"Darning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sitting by the table, darning socks; and at the opposite side of the lamp sat a full-grown girl, in holiday attire, with her elbows on the table and her fingers in her hair, reading some illustrated journal; while a little boy, squatted behind the girl's chair, was attaching ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... a most practical sound about darning; it can, however, be made good use of in embroidery as well as in plain needlework. There are two rather different kinds in use; in both the stitch is a running one and done in much the same way that a thin place would be ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... given him the prize, and some other gentlemen of the profession of journalism. But his pleasure was followed by quick mortification. What should he wear? Still holding the open note in his hand, he looked down ruefully at his clothes—his only ones. For all their brushing and darning they were unmistakably shabby—utterly unfit to grace a dinner-party. Nearly all of the hundred dollars which had seemed such a fortune had already been spent to pay bills incurred during his illness and to buy provisions for the bare little home which had sheltered him in his ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... throughout is practical, the girls learning the principles of sanitation, and their application to the household; domestic art and home decoration; lighting, heating and ventilation. The sewing classes cover the usual exercises in simple hemming and darning, making towels, hemming napkins, and the like; then underclothes, and later ...
— The New Education - A Review of Progressive Educational Movements of the Day (1915) • Scott Nearing
... a basket of sewing with her which she set upon the table. Then she took from it a bundle of socks and stockings and began to overhaul them with a view to darning. Seth watched the slight figure bending over its work, and the bright eyes peering through the black-rimmed glasses which hooked over her ears. His look was one of deep affection. Surely Nature had made a mistake in not making them mother and son. Still, she had done the ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... poor little gnat Go toiling along on his nose broad and flat Towards the Rhine, pleasant Rhine; "Aha, tiny friend, I should hate to offend, But your stockings need darning"—which same did he mend, ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... REPRISE.—This stitch is worked by darning over and under two threads forming a triangle. The space is filled by parallel and crosswise bars placed at equal distances, and on the triangles thus produced point de ...
— The Art of Modern Lace Making • The Butterick Publishing Co.
... emerging from the enormous circle in which the rest of her was buried—like an intrepid aeronaut who has fallen by some accident through a hole in the balloon, and you were lost in calculations of the length of darning-needle that would be needed to reach to the vera superficies. Now if I invent, I like to have the honour of the invention entirely to myself; and I found it impracticable to extract a heroine from seven or eight spring gauze petticoats, and a roll of ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... while to pass a week or a month among the plain, average people of Stratford. What is the relative importance in human well-being of the emendations of the text of Hamlet and the patching of the old trousers and the darning of the old stockings which task the needles of the hard-working households that fight the battle of life in these narrow streets and alleys? I ask the question; the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Mrs. Merrill laughingly, "if you don't want a doll dress any more than that, you don't want one very badly—that's certain! You run along up to your room now and then, after you're dressed, I'll take my bag of darning out on the front porch—I think it's plenty warm enough to-day—and you may play in the yard. Would you ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... of a summer cottage in Camelot, Maine. A pretty woman of between twenty-five and thirty-five is sitting in a big chair in the lamplight darning socks. She is Mrs. Arthur B. Robinson—or, to give her her own name, Guenevere. She is dressed in a light summer frock, and with her feet elevated on a settle there is revealed a glimpse of slender silk-clad ankles. It is a pleasant summer evening, and, ...
— King Arthur's Socks and Other Village Plays • Floyd Dell
... on the night of his arrival, but in a smaller apartment in the rear of the premises, where his lady wife, his amiable son, and accomplished daughter, were in the full enjoyment of each other's society; Mrs Squeers being engaged in the matronly pursuit of stocking-darning; and the young lady and gentleman being occupied in the adjustment of some youthful differences, by means of a pugilistic contest across the table, which, on the approach of their honoured parent, subsided into a noiseless ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... looked grave over the rents and holes and threadbare places, sure as she was that, however shabby they had become, they must in some way or other be made to serve for a long time yet. It looked like a hopeless task, the attempt to transform by darning and turning, by patching and eking, the poor remnants of last winter's frocks and petticoats into garments suitable for home and ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... about the piece of goods beside you—she ain't worth it. The miller's a good fellow, and what he says is true, and the watchman's right too. A plain tradesman can hardly venture to marry now. All the women wish to marry above their station. Instead of darning stockings, they read romances; instead of working in the kitchen, they run after comedies and concerts. Their houses are dirty, and they are walking out, dressed like princesses; all they bring a husband ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German • Various
... were not only Mrs. Adams, Mrs. Reed, and Mrs. Schuyler, but the wives of the farmers and shoemakers and blacksmiths everywhere. It is not Mrs. Stowe, or Mrs. Howe, or Miss Stevenson, or Miss Dix, alone, who is to save the country, but the thousands upon thousands who are at this moment darning stockings, tending babies, sweeping floors. It is to them I speak. It is they whom I wish to get hold of; for in their hands lies slumbering the future ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... quite at his ease, therefore, and busy with two things at once, when the doctor opened the door and walked in. I think it is possible that he came up quietly with some design of surprising him. He found him with a stocking on one hand, a darning needle in the other, and a Greek book open before him. Taking no apparent notice of him, he walked up to the bedside, and Robert put away his work. After his interview with his patient was over, the doctor ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... first-class sister. She did not say a word till she had got out the Scotch heather-mixture fingering wool and the darning-needle and the thimble and the scissors, and by that time she had been able to get the better of her natural wish to be thoroughly disagreeable, and was able to say ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... of unkindness was sharper than the sharp cough which brought blood at every paroxysm. He did not like her so near him, but he did not blame her. Again, I say,—poor fellow! The woman opened the door, went to the other side of the room, and sat down on an old box and began darning an old neck-handkerchief. The silence was soon broken by the moans of the fast-dying man, and again he muttered, as he tossed to and ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... life of which Andrew had dreamed—not even the reincarnation of Madame Flint sitting by the round table darning socks by the light of the shaded lamp. Elodie ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... sat down-stairs darning stockings. The girls' intentions had been the best in the world, but in less than a year the family darning had fallen entirely into the capable and willing hands ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... rose-tinted silk, its shining scissors and gold thimble, with its spools and sea-green silk needlebook was a whole poem to the child; she thought the possession of one could make any kind of sewing, even darning stockings, very delightful work. "Stitch, stitch, stitch," would not seem ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... the doctor's dog-cart was observed by all the Tenements standing at the Auld Licht manse. The various surmises were wrong. Margaret had not been suddenly taken ill; Jean had not swallowed a darning-needle; the minister had not walked out at his study window in a moment of sublime thought. Gavin stepped into the dog- cart, which at once drove off in the direction of Rashie-bog, but equally in error were those who said that the doctor was making ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... product of the masculine imagination!) of the stout bread-winner, buffeted about in all weathers and amid all discomforts, nobly pursuing the task of earning his living, and fortified by the recollection of a domesticated little wife, darning his stockings at home by the fire, and prepared to lavish her attentions on the weary hero in the evening. The passage is an excellent example of the Menagier's vivid and simple style, and of the use of incidents drawn from everyday life to illustrate his thesis, ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power
... without. The window was twenty feet from the ground, and Kathleen must have let herself down by the sturdy arm of the old ivy. Mrs. Tennant looked out, half expecting to see a mangled body on the ground; but there was no one in view. She returned to her darning and her anxious thoughts. ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... my son," answered the old man, and taking a big darning needle, he made a top to it of sealing wax, and gave it ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... hard on her husband," declared Jacqueline. "You know he'd rather have her at home taking care of the children properly, and darning the stockings, and ready to greet him when he comes ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... showed her that her surmise was accurate: there was at least a month's hard mending to be done before that wardrobe would contain garments really worthy of the name of underclothing. She decided to begin by darning his socks, for she chanced to have some black darning wool in her workbox. She brought three pairs of them into the studio, and began to darn. Nature had been generous, even lavish, to Hilary Vance ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... then!" he said. "The ultimatum has been reached, at last, in the possessor of a pretty face and a broken fiddle! and dreams for the restoration of the race are to end in a broken-down hovel by the sea, in darning the Cradlebow's socks, and dressing the clams for dinner, while the bucolic George Olver and the versatile Harvey, and all the rest of the awkward, moon-gazing crew, take turns in sitting on the door-step, and dilating on the weather! ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... forehead made it seem higher than it really was. He wore his working clothes and a pair of very old boots cut down into slippers. The only stocking he had was in his hand, and he appeared to have been darning it. Close behind him came his wife, holding the baby. The bright look of recognition on her face at the sight of Mrs. Greymer faded when she perceived the countess. Rather stiffly she invited them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... kitchen to find Nathaniel, and get him to help her move the stove. As soon as the business was over, Nathaniel came into the kitchen, and held up his sooty hands for Patty to see. She was stabbing the turkey with a darning-needle. ...
— Prudy Keeping House • Sophie May
... sitting-room, the sour-faced governess was darning a hole in a small stocking. She was as close as possible to the green-tile stove, and she was looking very unpleasant; for the egg-shaped darner only slipped through the hole, which was a large one. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the care of the different rooms of the house is taken up—the chambers, the sitting-room and the storeroom; instructions are given for making "blue Monday" less blue; the arts of starching and ironing are discussed; and a chapter is given to the mending and darning basket. Other portions of the book are devoted to "Company Days," "Shopping," "Sickness in the House," "Making the best of Things," and "Helps that are Helps," the servant-girl question forming the subject of the closing chapter. The volume is very handsomely brought ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... was housekeeper and cook, with Miss Phoebe to run errands, do the marketing, visit the needy, and supervise generally. Some one must have done the mending and darning and laundry work, but I never saw any ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... her dear but most contrary mother would glance up from her book or her darning and remark, with ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... extremely well adapted for darning on square netting. In that case the netting may be done in Brooks' Knitting Cord, No. 60, and the darning in Embroidery Cotton, No. 70. The centre only can be done thus—a netted border must ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown
... He has pretty yellow stripes around his Body, and a darning needle in his tail. If you will Pat the Wasp upon the Tail, we will Give you a nice ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... commanded by the Suy Dams, and the Van Dams,—incontinent hard swearers, as their names betoken. They were terrible looking fellows, clad in broad-skirted gaberdines, of that curious colored cloth called thunder and lightning, and bore as a standard three devil's darning-needles, volant, in a ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... therefore, was excessive, when, the next Saturday morning but one after her daughters' return, Amelia came into her bedroom, where she sat darning a stocking by the window, and after so much hesitation that her mother began to wonder, suddenly put her arms about her neck, hid her blushing face upon her shoulder, and in that position softly whispered a confession, that a certain ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... things, and among them the darning Thomas A'Becket's hair-shirt, and the supporting a robber on the gibbet, were not the most singular, yet they seem not to have shocked Queen Blanche or Saint Francis or Saint Thomas Aquinas so much as they ...
— Mont-Saint-Michel and Chartres • Henry Adams
... illustrated by a familiar example. Sir John Cutler had a pair of black worsted stockings, which his maid darned so often with silk, that they became at last a pair of silk stockings. Now, supposing those stockings of Sir John's endued with some degree of consciousness at every particular darning, they would have been sensible that they were the same individual pair of stockings, both before and ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan
... evening at the close of August. The father and son had been all day in the meadows, mowing the second crop of grass; Mrs Warner was darning stockings in the porch, with her two daughters knitting on the bench beside her; Amy being then fourteen, and Orphy about twelve. Chloe was absent, having been borrowed by a relation, about five miles off, to ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... peering giantess. This movement made the old lady see where it was, and, her finger popping into it, it vanished from the eyes of Tricksey-Wee, buried in the folds of a white stocking, like a cloud in the sky, which Mrs. Giant was busy darning. For it was Saturday night, and her husband would wear nothing ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... mine: they did not appear to want to think about the fighting man or of the colossal deeds that were being done daily and nightly on the several fronts. No, they all talked of their own war-work. Overworked they were, (p. 068) breaking up—some at munitions; some at shoemaking classes; others darning socks—and they were all suffering terribly from air raids. In fact, to put it in a few words, they were well in the middle of the world war; they were just the same as the fighting man in France or ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... after the children, when the others are out having a good time. Her cares never cease. She is responsible for the housework, for the preparation of meals; she has the children's clothes to make or mend, there is company to be entertained, darning to be done, and a score of little duties which must often be attended to at odd moments, snatched from her busy days, and she is often up working at night, long after every one else ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... thoughtfully that noon, a procedure so contrary to his usual actions that his mother asked him if he felt well. He nodded abstractedly, went upstairs to the big, sunny sewing room, searched the family needlecase for a long stiff darning needle and extracted several rubber bands from the red cardboard box on the library table. Then he sauntered off to wait in the school yard for assembly bell, with the air of a military strategist who has planned a well-laid campaign and ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... wind that was getting up. She drew her work-table to her and took out a pair of Shawn's stockings that needed darning. Margaret McKeon's eyes had been failing of late, and Lady O'Gara had taken on joyfully the mending of her husband's things. Her darning was a thing of beauty. She had said it soothed her when Sir Shawn would ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... stone house, with a piazza in front (only people out of America are so stupid, they don't know what I mean when I say "piazza"); about six feet of yard with some grass and flowers. Me at school; Mamma reading novels with one eye, and darning papa's stockings with the other. My goodness, what a different Mamma! When I thought of the difference, I was surer than ever that I must be dreaming her as she is now, and I had half a mind to go and peek into the ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... enough for midnight, the smoke-jack indulging in supernatural groans, and the whole lonely house full of undefined terrors, with an unlimited space of the like solitude before her. She would even have been glad to be sure of an evening of Mrs. Martha's good advice, and of darning stockings! She sat down by the round table to Mr. James's wristbands; but every creak or crack of the furniture made her start, and think of death-watches. She might have learnt to contemn superstition, but that did not prevent it from affecting ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... bestow on her a present with which her Christian name was to be connected. Miss Sandys' eyes had failed through long looking over lessons, and she no longer did any handiwork, save coarse knitting, hemming, and darning. But she had a fuller purse than her companion, and shops, even metropolitan shops, were to be reached by letter from ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... bought new stockings for all the little feet at home, that the weekly darning might be less for the mother while they were away; and had come with their own patiently cared for old hose, "which they should have nothing else to do ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the hill we found a rustic table, also a rustic seat on which was seated a comely matron engaged in the very commonplace work of darning socks. She cast on us a sharp and remarkably penetrating glance as we approached. Doubtless our appearance was peculiar, for a pretty maiden in savage costume, a somewhat ragged white man, and a gigantic savage, all mounted on magnificent ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... sempstress, Jarl's favorite perch was the triangular little platform in the bow; which being the driest and most elevated part of the boat, was best adapted to his purpose. Here for hours and hours together the honest old tailor would sit darning and sewing away, heedless of the wide ocean around; while forever, his slouched Guayaquil hat kept bobbing up and down against the horizon ...
— Mardi: and A Voyage Thither, Vol. I (of 2) • Herman Melville
... there's another kind just the size of a hen's egg that I want for nest eggs for Dickey's hens; and there's the loofa full of fibre that you can use for a bath sponge; and there's a pear-shaped one striped green and yellow that Mother likes for a darning ball; and there's a sweet smelling one that is as fragrant as possible in your handkerchief case. There are some as big as buckets and some like base ball bats, but ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... premeditated sin could be attached, and this act was no other, than presenting one of the wives of the sultan secretly, clandestinely, and covertly, with a most valuable article, in the shape of a large darning needle, which he carried about with him, for the purpose of repairing any sudden detriment, that might happen to any part of his habiliments. A female, whether European or African, generally takes a pride in displaying the presents ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... after I had done my best to explain the technicalities of male politics, and fancied that I had made some impression, the answer would be: "Well, I'd go, I'm sure, just to oblige you, but then there's the tomatoes to be canned"—or, "I'm so behindhand with my darning and patching"—or, "John'll be sure to go, and there's no need of two from the same house"—and so on, until I was mightily discouraged. There were just nine of us, all told, to about a hundred men. I won't deny that our situation that night, at the Wrangle House, was awkward ...
— Beauty and The Beast, and Tales From Home • Bayard Taylor
... drawing-room, I suppose, in times when every other woman was a "Sister Susie." But the "Sister Susie" species is nowadays almost extinct. It requires a German offensive to drive the modern woman towards her darning needles. ...
— Over the Fireside with Silent Friends • Richard King
... don't say I've got an invite," said she, leaving the darning-needle in the stocking-heel which she was mending, and wiping her steel-bowed spectacles. "Come, 'Leny, you read it, ...
— 'Lena Rivers • Mary J. Holmes
... like a witch in a dark cavern, sat a little old woman mending one of the two pairs of stockings wherewith Peter Goldthwaite kept his toes from being frost-bitten. As the feet were ragged past all darning, she had cut pieces out of a cast-off flannel petticoat to make new soles. Tabitha Porter was an old maid upward of sixty years of age, fifty-five of which she had sat in that same chimney-corner, such being the length of time since Peter's grandfather ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... past as well—and think you she will die? She goes about as if death were a thing did not concern her. When the fishermen are down on the beach, painting their boats or darning nets, comes Gunhild with her vacant eyes, but with a mind as keen ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... as he looks before he gets his wings. He lives on the bottoms of ponds when he is young; but at a certain age he ascends to the surface, and crawling out of his old clothes, comes forth an unmistakable darning-needle. When he lived under the water he had very large and long jaws, folded up on the under side of his head. If a fish came within reach, he would dart out this curious trunk, and seizing it, convey ...
— Harper's Young People, August 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Young Charms—and I am hers to command, world without end, forever and ever, amen! My eyes cloud up for a rainy spell, and in my throat there comes a lump so big I feel like a coach-whip snake that has inadvertently swallowed a china darning-egg. And when she is through I am the person sitting in the second row down front who applauds until the flooring gives way and the plastering is jarred loose on the next floor. She can sing for me by the hour and I'll sit there by the hour and listen to her, and forget that there ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... looking for a hole, all of a sudden, in the heel of that stocking, it must have been a very little one indeed, and not worth darning. ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... obeyed, and Mr. Travers—who was by no means a good hand at darning socks—shivered as he trod lightly over a stone floor. Then, following the instructions of Mr. Benn, he made his way to ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... people are alike, and that rusty darning-needle need not stare so rudely, for I shall prove what I say. We are divided into classes by birth and constitution, and each can do much in its own sphere. I am a shawl pin, and it would be foolish in me to aspire to the duties of those dainty lace pins made to ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... boys it is repair day, rips are sewed up, buttons sewed on clothing, and for the initiated, the darning of socks. In camps with permanent buildings a big log fire roars in the fireplace, the boys sprawl on the floor with their faces toward the fire, and while the rain plays a tattoo[1] upon the roof some one reads aloud an interesting story, such as "Treasure ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... Mrs. Barclay sat darning the stocking which would have been Kirsty's affair had she not been stalking Phemy. She took it out of her mother's hands, and laid the girl in ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... Dorothy laughed. Rising she laid aside the silk blouse she was darning and went to the wardrobe for her wraps. "I'm a very poor senior these days," she added. "I can't buy a new blouse every day in the week. I have to make my old ones ...
— Jane Allen: Right Guard • Edith Bancroft
... small; and though he entertained many visitors and friends, it was in a quiet way and on a moderate scale. The small regard he had for personal dignity may be inferred from the fact, that to the last he continued the practice, which he had learnt when a working mason, of darning ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... industry manufacturing babies' shoes. This photograph, too, Missy studied without enthusiasm: the shoemaker was undeniably middle-aged and matronly in appearance; nor did the metier of her achievement appeal. Making babies' shoes, somehow, savoured too much of darning stockings. (Oh, bother! there was that basket of stockings mother had said positively mustn't ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... in midsummer, and they had gathered round the kitchen fire as being the most agreeable place. The children were long gone to bed; the rest of the family had at length followed them; Elizabeth and Mrs. Landholm alone kept their place. The one was darning some desperate-looking socks; the other, as usual, deep in a book. They had been very still and busy for a long time; and then as Elizabeth looked up for a moment and glanced at the stocking- covered hand of her neighbour, Mrs. Landholm ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... beside him darning a pair of very large socks. The juvenile policeman, and the incorrigible criminal were sound asleep in their respective cribs, the one under the print of the Queen, the other under that of Sir Robert Peel. Giles was studying a small book of instructions as to the ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... hidden, with equal cunning, in the "yarn cupboard," where were kept the woollen balls and yarn hanks, used in darning and knitting,—a small, high cupboard, with a little panel door, set in the wall of the sitting-room next to the fireplace and chimney. The bottom of this cupboard was formed of one broad piece of pine board, which seemed to be nailed down ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... Anything like Ada's ease of character and inability to worry or even face a disturbing situation I have never seen. I laugh, although her method of receiving my tale was not, so to speak, flattering to me. Ada was in her loose white kimono, and she was sitting at her shady window darning stockings in very much the same way that a cow chews her cud; and when I told her, under promise of the strictest secrecy, she just laughed that placid little laugh of hers and said, taking another stitch, "Oh, well, boys are always falling in love with older women." And when I asked ...
— The Whole Family - A Novel by Twelve Authors • William Dean Howells, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, Mary Heaton Vorse, Mary Stewart Cutting, Elizabeth Jo
... laughter, and roused the ire of the Queen's poodle, who attacked the small Yankee stranger. The General defended himself with his little cane, as valiantly as the original Tom Thumb with his mother's darning-needle. On the next visit, he was introduced to the Prince of Wales, whom he addressed with a startling, "How are you, Prince?" He then received a costly souvenir from the Queen, and, each time he performed, generous pay ...
— Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood • Grace Greenwood
... wet clothes and, cautiously leaving the scullery, crossed the passage to the parlour, where Mrs. Wheeler, a confirmed invalid, was lying on a ramshackle sofa, darning socks. Mr. Wheeler coughed to attract her attention, and with an apologetic expression of visage held up a small, pink garment of the knickerbocker species, and prepared for ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... the active housewife, whose hand was always busily employed sewing, darning, scouring, never idle for one minute, keeping her house clean, and her children tidy. "The fashion changeth." She can stir no hand, can think for no one ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... I'll tell you the rest. We'll start in together, up there, and—we'll keep the sewing-machine for home use. You see my socks 'll sure need darning." ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... would never let go of for an instant. These slight favors gradually brought Martinez into the family, making his relations with sina Tona more and more intimate. He got his meals now at the tavern, and spent most of his time there; and the mistress finally had the pleasure of darning his stockings and sewing the buttons on his underwear. Poor sinor Martines! What would happen to a fine young man like him without a woman around? He would get to be as shabby and disreputable as a stray cat. And, frankly, no decent lady could ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... get your religion at Bethel rewiwal?" Mrs. Getz quickly asked, glancing up from the little stocking she was darning, to look with some interest at the doctor. "I wanted to go over oncet before the rewiwal's done. But now Tillie's sick, mebbe I won't get to go fur all. When they have rewiwals at Bethel they always make so! And," ...
— Tillie: A Mennonite Maid - A Story of the Pennsylvania Dutch • Helen Reimensnyder Martin
... at some beautiful cranes that, floating on their large pinions, slowly passed us with their long legs stuck straight out astern, and their longer necks gathered into their crops, when we heard a loud shouting in the direction where the Captain's boat had vanished. Presently the Devil's Darning Needle, as the Scotch part of the crew loved to call the Dragonfly, stuck her long snout round the headland, and came spinning along with a Spanish canoe manned by four negroes, and steered by an elderly gentleman, a sharp acute—looking little man, in a gingham coat, in her wake, also pulling ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... pocket, he set off to Sunnybraes to get them darned. When there, as his "dulness" did not leave him so quickly as he had anticipated, and as he was, moreover, loath to sit silent in the presence of one whose good opinion he was so anxious to procure, while Elspeth was darning the stockings, he told Catherine the whole story—what he had heard the factor say, and the conclusions and inferences which he had drawn therefrom—taking care, however, neither to mention his "dulness," nor the manner in which he had produced ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... clothes, and Mr. Muller had fallen into the habit of reading to her while she did so. But to-day the Reformatory rose before her a prison, the gates of which were about to close on her. The heap of stockings, the touch of the darning cotton, the sound of Mr. Muller's droning voice, were maddening to her: every moment she made a tangle in her thread, looking down at Maria under the Bourbon rose, and the attentive face bent over her. Where should she go? What should she do? Had the world nothing in it for her but this? Yesterday ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... not at present do her own laundry-work, she insisted upon darning and patching and mending as only she could darn ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... Sleeping-socks. Extra pair of day socks. A shirt. Tobacco and pipe. Notebook for diary and pencil. Extra balaclava helmet. Extra woollen mitts. Housewife containing buttons, needles, darning needles, thread and wool. Extra pair of finnesko. Big safety-pins with which to hang up our socks. And perhaps one ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... the Hopes'. They found Mrs. Hope darning stockings on the back piazza which commanded a view of the mountain range. She always claimed the entire credit of Clover's match, declaring that if she had not matronized her out to the Valley and introduced her and Geoff to each other, they would never have met. ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... historic faculty, and had allowed space to take up neglected threads, he would have had to expose the boundless innovation, the unfathomed gulf produced by American independence, and there would be no opening to back the Jeffersonian shears against the darning-needle of the great chief-justice. My misgiving lies in the line of thought of Riehl and the elder Cherbuliez. The first of those eminent conservatives writes: "Die Extreme, nicht deren Vermittelungen und Abschwaechungen, deuten die ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... gracile thing is the mind that can leap thus from nine bargain basement hours of hairpins and darning-balls to the downy business of lining a crib in Never-Never Land and warming No Man's slippers before the ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... the door. "Come in," answered a gruff voice. I found the lieutenant with his shirt-sleeves tucked up, he having just completed his morning ablutions, an old stocking on one fist and a needle and thread in the other, engaged in darning it. ...
— Paddy Finn • W. H. G. Kingston
... the water supply depended on a rickety windwheel. It was with a dark foreboding that she returned to the kitchen and turned on one of the taps. For perhaps three seconds a stream of the dimension of a darning-needle emerged, then with a sad gurgle the tap relapsed into a stolid inaction. There is no stolidity so utter as ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... dragon fly a darning needle, and say it sews up people's ears when they lie on the grass. This is not true. It does not sew up anything. It has ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... easily made and saves time (fig. 3). Cut a piece half an inch deep from a broad cork; press through this a dozen or more coarse darning needles; tack the cork on a piece of board. Strike the fruit on the bed of needles, and you have a dozen holes at once. When the work is finished, remove the cork from the board, wash and dry thoroughly. A little oil on the needles will prevent rusting. ...
— Canned Fruit, Preserves, and Jellies: Household Methods of Preparation - U.S. Department of Agriculture Farmers' Bulletin No. 203 • Maria Parloa
... many passengers to-day; the majority were mothers with their children, the latter chasing each other about the deck or clambering into all forbidden and dangerous places, the former sitting in the shade, darning or sewing or embroidering according to their station in life. A few young ladies sat in groups, and chatted and ate candies, or read and ate candies while one young man, in white flannels and a straw hat waited upon them ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... she had dressed herself with so much care, mending her gloves, and darning her little fragments of finery! He stood looking at her, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets,—looking at her and thinking what he had better do to rid himself of her presence. If he even quite resolved to ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... Hope was darning stockings. She had one of Hubert's socks drawn on over her hand, which showed, white and dainty, through the great, ragged hole. Hubert sat near her with little Allyn on his knee, tiding over a crisis in the young man's temper by showing him pictures in the dilapidated ...
— Teddy: Her Book - A Story of Sweet Sixteen • Anna Chapin Ray
... the problem was to make the old one hold until that point would be reached. Just as we were about to insert a plug to take the place of the nail, a bicycle repairer suggested rubber bands. A dozen small bands were passed through the little fork made by the broken eye of a large darning-needle, stretched tight over a wooden handle into which the needle had been inserted; some tire cement was injected into the puncture, and the needle carrying the stretched bands deftly thrust clear through; on withdrawing the needle the bands remained, plugging the hole so effectually that ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... give to mere words the construction of plural nouns, are in the habit of writing them in the form of possessives singular; as, "They have of late, 'tis true, reformed, in some measure, the gouty joints and darning work of whereunto's, whereby's, thereof's, therewith's, and the rest of this kind."—Shaftesbury. "Here," says Dr. Crombie, "the genitive singular is improperly used for the objective case plural. It should be, whereuntos, wherebys, thereofs, therewiths."— ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... began to fear that he might, with his rashness, have involved himself in some quarrel with the troopers in the village. Lady Woodley and her children had closed around the wood fire which had been lighted on the hearth at the approach of evening, and Rose was trying by the bad light to continue her darning of stockings, when a loud hasty knocking was heard at the door, and all, in a general vague impression of dread, ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... her mother's headaches; milking the cow, and kneading the bread, and darning the stockings; going to church in old hats,—for what difference was it going to make to anybody now, whether she trimmed them with Scotch plaid or sarcenet cambric?—coming home to talk over revivals with Deacon Snow, ...
— Men, Women, and Ghosts • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... the settled practice,—the young leaving the nest one at a time, to the number of six or eight. The young have quite the look of the young of the dove in many respects. When nearly grown they are covered with long blue pin-feathers as long as darning needles, without a bit of plumage on them. They part on the back and hang down on each side by their own weight. With its curious feathers and misshapen body the young bird is anything but handsome. They never open their ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... by the name of the entertainment which had bought them. Thus, if you wished to consult a certain book on geology, in which subject the library was rich, owing to the scientific tastes of Squire Pritchett, you were told by the librarian for the day, as she looked up from her darning with a friendly smile, that it was in the "Uncle Tom's Cabin section." The Shakespeare set, honorably worn and dog's-eared, dated back to the unnamed mass coming from early days before things were so well ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... exacting business in life it is to gallop like the devil into the far distance when it is rumoured that the battalion will deploy. He sits now at leisure, but even at leisure he is not at ease: silent, with every nerve and fibre strained to the utmost tension, he crouches over his work. He is at his darning; ay, with real wool and a real needle he is darning his socks. The colour of his work may not be harmonious, but it is a thorough job; he has done what even few women would do, he has darned not only the hole in his hosiery but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... light the little rag-lamp which she and Jane sometimes sat by with their belated sewing or darning if they had not kept the hearth-fire burning. She went to bed in the dark, and slept with the work-weariness which keeps the ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... Use a darning or crewel needle, and a very long thread, or you will have to be continually taking fresh. This work is sometimes done with crewel wool, and in rather a different way, see Fig. 4; but it is not so neat ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... neatly darning his own woolen socks. Instead of betraying shame at being detected in that effeminate pastime he proudly explained that he'd learned to do a bit of stitching in the army. He hasn't many possessions, but ...
— The Prairie Wife • Arthur Stringer
... candle ends, and cut the cabbage for the brose; all which being done, and the servants' dinner seen to, and it must be confessed, it was seldom that they had a very sumptuous regale, she dressed herself as a lady should be dressed, and sate down to her darning, which was her principal work, in the oval window in the chief room in the castle. Darning, we say, was her principal work, because there was scarcely an article in the house which she did not darn occasionally, ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... sewing and darning was after they had all gone to bed. Then, as she expressed it, she had a breathing time for herself; and she occupied it in making new things for them, and putting double pieces on the knees, for they were all most frightfully hard on ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... Bethiah is glad. We are having longer evenings. When the candles are lit Frederic bids mammy good night and goes off. Sometimes she sits up and puts on her spectacles, and reads Watts's hymns loud to daddy. Aunt Bethiah pares apples and slices them, and Elinor strings them up with a darning-needle. I am tired and sit ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... but lately that I visited a family, not of 'moderate fortune,' but of no fortune at all; one of those people who live 'nobody knows how;' and I found a young girl, about sixteen, practising on the piano, while an elderly lady beside her was darning her stockings. I was told (for the mother was proud of bringing up her child so genteelly) that the daughter had almost forgotten how to sew, and that a woman was hired into the house to do her mending! 'But why,' said I, 'have you suffered your daughter to be ignorant of so useful ...
— The American Frugal Housewife • Lydia M. Child
... nomenclature which is well worthy of recognition; thus the shooting lights of the Aurora Borealis are in Lancashire 'the Merry Dancers'; clouds piled up in a particular fashion are in many parts of England styled 'Noah's Ark'; the puff-ball is 'the Devil's snuff-box'; the dragon-fly 'the Devil's darning-needle'; a large black beetle 'the Devil's coach-horse.' Any one who has watched the kestrel hanging poised in the air, before it swoops upon its prey, will acknowledge the felicity of the name 'windhover,' ...
— On the Study of Words • Richard C Trench
... when he returned, but even the spectacle of his wife laboriously darning her old dress failed to reduce his good-humour in the slightest degree. In a frivolous mood he even took a feather from the dismembered hat on the table and stuck it in his hair. He took the stump of a strong cigar from his lips and, exhaling a final cloud ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... find the girls sewing and Mrs. Staton darning stockings. Mr. Staton had been reading his ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... sometimes whirl down the great chimney, I remember well where my father's chair was always placed; and where my mother sat of those winter evenings, when her household cares were over for the day, plying her needle, or knitting, or darning stockings, or mending garments, for such employment was no dishonor to the matrons of those days. With these for the leading figures, I remember how seven brothers and sisters were grouped around, and how the old house dog ...
— Wild Northern Scenes - Sporting Adventures with the Rifle and the Rod • S. H. Hammond
... wore away. The young hostess still sat under the limes, severely darning, but Violet and her companion had disappeared unobtrusively into a more secluded part of the garden. For nearly half an hour she had heard no sound of voices. She wondered if she ought to go in search of them, but her pile of work was still somewhat formidable ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Uncle Remus—adjusting his spectacles so as to be able to see how to thread a large darning-needle with which he was patching his coat—"one time, way back yander, 'fo' you wuz bomed, honey, en 'fo' Mars John er Miss Sally wuz bomed—way back yander 'fo' enny un us wuz bomed, de animils en de creeturs ...
— Uncle Remus • Joel Chandler Harris
... complaint. We cannot understand why you should feel "as if wind were always coming from your left ear." Try blowing into the ear with the bellows three times a day. It may drive the wind back. For the "fulness, throbbing, &c.," we should advise ramming a good-sized darning-needle as far as it will go into the orifice. After that—or even before—it might be best to consult ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 25, 1892 • Various
... wire, oars, clothes lines, blankets, pewter pots, stockings and broken bottles. He prepared a club with a stocking and a bottle inside upon the best East End model. He swung it round his head once, broke an outhouse window with a flying fragment of glass, and ruined the stocking beyond all darning. He developed a subtle scheme with the cellar flap as a sort of pitfall, but he rejected it finally because (A) it might entrap the plump woman, and (B) he had no use whatever for Uncle Jim in the cellar. He determined to wire the garden that evening, burglar fashion, ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... chicken, as shown in Fig. 27, with any desirable stuffing. Directions for preparing stuffing are given later. Also, fill with stuffing the space from which the crop was removed, inserting it through the slit in the neck. Thread a large darning needle with white cord and sew up the slit in the neck, as well as the one between the legs, as in Fig. 28, so that the stuffing will not fall out. Also, force the neck inside of the skin, and tie the skin with a piece of string, as in Fig. 29. Then, as Fig. 29 also shows, truss the chicken by forcing ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... all he was very angry. "Is this how you serve me, child? To fight battles for me? I suppose I should return the compliment by darning your stockings. I had things to say to this woman, many things to learn. You have bungled my plans ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... Thumb, and on this account he was always called Thumbling. He had, however, some courage in him, and said to his father, "Father, I must and will go out into the world." "That's right, my son," said the old man, and took a long darning-needle and made a knob of sealing-wax on it at the candle, "and there is a sword for thee to take with thee on the way." Then the little tailor wanted to have one more meal with them, and hopped into the ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... stockings. The girls' intentions had been the best in the world, but in less than a year the family darning had fallen entirely into the capable and willing ...
— Prudence Says So • Ethel Hueston
... of little girls told of the various forms of needlework, which was something more than theory with them, as their samples of work on exhibition testified. There was not a useless article in the entire collection; they have been taught how to make serviceable garments. Very neat specimens of darning and ...
— The American Missionary, Vol. 43, No. 9, September, 1889 • Various
... right, Johnnie. Somehow it relieves me to talk about Phoebe." She rose from her rocker, laid down her darning, and went to a dresser in the next room. She came out again, holding forth to me ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... eyes a millstone which is broken; and I require of thee that thou sew up the rent." Accordingly the Envoy looked about him and, seeing there another stone, said to Pharaoh, "O my lord, here am I a stranger man nor have I with me aught of darning-gear; but I would have thee bid thy confidants amongst the cobblers to provide me out of this other stone with shoemaker's awls and needles and scissors wherewith I may sew up for thee the breach in yon millstone." Hereat Pharaoh the King fell a-laughing, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton |
