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Updated: May 20, 2025
I used to wonder," she went on, "why it was that I didn't really like the villagers in other places, but I never found out why until I came to Boveyhayne, and it was simply because I felt instinctively that they were spongers ... those other people ... that they hadn't any real work to do, and that they were living on us like ... like ticks on a sheep. The Boveyhayne men are splendid men.
Go into any smart billiard-room nowadays, or make a round of the various race meetings, and you will see something to make you sad. You see one vast precession of Rakes making their mad Progress. Bob was always kindly with me, as, indeed, he was with everybody. The very bookmakers scarcely had the heart to offer him false prices, and only the public-house spongers gave him no law.
Gradually, without realizing it, she got into the habit of leaving him to amuse himself, as he best could, for she knew he did not specially care for the pursuits which gave her the keenest joy. In consequence of this unintentional neglect he very naturally fell more and more into the hands of the bar-room spongers who loitered about the hotel corridors.
I'll do anything for you, if you only can!" the boy kept on saying, and unconsciously raising his voice in his excitement. Frank's determination was taken. He would accept the chances of trouble and assist this poor little chap, whose condition seemed so miserable, as the slave of the trio of big, rough spongers.
Most people had a good word for poor Bob, and many kind fellows could not mention him without the tears coming into their eyes. Only the spongers were indifferent; but they had, of course, to look around for another liberal spendthrift. Bob was so young, and bright, and brave; I never knew a straighter or a kinder man, and I have seen few who had so much ability.
"I judged it shore lay in this direction, but like yuh says, it must'a ben a steamer out yonder on the gulf mebbe thet rev'nue boat they done tole us to watch out fur er else some o' them spongers frum up Tarpon Springs way. Anyhow, I got all I wants o' exercise so I move weuns call hit a day an' get back to the shanty."
"I say, partner, how 'bout that Greek sponger we talked with when we dropped in at Tarpon Springs t'other day you kinder s'pected he knew a heap more about these goin's-on than he wanted us to grab, even if we was jest s'posed to be Northern tourists, bent on havin' a fishin' spree later on when big tarpon strike in around Fort Myers could them spongers have a hand afetchin' in bottled stuff, or ferryin' Chinks over from some island halfway point?"
Who would not despise the city whose guards are such miserable creatures? Who would not suppose, seeing these pallid, hairy manikins scattered on the ground, that it had none to fight for it, and so had turned out its gaol-birds to fill the ranks? That is how the spongers differ from the rhetoricians and philosophers in war.
His father had always scoffed at tramps and beggars. "They are spongers," he had often said, "and people cannot afford to have such useless people around." That word "sponger" as it came to Dan caused him to straighten himself up and step forward more quickly. He was not a sponger now. His face flushed at Farrington's insult.
Not an idiot on the highway, not a penny in the till. Eat away, hell-born boy! Tear and crunch! We have fallen on times when nothing can equal the cynicism of spongers. Fatten at my expense, parasite! This wretched boy is more than hungry; he is mad. It is not appetite, it is ferocity. He is carried away by a rabid virus. Perhaps he has the plague. Have you the plague, you thief?
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