive Him, for my bulkheads are not closed, and sins ...
— En Route • J.-K. (Joris-Karl) Huysmans

... argue design from the beneficial provision it finds itself enjoying, in happy ignorance of the perishing or latent multitude. But, in view of the large and important part they play (as the producers of all fermentation and as the omnipresent scavenger-police of Nature), no good ground appears for arguing either wasteful excess or absence of design from the vast disparity between their potential and their actual numbers. The reserve and the active members of ...
— Darwiniana - Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism • Asa Gray

... them) by assuring me his conduct is founded on a sage selfishness. This is diverting enough. I suppose the Commissioners of, Police will next send me a letter of condolence, begging my acceptance of a broom, a shovel, and a scavenger's greatcoat, and assuring me that they had appointed me to all the emoluments of a well-frequented crossing. It would be doing more than they have done of late for the cleanliness of the streets, which, witness my shoes, are in a piteous pickle. I thanked the ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott

... thy bounty and beneficence; and, although none of my company be worthy of it, yet I have a set of honourable men, to wit Zantut the bath-keeper and Sali'a the corn-chandler; and Silat the bean- seller; and Akrashah the greengrocer; and Humayd the scavenger; and Sa'id the camel-man; and Suwayd the porter; and Abu Makarish the bathman;[FN621] and Kasim the watchman; and Karim the groom. There is not among the whole of them a bore or a bully in his cups; nor a meddler nor a miser of his money, and each and every ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton

... have been elected to do the scavenger work in this town," he said. "But I'm going to leave it to you gentlemen to take the carrion away. Shorty, I'm going back to the house. Are you ready to ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand



Words linked to "Scavenger" :   animal, fauna, creature, beast, hoarder, magpie



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