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Housewife   Listen
noun
Housewife  n.  
1.
The wife of a householder; the mistress of a family; the female head of a household. "He a good husband, a good housewife she."
2.
A little case or bag for materials used in sewing, and for other articles of female work; called also hussy. (Written also huswife)
3.
A hussy. (R.) (Usually written huswife)
Sailor's housewife, a ditty-bag.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Housewife" Quotes from Famous Books



... wide, white board with the cheerful announcement, "Smith's Inn—Refreshments for Man or Beast," stood a more modest structure. Brown, unpainted, unclapboarded, it stood by the wayside. Its log walls were stuccoed with mud, and in the wide mouth of the doorway was the brawny housewife, bare-armed, peering from beneath a slatternly red sun-bonnet, while over the doorway the passer-by read the letters in red chalk upon ...
— A Sketch of the History of Oneonta • Dudley M. Campbell

... know, I take for granted, what that word lady meant at first. That it meant she who gave out the loaves, the housewife who provided food and clothes; the stewardess of her household and dependants; the spinner among her maidens; the almsgiver to the poor; the worshipper in the chapel, praying for wild men away in battle. The being from whom ...
— All Saints' Day and Other Sermons • Charles Kingsley

... household duties such as churning butter, making soap, pouring candles, quilting, and weaving cloth for the family's clothing, it was not uncommon for the women to join the men in the field at harvesttime. The domesticity of the American housewife may be one impact on American life made ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf

... inhabitants were obliged to cross to a neighbouring island, and this the majority of them did very regularly. Stores were brought twice a year from the town of Lerwick; and it seldom happened that these ran short, for Miss Adiesen was a shrewd housewife and James Harrison a notable manager; also the Laird was somewhat eccentric, and objecting strongly to all society outside of Boden, did not like that "provisions short" should be made an excuse for frequent expeditions ...
— Viking Boys • Jessie Margaret Edmondston Saxby

... to his father and mother clearly shows. He went to the house of the printer, where he did not receive the warm welcome he had expected. Deborah Franklin was a fat, hard-working, illiterate, economical housewife. She had a great pride in her husband, but had fallen hopelessly behind him. She regarded with awe and slight understanding the accomplishments of his virile, restless, on-pushing intellect. She did not know how to enjoy the ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller

... pudding with honey sauce. The children had a Christmas tree, brought in by their father from the forest, and this was decorated with fancy-colored papers, and rings, stars and animals, all made of a kind of ginger and spice dough and baked by the housewife. There were a few presents, and the boys and Granbury Lapham added to these by giving the children each a small silver ...
— Dave Porter in the Far North - or, The Pluck of an American Schoolboy • Edward Stratemeyer

... approached, the watchful housewife had loosed a vicious-looking bulldog, and the tramp wisely passed by without stopping. The next house was deserted, the door of the third place was slammed in his face before he could even make known his wants, and he was beginning to wonder ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... sacrifice, can people who are pinched for money preserve a moderate purity in their persons and their surroundings. By painful degrees Amy had accustomed herself to compromises in this particular which in the early days of her married life would have seemed intensely disagreeable, if not revolting. A housewife who lives in the country, and has but a patch of back garden, or even a good-sized kitchen, can, if she thinks fit, take her place at the wash-tub and relieve her mind on laundry matters; but to the inhabitant of a miniature flat in the heart of London anything ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... often eat more than three times a day. They take a little candy now, a little fruit then, or they go to the drug store for a glass of malted milk or buttermilk, which they call drinks, or they take a dish of ice cream. The housewife nibbles at cake or bread. If a person is in fair health and wishes to evolve into self-mastery and good health, he should make up his mind never to eat more than three times a day. Nothing but plain water should enter his mouth except at ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker

... friends and companions I was leaving behind, and I leaned on the bulwarks of the little steamer as we passed out of the lovely bay and saw the shepherd's hut, high up on the cliff, where we wanderers from the ship five years before had been entertained by the Scotch housewife to our first New Zealand dinner, then on to where we visited the whalers and the head to which we rowed in the Captain's gig. The whole scene arose before me afresh; where were we all scattered to? ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth

... a straighter or leveller furrow. He had won prizes at the annual ploughing and harrowing matches: and upon the strength of ten and sixpence a week had married Nancy Tugby, to whom he had been engaged off and on for eleven years. Nancy was a frugal housewife, and worked hard, morning, noon and night. She was quite a treasure to Bumpkin; and, what with taking in a little washing, and what with going out to do a little charing, and what with Tom's skill in mending cart-harness (nearly all the cart-harness in the neighbourhood ...
— The Humourous Story of Farmer Bumpkin's Lawsuit • Richard Harris

... became impossible for the husband to tell his wife that he was going to the tavern; everyone can go to the tavern, and no place in England where everyone can go is considered respectable. This is the genesis of the Club—out of the Housewife by Respectability. Nowadays everyone is respectable—jockeys, betting-men, actors, and even actresses. Mrs Kendal takes her children to visit a duchess, and has naughty chorus girls to tea, and tells them of the joy of respectability. There is only one class left that ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... may be on the alert with his gun, this marauder will watch his chance, dash into the yard, then out again with his prey, so suddenly that only the despairing cries of the fowl reveal the murderous onslaught. In western Maine this hawk is very common. A housewife will hear a rush of wings and cries of terror, and can only reach the door in time to see one of these robbers sailing off with the finest of her pullets. Hares and wild-ducks are favorite game also. The goshawk will take a mallard with perfect ease, neatly and deliberately strip off the feathers, ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe

... says: "CASSELL'S BOOK OF THE HOUSEHOLD is another book, of a class of which many have been issued, and good books too; but this one, by the thoroughness and comprehensiveness of its arrangement, will go far to render the housewife who possesses it independent of all the rest.... Many a housewife will find the articles interesting enough to be taken up at any ...
— Cassell's Vegetarian Cookery - A Manual Of Cheap And Wholesome Diet • A. G. Payne

... the once-peaceful spot, he might have fancied the whole promontory, its hut and its inhabitants, to be a delusion of magic, but that he still heard in the distance the Fisherman's piteous cries of "Undine!" and the old housewife's loud prayers and hymns, above the ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various

... almost not far-fetched. There was a blue-and-white spick-and-spanness about Mrs. Lipkind's kitchen which must lie within the soul of the housewife who achieves it—the lace-edged shelves, the scoured armament of dishpan, soup-pot, and what not; the white Swiss window-curtains, so starchy, and the two regimental geraniums on the sill; the roller-towel too snowy for mortal hand to smudge; the white sink, hand-polished; the bland ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst

... about me lustily, striving to get between the villains and my young master (which is no credit to me, as I was so wrought with rage that I verily believe I would have no more felt the thrust of a rapier than Marian's housewife the prick of a needle). But there was no method in aught, neither could anything be seen; for the moon had withdrawn behind the clouds, and we seemed to be fighting underneath clear water, so pale and ghastly ...
— A Brother To Dragons and Other Old-time Tales • Amelie Rives

... she took out of her pocket a neat little housewife and put the button carefully inside it. Then she said, "The swing ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon

... room with the good housewife sat her two sons; they were still small, but had great thoughts. Their mother, too, had always spoken to them of right and justice, and exhorted them to keep to the truth, which she said was the countenance of the Lord in ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen

... of the Pawnee. It became broken, but at no time lost its distinctive character. It never rose to a high key, and from the beginning to the end, its variation in tone was no more than two notes of the musical scale. Had the volume been less, it would have called to mind the crooning of the housewife by her spinning wheel or over the cradle of the infant she ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis

... to go and buy himself a founder's share in the New River Company. He would not even know what was meant, and even if he did it would take several millions of sixpences to buy one. It is astonishing what a clever workman will do with very modest tools, or again how far a thrifty housewife will make a very small sum of money go, or again in like manner how many ideas an intelligent brute can receive and convey with its very limited vocabulary; but no one will pretend that a dog's intelligence can ever reach the level of a man's. ...
— Essays on Life, Art and Science • Samuel Butler

... "Irish Odyssey" ("Merugud Uilix maiec Leirtis"—"Wandering of Ulysses M'Laertes"). It was derived, in all probability, from the Gesta Romanorum, c. 103, where two of the three pieces of advice are "Avoid a byeway," "Beware of a house where the housewife is younger than her husband." It is likely enough that this chapter, like others of the Gesta, came from the East, for it is found in some versions of "The Forty Viziers," and in the Turkish Tales (see Oesterley's parallels ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)

... there an ancient apple-tree, bent down and bowed to the ground with age, offers a mossy, shady seat upon one of its branches which has returned to the earth from which it sprung. Some wooden posts grown green and lichen-covered, standing at regular intervals, show where the housewife dries her linen. Right before the very door a great horse-chestnut tree rears itself in all the beauty of its thousands of blossoms, hiding half the house. A small patch of ground in front is railed ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies

... father's office every day or two, trips to "town" being among the Montgomery housewife's privileges, a part of her routine. Much visiting was done in Main Street, and there was always something to take one into Struby's drug-store, which served as a club. Even in winter there was hot chocolate and bouillon to justify the sociably inclined in lingering at the soda-water tables ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson

... the blazing hearth shall burn, Nor busy housewife ply her evening care; No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 69, February 22, 1851 • Various

... is a kind of smoked fish—salmon, ling, or cod—prepared in a delicious way which only a Swedish housewife understands. It is always the very finest fish to be had in the market, and before it reaches the market it is the very finest fish that swims in the sea. Every fisherman who sails from the west ...
— Gerda in Sweden • Etta Blaisdell McDonald

... waist, because there was no deeper, and even then his head was circled by clouds. He had a wife of an immensity comparable to his own. Once, while busily beating out a piece of bark-cloth, the sun sank low before she had finished her task. Like the excellent housewife that she was, she did not wish the day to end on work unfinished, so, at her request, Maui reached out into the west, seized the sun, without burning his fingers much, pulled it back to noon and held it there for two or three hours while the making of the cloth proceeded. Then ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner

... same idea as to color and form in the whole. It is not en regle to have decorations in sets or pairs; the arrangements should all be done with odd pieces. Every room in the house should be arranged for occupancy, having nothing too good for use, and the judicious housewife will follow a medium course and adopt ...
— The Ladies Book of Useful Information - Compiled from many sources • Anonymous

... a time a young couple of the middle class. The man was a reckless scapegrace and spendthrift; but the woman was a pious, faithful, and virtuous housewife. Juan was the husband's name; Maria, the wife's. One of the worst things about Juan was that he spent on another woman the greater part of the money which Maria could with difficulty scrape together. This other woman's name was Flora. It ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... the lad, "'tis winter with thee now. A poor old rogue! Did the new housewife talk of a halter because he showed his teeth when her ill-nurtured brat wanted to ride on him? Nay, old Spring, thou shalt share thy master's fortunes, changed though they be. Oh, father! father! didst ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... wondered how it had been possible to spare her so long, and always wound up her praises by saying, that Berenger would learn in time how lucky he had been to lose the French puppet, and win the good English housewife. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge

... so habituated herself to this way of speaking, that it was difficult for her to avoid it. As a housewife she was unexceptionable. She was careful to have everything in the most cleanly and orderly condition. She was an excellent cook, and the Squire an excellent provider, so that their table was always well spread, whenever good cheer was required. And yet you could not enter the ...
— Talkers - With Illustrations • John Bate

... had been given to social intercourse, the display of livestock, the exhibits of deft women fingers, of housewife skill, of the tradesman, of the merchant, of cotton—cotton, in every form ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore

... pain—that my fancy has never been half so greatly enkindled by Carthula, of the bending spear, or Morven of the winds, as by the sedate and homely aspect of an ordinary dish of eggs and bacon, hot from the flaming frying-pan of some worthy housewife." ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms

... rows of battered tin cans, resplendent in blue and yellow labels, are the homes of verbenas and geraniums, in sickly bloom. Now and then, a back door in the dreary block is distinguished by an arbored trellis bearing a grape-vine, and furnishing for the weary housewife a shady kitchen, al fresco. As a rule, however, there is little attempt to better the homeless shelter furnished ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites

... Ato, acting as pilot and co-pilot, set The Nebula down with as much ease as a housewife putting a fine piece of china ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... I have made an earnest effort to be of service to the housewife without or with one maid, as well as to those who are fortunate enough to ...
— Ice Creams, Water Ices, Frozen Puddings Together with - Refreshments for all Social Affairs • Mrs. S. T. Rorer

... Mr. Lockyer the meteors which we have been accustomed to consider trivial or incidental matters in planetary and stellar systems, no more important than the dust which the housewife raises from parlor and chamber, are really fundamental and basic elements of the Universe, capable of generating comets, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various

... and cry which in France tells so much to those of a trade. At this blacksmith's, as at most other solitary houses far away from a town, there was not only a store of men's clothes laid by as wanting mending when the housewife could afford time, but there was a natural craving after news from a distance, such news as a wandering tailor is bound to furnish. The early November afternoon was closing into evening, as we sat down, she cross-legged on ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell

... anything so altogether superfine, so utterly magnificent in my life," cried the king; "stewed peacocks' tongues from the Baltic, are not to be compared with it! Call out the housewife immediately!" ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins

... is missing!" the housewife shouted in her sister's ear, "and the foolishness thou singeth doth make ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock

... As valets now wou'd powder tender beaus: The liquid forms in hasty mass unite, Both equally delicious as they're white. In mining dish the hasty mass is thrown, And seems to want no graces but its own. Yet still the housewife brings in fresh supplies, To gratify the taste, and please the eyes. She on the surface lumps of butter lays, Which, melting with the heat, its beams displays; From whence it causes wonder to behold A silver soil bedeck'd with streams ...
— The Lives of the Poets of Great Britain and Ireland (1753) - Vol. III • Theophilus Cibber

... with landscapes in which pretty shepherdesses, impossible sheep, and garlands of roses predominated,—a style much in vogue in the early forties,—indeed the room seemed as if it had been closed and laid away by a tidy housewife years before, and opened and aired for my reception but yesterday. An illumined text,—a "Jonah under his Gourd," elaborately worked in colored silks,—a smirking likeness of "The Father of his Country," and an equally self-satisfied looking portrait ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... But now the housewife saw, dismayed, The waste so many mice had made, And did a trap procure. "And if I catch a mouse," said she, "No mercy shall it find from me; From mice my pantry ...
— Surprising Stories about the Mouse and Her Sons, and the Funny Pigs. - With Laughable Colored Engravings • Unknown

... bearing the full cup delicately, he lay like a disconsolate boy, face down upon the ground; so she touched him on the shoulder and said, in a tone of the brisk housewife:— ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown

... did not extend beyond Mrs. Finnigan's establishment, where they took two or three rooms and set up housekeeping in a humble way. Margaret, who was a tidy housewife, kept the floor of her apartments as white as your hand, the tin plates on the dresser as bright as your lady-love's eyes, and the cooking-stove as neat as the machinery on a Sound steamer. When she was not ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... who addressed her was a perfect specimen of the good housewife in the fifteenth century. She wore a quilted woollen gown, open before, with pendant sleeves, and a long narrow train; a corset, fitted close to the body, unto which the petticoats were attached, and a boddice laced outside. She wore the horned head-dress ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... processional movements in the opposite direction; but our modern customs or household life show, among the ancestors of English folk, that the sun-wise circuit entered not only into the religious life, but also mingled with and directed the most ordinary actions. Little does the modern housewife, who in beating the egg instinctively stirs her spoon in one direction,—a form of movement usually recommended by no conscious association of ideas,—imagine that in the method of her action she is bearing testimony ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various

... is the jingle of the bells on the baker's cart as it begins its rounds. From innumerable chimneys the curdled smoke gives evidence that the thrifty housewife—or, what is rarer in Stillwater, the hired girl—has ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich

... though they have many books, are essentially people of one Book. Wherever they are, the Bible is. Queen Victoria has it near by when the messenger from the Orient appears, and lays her hand upon it to say that this is the foundation of the prosperity of England. But the poor housewife in the cottage, with only a crust for food, stays her soul with it. The Puritan creeps into hiding with the Book, while his brother sails away to the new land with the Book. The settler may have his Shakespeare; he will surely have his Bible. As the long wagon-train creeps across the plain to seek ...
— The Greatest English Classic A Study of the King James Version of • Cleland Boyd McAfee

... in fact, that variety in cooking being a matter of the seasoning introduced by each cook or housewife, the cooking together of a hundredweight of potatoes would not prevent each cook or housewife from dressing and serving them in any way she pleased. And we know that stock made from meat can be converted into a hundred different soups to suit a hundred ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin

... in winter time, and this calls for a furnace for at least a portion of the house. Usually the kitchen is kept warm enough through the winter nights, so that running water may be put in the kitchen without danger from frost; although the writer knows of a house where it is the task of the housewife each winter night to shut off all water in the cellar and to clean out the trap in the sink drain in order to prevent freezing in both the supply pipe and drainpipe. Usually a water-pipe may be carried through the cellar without danger ...
— Rural Hygiene • Henry N. Ogden

... A little further down the way the Fish-monger. Stands Miles's fish-shop, whence is shed So strong a smell of fishes dead That people of a subtler sense Hold their breath and hurry thence. Miss Thompson hovers there and gazes: Her housewife's knowing eye appraises Salt and fresh, severely cons Kippers bright as tarnished bronze: Great cods disposed upon the sill, Chilly and wet, with gaping gill, Flat head, glazed eye, and mute, uncouth, Shapeless, wan, old-woman's ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various

... club, which he had inherited from Hercules, and which had the enviable property of falling of itself upon any knave in company, and there is a dash of the Tom Jones manner in the noisy activity of that excellent housewife Mrs. Joan. Some of the lighter papers, such as the one upon the "Art of Puffing," are amusing enough; and of the visions, that which is based upon Lucian, and represents Charon as stripping his freight of all their superfluous incumbrances in order to lighten ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson

... his own he had been led to believe was the best—whether in flocks or herds, or farm products—may be greatly improved, and his ambition and pride, as well as his interest, are at once excited to make an advance. At the same time the industrious housewife, and the blushing Miss, by an examination of the cloths and flannels—the carpets and quilts—the embroidered skirts and capes—the collars and slippers, discover that these articles are worthy not only of their admiration but of their emulation, and they, too, ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo

... Italy, where, when she rose to go, and remarked how delightful it had been, and the other guests joined in their expressions of enjoyment, Mr. Browning impulsively exclaimed: "Come back and sup with us, do!" And Mrs. Browning, with the dismay of the housewife, cried: "Oh, Robert, there is no supper, nothing but the remains of the pie." To which the poet rejoined: "Then come back ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... benefit to the human race. We can picture the day when our dooryards, our roadsides, our fields and hills shall be shaded by grand nut trees, showering sustenance and wealth on our descendants, and all people, and bearing the names of their originators; when the housewife of the future shall send her wireless call to the grocer for a kilo of Hales' Papershells, the Rush, the Jones, the Pomeroy Persian walnuts, the Black Ben Deming butternut, the Craig Corean chestnut, the Morris Hybrid hickory, the Close black-walnut ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association

... the fact that an old frost bite will swell or succumb to a temperature which will be innocuous to any other part of the body. The microscope may invariably reveal fungi in the patch of pear blight precisely as the housewife discovers the mold plant in her preserves and canned fruit, and even in the eggs of fowls, the mycelium (or spawn) penetrating the fruit or preserve though it be covered while boiling hot. If so, the reason why all parts of the tree are not attacked at the same time, is not because ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 3, January 19, 1884. - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various

... The officious housewife fetched a joint-stool, first clearing it from dust, whilst her husband added a billet to the heap. She was just preparing breakfast. A wooden porringer, filled to the brim with new milk, in which oatmeal was stirred, a rasher of salted mutton, and a large cake ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... towns where many houses adjoin, it is a common practice to paint or dye young chickens as soon as they are hatched, so that each housewife may know her own. One woman will colour hers a bright red, another will use blue, another green, and so on, the appearance of these strikingly-coloured little creatures intermingled in the streets being exceedingly ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready

... people were essentially Dutch. New York gets her Santa Claus, her doughnuts, crullers, cookies, and many of her odors, from the Dutch. The New York matron ran to fine linen and a polished door-knocker, while the New England housewife spun linsey-woolsey and knit "yarn ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... lodge beside the Capilano River, where leaping trout and salmon could be speared by arrow-heads fastened to deftly shaped, long handles. All through the salmon run he smoked and dried the fish with the care of a housewife. The mountain sheep and goats, and even huge black and cinnamon bears, fell before his unerring arrows; the fleet-footed deer never returned to their haunts from their evening drinking at the edge of the stream—their wild hearts, their agile bodies were stilled when he took aim. Smoked hams ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson

... put there. Such a plant must have been a favourite with an excellent housewife buried in the churchyard, whose epitaph attracts ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker

... them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care; No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various

... which we imbibe with our morning cup, then sifted down slowly through various media of {499} communication, mostly oral. It was two months after the battle before Philip of Spain knew the fate of his own Armada. The houses had no steam heat, no elevators; the busy housewife was aided by no vacuum cleaner, sewing machine and gas ranges; the business man could not ride to his office, nor the farmer to his market, in automobiles. There were neither railways nor steamships to ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... of a contented old age in country places, where there is little matter for gossip and no street sights. Housework becomes an art; and at evening, when the cottage interior shines and twinkles in the glow of the fire, the housewife folds her hands and contemplates her finished picture; the snow and the wind may do their worst, she has made herself a pleasant corner in the world. The city might be a thousand miles away: and yet it was close by that Mr. Bough painted the distant view of Edinburgh ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... same thing will befall the Osmukhins," he next remarks. "Let them be a warning to you never to make friends with Germans, and never to engage in business with them. In Russia any housewife may brew beer; yet our people will not drink it—they are more used to spirits. Also, Russian folk like to attain their object in drinking AT ONCE; and a shkalik of vodka will do more to sap wit than five kruzhki of beer. Once our people liked uniform simplicity; but now they are ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky

... world-wide decrease of animal production, animal fats are now growing so scarce that the world is being scoured for new sources of supply. Our Government has asked the housewife to conserve all the fats that come to her home and utilize them to the best advantage. To this end it is necessary to have some knowledge of the character of different fats and the purposes to which they ...
— Foods That Will Win The War And How To Cook Them (1918) • C. Houston Goudiss and Alberta M. Goudiss

... up cold cooked stuff—savoury rice, vermicelli, &c.—so that one can have a dainty savoury with very little trouble. This is of no little importance in an age when so many demands are made upon the time and energy of the average housewife, and one would do well to study while preparing any dish requiring a good deal of care and labour, to have sufficient over to make a fricassee of some ...
— Reform Cookery Book (4th edition) - Up-To-Date Health Cookery for the Twentieth Century. • Mrs. Mill

... passing him swiftly, with the manner of a busy housewife, when Max, encouraged by her new reserve, and a demure side-look, which was not without coquetry, seized the hand which held the kettle, and asked her if he was to get no thanks for coming to her assistance ...
— The Wharf by the Docks - A Novel • Florence Warden

... his surprise at finding himself installed, not in some mean garret, but in the study of one of the leading Jews of the town. The climax was reached when he handed some coppers to the housewife, and asked her to get him ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... ancestral precedents. You will have no fault to find with her respectfulness towards you and Herrania or with her behavior as a wife. She will be circumspect in her deportment towards all men and is sure to turn out an excellent housewife. She has lofty inherited standards to live up to and she ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White

... Mulrady!" she said, exorcising the ghost of a blush that had also been recalled from the past with her housewife's apron, "what are you doin', and ...
— A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready • Bret Harte

... machines to reap and thrash, and the housewife has an engine that will grind up meat for hash; we've machines to do our washing and to wring the laundered duds, we've machines for making cider and to dig the Burbank spuds; all about the modern farmstead you may hear ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason

... the Japanese pile up their fresh vegetables with such charming show of taste. The great sheds cover three long blocks, and in the countless stall-like shops which they contain may be found everything for the table, including flowers to trim it and after-dinner sweets. I doubt that any northern housewife knows such a market or such a profusion of comestibles. In one stall may be purchased meat, in the next vegetables, in the next fish, in the next bread and cake, in the next butter and buttermilk, in the next fruit, or game, or flowers, or—at Christmas time—tree trimmings. ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street

... possible, the women of that time might be divided into ladies of high degree and women of the people. The former were naturally fitted by their training to take their part in the spectacle of feudal life with proper dignity; more than that, they were often skilled in all the arts of the housewife, and many times they showed themselves the careful stewards of their husbands' fortunes. The women of the people, on the other hand, were not shown any special consideration on account of their sex, and were quite ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger

... bells; and from their native soil they dig the clay which they mould into earthenware. The tintinnabulations of the loom can be heard in other parts of the Lebanons; but no where else can the vintner buy a dolium for his vine, or the housewife, a pipkin for her oil, or the priest, a bell for his church. The sound of these foundries' anvils, translated into a wild, thrilling, far-reaching music, can be heard in every belfry and ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani

... dear man would be in a better humour if he were allowed his pipe. According to the French, the plain housewife looks charming to her husband when seen through the fumes of a good soup, and so too the plays of Mr —— (perhaps it is wise to suppress the name) might appear entertaining to the British householder if a cloud of tobacco smoke were ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... about the hearth, especially during the long winter evenings; and when a member of the family was ill, the fireplace and its accessories were in constant use. The fireplace was the first place visited by the housewife in the early morning, and was usually the last place where she performed her household ...
— New Discoveries at Jamestown - Site of the First Successful English Settlement in America • John L. Cotter

... sauce by hunger was supplied And my poor children prattled at my side. Methinks I see the old oak table spread, The clean white trencher and the good brown bread, The cheese my daily food which Mary made, For Mary knew full well the housewife's trade: The jug of cyder,—cyder I could make, And then the knives—I won 'em at the wake. Another has them now! I toiling here Look backward like a child and drop ...
— Poems • Robert Southey

... Papa is forty to-day; (innocently) fancy living to that age! The tenants have presented him with a handsome jar of mixed pickles, with an appropriate inscription. Papa is loved and respected by every one. And I—well, I have made him a little housewife, containing needles and thread.... See! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, March 29, 1890 • Various

... Greeks, methinks, thrown into the pickle-pot, would be a treasure to the housewife's ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor

... Diderot's powerful advocacy, and made him the popular interpreter of bourgeois intimacies. Other patient studies of still life are: 95, 96, 101, and 102; and R. wall 94. On the same wall hang, 97, The Ape as Antiquary, and 99, The Housewife. If Chardin touches the border-line between sentiment and sentimentality, Greuze (end wall) in 369, Return of the Prodigal; 370, A Father's Crime; and 371, The Undutiful Son, certainly oversteps it. Each of these became the theme of extravagant eulogy and didactic preachments by Diderot, his literary ...
— The Story of Paris • Thomas Okey

... allowed to sleep until he woke up at ten o'clock, and when he went downstairs at eleven he found a warm breakfast awaiting him, and the little housewife, Bee, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... home-made cheese. Yet when the [12] meal Was ended, Luke (for so the Son was named) And his old Father both betook themselves To such convenient work as might employ 105 Their hands by the fire-side; perhaps to card Wool for the Housewife's spindle, or repair Some injury done to sickle, flail, or scythe, Or other implement ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth

... quite overcome at the death of poor Cochegrue, and there is not at the present moment a good housewife's tongue or a virtuous cuckold's lips that are not talking ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac

... course, to lessen the use of wheat by increasing the use of the substitutes. The housekeeper who through lack of initiative or ingenuity fails to feed the family the substitutes and lets them accumulate on her shelf has just so far failed to co-operate with the Food Administration. Many a housewife has learned the value of these cereals and will continue to use them long after the war and the Food Administration have passed ...
— Food Guide for War Service at Home • Katharine Blunt, Frances L. Swain, and Florence Powdermaker

... happened in the mines and iron mills. And when a man was killed, it often meant his wife and babies would face hunger, for the jobs were not the kind for women and children; muscular men were needed. Aside from the occupation of housewife, there was nothing for a woman to do in those days except to take ...
— The Iron Puddler • James J. Davis

... of sponge, fruit, vegetables, lumber and other goods are sold in lots to suit purchasers, who range from the dealer who buys by the cargo, or the small merchant who takes a few boxes of pines, oranges, grape-fruit, or tomatoes, to the housewife who wants a watermelon or a bunch of bananas. On the day following their arrival at Key West Captain Wilson handed Dick a roll of bills containing a ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock

... overcast, and presently the heavy drops began to fall. Consulting the little friendly compass which Oriana had given him, he pushed on briskly, turning always to the right or left, as the smoke, circling from some early housewife's kitchen, betrayed the dangerous ...
— Fort Lafayette or, Love and Secession • Benjamin Wood

... sunset, to get a sandwich at a farmhouse, though he was looked upon with suspicion by the housewife who gave him the food. Phil offered to do something to pay for the slender meal, but the woman refused and bade ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington

... the impulse of the hour, displaying in his person all the fitful and emotional temperament of his nation, vibrating from one moment to another between the loftiest enthusiasm and the most abject despair; she, the patient, indomitable housewife, such an inconsiderable little creature in her resignation and self-effacement, meeting adversity with a brave face and eyes full of inexpugnable courage and resolution, fashioned from the stuff of which heroes ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... is the custom for the coal dealers to go along the streets with their lorries, crying their wares, much after the manner of a vegetable peddler in America. If a housewife wants any coal, she goes to the window when she hears the hail of the coal man, and holds up a finger, or two fingers, according to the number of sacks of coal ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder

... Coleridge, Vicar of the Parish and Head Master of the Grammar School of Ottery St. Mary, in Devonshire. One of the poet's elder brothers was the grandfather of Lord Chief Justice Coleridge. Coleridge's mother was a notable housewife, as was needful in the mother of ten children, who had three more transmitted to her from her husband's former wife. Coleridge's father was a kindly and learned man, little sophisticated, and distinguishing himself now and then by comical acts of what is called absence of mind. ...
— Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit etc. • by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

... some complacency, as she glanced round her sitting-room. Everything in the room shone and twinkled. The rugs were beautifully made, and the floor under them in the usual dining-table condition ascribed ever since books were written to the model housewife. The corner cupboards held treasures of blue and white that it makes one ache to think of to-day, and some pieces of India china besides, brought over seas by some sea-going Rock of a former generation: and there were silver spoons in the iron box under Abby's bed, and the dragon tea-pot on the ...
— Marie • Laura E. Richards

... countess understands these matters. Her mother-in-law, heaven rest her soul, taught her! Ah! that was a housewife ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... pounding the bear meat, much as the white housewife would pound a steak, but with more vigor. Grizzly or any other kind of big bear was exceedingly tough, even after treatment, but, in the last resort, the Indians would eat it, and, despite their great stores of ordinary food, Xingudan feared they would not ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler

... for match-making, and, somehow or another, Henry Stephens had contrived to steal away the heart of the 'Downshire' belle. Prudence, however, compelled our young people to postpone their marriage, and whilst the good housewife qualities of the one readily procured her a situation in a highly respectable family in Melbourne, Henry obtained an appointment in the police force of ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey

... of her last journey through the house she found the kitchen, where an oven-door ajar and a half-dozen small, fragrant loaves in the opening showed her that though empty, the room was deserted only for a housewife's rapid moment. She sat down therefore beneath the patient old clock, and waited. Soon she heard a quick, bustling step, unlike Hester's lithe quietness or the heavier stride of Ann, and knew that the little old lady who entered, fresh ...
— The Strange Cases of Dr. Stanchon • Josephine Daskam Bacon

... happens that an almost imperceptible boy, with a card of shirt buttons and a paper of hair pins, is much worse than the Anvil Chorus with real anvils. Fishermen, with baskets of fish upon their heads; peddlers, with trays of housewife wares; louts who dragged baskets of lemons and oranges back and forth by long cords; men who sold water by the glass; charlatans who advertised cement for mending broken dishes, and drops for the cure of toothache; jugglers who spread their carpets and arranged ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... His influence upon the common people is thus described by the historian Green: "The theory of government wrought out in the cell and lecture-room was carried over the length and breadth of the land by the Mendicant brother begging his way from town to town, chatting with the farmer or housewife at the cottage door and setting up his portable pulpit in village green or market-place. The rudest countryman learned the tale of a king's oppression or a patriot's hope as he listened to the rambling, passionate, humorous discourse of ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart

... was, for a few minutes, mute with astonishment. On recovering herself, she did not storm and fret. Indeed, she was never guilty of these little housewife effervescences, usually taking every trouble with a degree of Christian meekness that it would have been well for many in the village, even the minister's wife, to ...
— Woman's Trials - or, Tales and Sketches from the Life around Us. • T. S. Arthur

... greatest good to the greatest number. He aims to place his inventions within reach of the great mass of the people. As with his touring-car, so with his tractor engine, he has had the same end in view. Nor does he forget the housewife. He has plans afoot for bringing power into every household that will greatly lighten the burden of ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs

... is at the same time an exemplary housewife, tells of how she retired one rainy spring morning to her study in just the mood for writing. Husband and sons had gone to their various occupations. She had a splendid day for work ahead of her. She sat down to her desk and took up her pen. The plot of a story was forming itself in her ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland

... the cast would seem to be taken from an exquisite work of Greek art. She had fled with her little treasure, which lay scattered around her—two silver cups, a few jewels, and some dozen silver coins; nor had she, like a good housewife, forgotten her keys, after having probably locked up her stores before seeking to escape. They were ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy



Words linked to "Housewife" :   married woman, woman of the house, lady of the house



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