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Examples

  • An old negro prefers to put his meal bags in a covered wagon, and drive them to market at his leisure, with his pocket full of the tobacco he helped to raise, and the whole country for a spit-box, to being whirled away bodily in a railroad car, in terror of his life, deaf with the whistling and the puffing of the engine.

    Aunt Phillis's Cabin Or, Southern Life As It Is 1852

  • By the regulations of the ship, the forecastle was cleaned out every morning; and the crew, being very neat, kept it clean by some regulations of their own, such as having a large spit-box always under the steps and between the bits, and obliging every man to hang up his wet clothes, &c. In addition to this, it was holystoned every Saturday morning.

    Two Years Before the Mast Richard Henry Dana 1848

  • The jury are accommodated at the rate of three men to a spittoon (or spit-box as they call it here); and the spectators in the gallery are provided for, as so many men who in the course of nature expectorate without cessation.

    The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete John Forster 1844

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