They were in the nature of a responsibility--a tax upon women as it were.

Every day she reminded me of the duty of keeping my body clean.

Its members had often suffered the tyranny of the soaped hand at the side of the rain barrel.

I suppose that all the waters of this world have gone up in the sky and come down again since those far days, but even now the thought of my aunt brings back the odor of soft soap and rain barrels.
She did her best, also, to keep our minds in a cleanly state of preservation--a work in which the teacher rendered important service.

He was a young man from Canton.
One day when I had been kept after hours for swearing in a fight and then denying it, he told me that there was no reason why I shouldn't be a great man if I stuck to my books and kept my heart clean.