It comes to the business man in the crowded city, and babbles of green fields, nudges Mr. Sparrowgrass with its elbow, and tells him to take Mrs. S. and the children into the country.
"A Lecture on Physical Development, and its Relations to Mental and Spiritual Development, delivered before the American Institute of Instruction, at their Twenty-Ninth Annual Meeting, in Norwich, Conn., August 20, 1858"
S.R. Calthrop
Any peas, spinnage, cucumbers, Sparrowgrass?
"Annie Kilburn A Novel"
W. D. Howells
Sparrowgrass, Asparagus The word Sparrowgrass, which is a corruption of the word asparagus, illustrates how readily the uneducated mind associates an unusual term with another that is familiar, and as the mental impression is received through the ear, and lacks that definiteness which the printed form would give, the new idea, when repeated, often assumes a picturesque, if not a ludicrous, form.
"Slips of Speech"
John H. Bechtel