"Sempstress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... nearly her own age, being five-and-thirty. Around these gradually grew a small roomful of Girard's admirers, who became his regular penitents. Among them were sometimes introduced a few young girls, such as La Cadiere, a tradesman's daughter and herself a sempstress, La Laugier, and La Batarelle, the daughter of a waterman. They had godly readings together, and now and then small suppers. But they were specially interested in certain letters which recounted the miracles and ecstacies of Sister Remusat, who was still alive; her death occurring ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... terse and homely phrases the follies and affectations of the dumb man's fair clients. The young blooming beauty who found little Duncan "wallowing in the dust" and bribed him with a sugarplum to reveal the name of her future husband; the "sempstress with an itching desire for a parson"; housekeepers in search of stolen goods; the "widow who bounced" from one end of the room to the other and finally "scuttled too airily downstairs for a woman in her clothes"; and the chambermaid ...
— The Life and Romances of Mrs. Eliza Haywood • George Frisbie Whicher
... (refusing meanwhile several good offers of marriage) she continued to ply her needle and shears, working steadily and cheerfully in her vocation, earning good wages and spending but little, until the thrifty sempstress was counted well to do, and held in esteem according. Sometimes, when she got weary, and thought a change of labor would do her good, she would engage with some lucky dame to help do housework for a month or two. She was a famous hand at pickling, preserving, and making all manner ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various
... over which the Northern Circuit men of the last generation delighted to laugh occurred at Newcastle, when Baron Graham—the poor lawyer, but a singularly amiable and placid man, of whom Jeckyll observed, "no one but his sempstress could ruffle him"—rode the circuit, and was immortalized as 'My Lord 'Size,' in ...
— A Book About Lawyers • John Cordy Jeaffreson
... one of her inexorable prescriptions for him that he should drink a glass of warm milk-punch before breakfast, and smell the cow's breath during the operation. She was milking the white cow herself, while the pseudo sempstress, Nichols, waited with the goblet, and the bandy-legged shoemaker, Twiss, stood on ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... together only as parts in the same phantasm. Compare with La Louve, the strength of wild virtue in the 'Louvecienne' (Lucienne) of Gaboriau—she, province-born and bred; and opposed to Parisian civilisation in the character of her sempstress friend. 'De ce Paris, ou elle etait nee, elle savait tout—elle connaissait tout. Rien ne l'etonnait, nul ne l'intimidait. Sa science des details materiels de l'existence etait inconcevable. Impossible de la duper!—Eh bien! cette fille si laborieuse ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... comes down, Threatening with deluge this devoted town. To shops in crowds the dangled females fly, Pretend to cheapen goods, but nothing buy. The Templar spruce, while every spout's abroach, Stays till 'tis fair, yet seems to call a coach. The tuck'd-up sempstress walks with hasty strides, While streams run down her oil'd ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 64, January 18, 1851 • Various
... marriage concluded between them,[72] the wedding clothes are bought, and nothing remaineth but to perform the ceremony, which is put off for some days, because they design it to be a public wedding. And to reward my love, constancy, and generosity, he hath bestowed on me the office of being sempstress to his grooms and footmen, which I am forced to accept or starve.[73] Yet, in the midst of this my situation, I cannot but have some pity for this deluded man, to cast himself away on an infamous creature, who, whatever ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... plantation negroes, coachmen, house-servants, mechanics, children of all ages, with descriptions as various as the kinds. Below the rest, and set out with a glowing delineation, was a description of a remarkably fine young sempstress, very bright and very intelligent, sold for no fault. The notice should have added an exception, that the owner ...
— Manuel Pereira • F. C. Adams
... sir, was housemaid and sempstress in your own family, time back, and you thereby have a right over her unto the third and ...
— Citation and Examination of William Shakspeare • Walter Savage Landor
... tall, thin, lathy skeleton, extend his lean jaws into an alarming grin, and indicate, by a nod of his yard-long visage, and a twinkle of his little grey eye, that there might be more faces in Fleet Street worth looking at than those of Frank and Jenkin. His old neighbour, Widow Simmons, the sempstress, who had served, in her day, the very tip-top revellers of the Temple, with ruffs, cuffs, and bands, distinguished more deeply the sort of attention paid by the females of quality, who so regularly visited David Ramsay's shop, to its inmates. "The boy Frank," she admitted, "used to ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... p. 30.).—If C. B. will consult Dr. Latham's English Language, 2nd ed., he will find that the termination ster is not merely a notion of Tyrwhitt's, but a fact. Sempstress has a double feminine termination. Spinster is the only word in the present English which retains the old feminine meaning ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 36. Saturday, July 6, 1850 • Various
... She was impulsive in her actions as well as in her words. She was her mistress's factotum—her cook, housemaid, sempstress, and confidential adviser; in addition to which she was somewhat of a bore, being stubborn and opinionated, but a good and ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... faults might be) to such a wandering life, and to put her up as it were to auction for whoever would bid highest, was too terrible to be thought of. Better a thousand times to be a governess, or a sempstress, or any honest occupation by which she could earn her own bread. But then to Bice any such expedient was out of the question. Her incredulous look of wonder and mirth came back to Lucy with a sensation of dumb astonishment. ...
— Sir Tom • Mrs. Oliphant
... of the fancy—the more so as my dream-vision displayed to me the dress and movements of the actors, the appearance of the room, the furniture, and other accidents of the scene; till on one occasion, in a gamesome mood, I narrated to my family the secret history of a sempstress who had just before quitted the room. I had never seen the person before. Nevertheless the hearers were astonished, and laughed and would not be persuaded but that I had a previous acquaintance with the former life of the person, inasmuch as what I had stated ...
— Clairvoyance • Charles Webster Leadbeater
... old-clothes buyers wear at market. On looking down at her kid shoes, made, it was evident, by the veriest cobbler, a stranger would have hesitated to recognize Cousin Betty as a member of the family, for she looked exactly like a journeywoman sempstress. But she did not leave the room without bestowing a little friendly nod on Monsieur Crevel, to which that gentleman responded by a look of ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... of every detail of her young guest's life. And wonderful as was the difference between the peasant maiden of Domremy and the most famous woman in France, the life of Jeanne, the Deliverer of her country, is as the life of Jeanne, the cottage sempstress,—as simple, as devout, and as pure. She loved to go to church for the early matins, but as it was not fit that she should go out alone at that hour, she besought Madame Marguerite to go with her. In the evening she went ...
— Jeanne d'Arc - Her Life And Death • Mrs.(Margaret) Oliphant
... an excellent sempstress, and what between making waistcoats and trousers for the tailors, and binding shoes for the shoemakers,—a business that she thoroughly understood,—she soon had her little hired room neatly furnished, and her grandfather as clean and spruce as ever. When she led him into the kirk of ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... called domestic, and as such are considered the peculiar business of the women among the lower classes in civilised society. The wife of one of these people, for instance, makes and attends the fire, cooks the victuals, looks after the children, and is sempstress to her whole family; while her husband is labouring abroad for their subsistence. In this respect it is not even necessary to except their task of cutting up the small seals, which is, in truth, one of the greatest luxuries and privileges they enjoy; ...
— Journal of the Third Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage • William Edward Parry
... paint chimney-boards, or cut paper, or work samplers?" "Dear aunt," said Isabel, "I am a brown bird of the mountains, as my mother called me. She taught me to sing, because she said it made work go on more merrily, but the longest day was short enough for what I had to do; I was laundress, and sempstress, and cook, and gardener; and if Cicely went to look for the sheep, I had to milk and bake, and at night I mended my father's fishing-nets, while I was learning Latin with Eustace. Yet I got through all very well, till my mother fell ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... a little bunch of mignonette upon her breast, just at the point where the slashing of her bodice ended, and the gray gave way to a wedge of virginal white, as if her sempstress had started to lay bare her heart. The flowers quivered as from some internal agitation, nestling their pale gold ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... Somme (God keep me therefrom Until War ends)— These, then, are my friends: Madame Averlant Lune, From the town of Bethune; Good Professeur la Brune From that town also. He played the piccolo, And left his locks to grow. Dear Madame Hojdes, Sempstress of Saint Fe. With Jules and Susette And Antoinette. Her children, my sweethearts, For whom I made darts Of paper to throw In their mimic show, "La guerre aux tranchees." ...
— Country Sentiment • Robert Graves
... observed her closely. To Abe—"Truly she is a beauty.... Your name is Kiku.... And age?... Twenty years only!... So Kiku is sempstress in the house of Aoyama Uji. So! So!" He and Abe regarded her attentively. They praised her beauty. The crimson blush spread over face and neck, adding to her charm. Thoroughly warmed the men left the room. Said Endo[u]—"Oh, the liar! This Aoyama ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... to Europeans for a loan of money, and they are admitted under the pseudonym of sempstress or housekeeper. Natives among themselves do not kiss—they smell each other, or rather, they place the nose and lip on the cheek ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the circumstances of its composition, had unusually impressed me and stirred my imagination. It was not the woman novelist who was coming to see me, but Marie Claire herself, shepherdess, farm-servant, and sempstress; it was a mysterious creature who had known how to excite enthusiasm in a whole regiment of literary young men.... And literary young men as a rule are extremely harsh, even offensive, in their attitude towards women writers. ...
— Books and Persons - Being Comments on a Past Epoch 1908-1911 • Arnold Bennett
... retire to the small cabin arranged for their reception; and here they were attended by an aged female, who had long followed the fortunes of the crew, and acted in the twofold character of laundress and sempstress. He himself, with Sir Everard, continued on deck watching the progress of the vessel with an anxiety that became more intense at each succeeding hour. Hitherto their course had been unimpeded, save by the obstacles already enumerated; and they had ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... wished to give me something like a polished education, but my mother was particularly determined that it should be a rough, but at the same time a useful one; and nothing farther she thought was necessary but to send me two or three months to a sempstress to be taught to make household linen. . . . My mother would not consent to my being taught French, and my brother Dietrich was even denied a dancing-master, because she would not permit my learning along with ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... my readers a little more than is above told, I have had recourse to my botanical friend, good Mr. Oliver of Kew, who has taught me, first, of palms, that they actually stitch themselves into the ground, with a long dipping loop, up and down, of the root fibres, concerning which sempstress-work I shall have a month's puzzlement before I can report on it; secondly, that all the increment of tree stem is, by division and multiplication of the cells of the wood, a process not in the least to be described as 'sending down roots ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... personal ones. They are not content with handsome houses: they want handsome cities. They are not content with bediamonded wives and blooming daughters: they complain because the charwoman is badly dressed, because the laundress smells of gin, because the sempstress is anemic, because every man they meet is not a friend and every woman not a romance. They turn up their noses at their neighbors' drains, and are made ill by the architecture of their neighbors' houses. Trade patterns ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... work within you," was Mrs. Hamilton's observation, as she folded up the tiny suit with very evident marks of satisfaction. "How you have acquired the power of working thus neatly and rapidly, when I have scarcely ever seen a needle in your hand, I cannot comprehend. I will appoint you my sempstress-general, in addition to bestowing my really sincere thanks for the assistance you have ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar |
