"Sewing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Sewing rough goat's-hair cloth into tents may be as truly serving Christ as preaching His name. All manner of work that contributes to the same end is the same in worth and in recompense. Perhaps the wholesomest form ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... see American goods, but not often. We sell India comparatively little merchandise except iron and steel, machinery, agricultural implements, sewing machines, typewriters, phonographs and other patented articles. One afternoon four naked Hindus went staggering along the main street in Calcutta carrying an organ made by the Farrand Company of Detroit, which has considerable trade there. American pianos are widely ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... knife and proceeded to the vacancy; if there was not a vacant place at the table, the newcomer retired to the window and read the Northern Messenger or the War Cry, which were present in large numbers on the sewing-machine. But before leaving the table conversation zone, it was considered perfectly legitimate to call out in a loud voice: "Some eat fast, some eat long, and some eat both ways," or some such bright and felicitous remark. It was a bitter cold day in November—one of those ...
— The Black Creek Stopping-House • Nellie McClung
... halt Edgar applied himself steadily to the work of repairing the water-skins. The camp of the Heavies joined that of the Guards, and he felt that his danger of being recognized by Easton or Skinner was great; but sitting with a group of others sewing, with his face shaded by his helmet, the risk was very much less than if standing up or moving about the camp. At two o'clock in the afternoon the force paraded and moved off in columns of companies. The Heavy Camel Corps led, the Guards followed, ...
— The Dash for Khartoum - A Tale of Nile Expedition • George Alfred Henty
... at Spencer, Mass., July 9, 1819. When a boy he worked in a cotton mill at Lowell, but afterwards entered a machine shop in Boston. Here he conceived the idea of the sewing machine, and after long days of labor, part of which time he and his family lived on the kindness of a friend, he completed his invention. After many struggles, his talent, industry, and perseverance were rewarded, and long before his death, which occurred ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... imprison him in his studio and keep him for ransom. Some one held the horse, and the two men went up to the sixth floor and into Carstairs's studio, where they discovered pretty Mrs. Carstairs in the act of sewing a new collar-band on one of her husband's old shirts. She went on at this while the railroad king, who seemed a very simple, kindly old gentleman, wandered around the studio and turned over the pictures, but made no comment. It had been a very ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... the bird aside, while Susan watched carefully to see just how the stew was made. When it began to boil, her mother picked up the sewing and told her to ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... that we should pay for the washing, ironing, bread-making, sewing?" he cries out. "We never could afford it, and, besides, what would the women put in their time at if all that ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... a Sewing Club, But thought we'd better not; 'Cause none of us knows how to sew— Not me nor Bub ...
— The Jingle Book • Carolyn Wells
... choicest products, in the teeth of native competition, but for the tariff, the taxes, and the inflation, which double the cost of producing. The time may come, however, when we shall sell pianos at Paris, and watches in London, as we already do sewing-machines everywhere. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 117, July, 1867. • Various
... his mother, "until he tells me so himself. You didn't, did you, back out of a fight, and let that Bob Bennett, whose mother used to be my sewing girl, and whom I supported for months after he was born, and his father died with the cholera and left her nothing, by giving her work and paying her cash, and who is now putting on all sorts of airs because everybody's ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... confinement—the closest, most uncompanioned confinement—make one of ourselves unhappy? Is the shoemaker, sitting with his head on his knees, in a hole in the wall from morning to night, in any respect to be pitied? Is the solitary orphan, that sits all day sewing in a garret, while the old woman for whom she works is out washing, an object of compassion? or the widow of fourscore, hurkling over the embers, with the stump of a pipe in her toothless mouth? Is it so sad a thing indeed to be alone? or to have one's motions circumscribed within ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... nobleman, and that it's gude siller—but it wad drive ane daft to be confused wi' deukes and drakes, and thae distressed folk up-stairs, that's Jeanie Deans and her father. And then, putting the very callant that was sewing the curpel out o' the shop, to play wi' blackguards in the close—Sit still, neighbours, it's no that I mean to disturb you; but what between courts o' law and courts o' state, and upper and under parliaments, ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... from the effects of her exposure in the forest, she lighted unexpectedly on the little flat parcel which her mother had charged her to keep. It was carefully sewn up in linen, and the sewing cost Maude some trouble to penetrate. She reached the core at last. It was something thin and flat, with curious black and red patterns all over it. This would have been the child's description. It was, in truth, a vellum leaf of a manuscript, elaborately written, but not illuminated, unless ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... a small room, well shielded from the draughts which raged through the building in winter; and here Sergeant Archelaus had lit a fire to-night and sat before it, sewing an artilleryman's stripe upon the ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... broidery-frame away, For my sewing is all done! The last thread is used to-day, And I need not join it on. Though the clock stands at the noon, I am weary! I have sewn Sweet, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... shirt or a pair of pantaloons. We obtained all our thread in the same way. A half of a sack, carefully raveled out, would furnish a couple of handfuls of thread. Had it not been for this resource all our sewing and mending would have ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... others repaired the frames and ironwork of the wagons. Them was much heating and hammering of iron and tightening of bolts and nuts. And I remember coming upon Laban, sitting cross-legged in the shade of a wagon and sewing away till nightfall on a new pair of moccasins. He was the only man in our train who wore moccasins and buckskin, and I have an impression that he had not belonged to our company when it left Arkansas. Also, he had ...
— The Jacket (The Star-Rover) • Jack London
... and trimming them up here and there, simply because they could not keep away from the place, or keep their hands off the trees and bushes. Sometimes in the long, tender afternoons, we see far up on some pasture slope, groups of girls scattered about on the grass, with their sewing, or listening to some one reading. Other times they are giving a little play, usually a comedy, for life is so happy here that tragedy would not be true to it, with the characters coming and going ...
— Through the Eye of the Needle - A Romance • W. D. Howells
... the attention of more than one manufacturer, and reference is made to a particular type of small rotary motors which are being constructed by MM. Riedinger & Co., and which is stated have given very excellent results. These engines were specially used for working sewing machines and developed on the brake an efficiency of 34.07 and 51.63 foot pounds per second. Trials were made with a half horse power variable expansion ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 803, May 23, 1891 • Various
... distinction to George. As a matter of fact, with our unkempt hair and beards and our rags, we now formed as tough looking a party of tramps as ever "came down the pike." That night in camp I cut up my canvas leggings and used pieces of the canvas to rebottom my moccasins, sewing it on with ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... Mr. Whyte to make a canoe, and then, embarking in it, to proceed to the Indian camp, to inform the natives of their rare good luck in having a band of white men come to settle near their lands to trade with them. The interpreter and Charley soon found birch bark, pine roots for sewing it, and gum for plastering the seams, wherewith they constructed the light machine whose progress we have partly traced in the last chapter, and which, on the following day at sunset, carried them to ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... a matter in China: "Well, it ain't any more than what he should. She was awful good to him when he was little and his father got so sick. I guess 'Niram wouldn't ha' had much to eat if she hadn't ha' gone out sewing to earn it for him and Mr. Purdon." She added firmly, after a moment's pause, "No, ma'am, I don't guess it's any more than what 'Niram had ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... vein in his forehead still twitched menacingly and the pupils of his eyes were distended until the colour about them disappeared in blackness. After he had eaten he went outside and smoked, while Annie sat fiddling with a bit of sewing and dreading she ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... was, I think, my grandfather was very late of coming home. My grandmother was not uneasy, for he had told her he would be late, and she had mentioned it to the servants, and told them they need not sit up. So there she was, late at night, alone, sewing most likely—ah girls, I wish I could show you some of her sewing—in her little parlour. She was not the least nervous, yet it was a little 'eerie' perhaps, sitting up there alone so late, listening for her husband's whistle—he always whistled when he was late, so that she might be sure it ...
— Grandmother Dear - A Book for Boys and Girls • Mrs. Molesworth
... talkative servant for grumbling, then rose and put her sewing away. Meanwhile, Hannah fastened the shutters, spread the cloth, and lighted the lamp. Then she made the tea and placed on the table a brown loaf and butter fresh from the dairy. As they partook of their simple meal, Elizabeth said: "Joseph ...
— The Children's Longfellow - Told in Prose • Doris Hayman
... not less fortunate with the women; I pointed out their torn clothes, brought needles, and thread, and taught them how to sew and mend. They were pleased with this, and I had in a short time a whole sewing school round me. ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... however, Chauliac's anticipation of modern views is most surprising. He recognized that wounds of the intestines were surely fatal unless leakage could be prevented. Accordingly he suggested the opening of the abdomen and the sewing up of such intestinal wounds as could be located. He describes a method of suture for these cases and seems, like many another abdominal surgeon, even to have invented a ...
— Old-Time Makers of Medicine • James J. Walsh
... circumstances as I have been attempting to describe, it was beautiful to observe what a mysterious efficacy still asserted itself in character. A woman, evidently poor as the poorest of her neighbors, would be knitting or sewing on the doorstep, just as fifty other women were; but round about her skirts (though wofully patched) you would be sensible of a certain sphere of decency, which, it seemed to me, could not have been kept more impregnable in the cosiest ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her work and laid it in her plaited rush sewing-basket. Then she stood for a moment, irresolute, and listened to the sounds issuing from the next room. She could hear her Aunt Maria bustle about the ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... thinks the world of her. She's a plump, jolly, delightful old lady who lives in a delightful old house full of dear, old-fashioned furniture. She keeps a lot of chickens and often sells them and the fresh eggs, and she does a little sewing, and sometimes takes a boarder or two, and goes out nursing occasionally—and oh, I don't know what all! But I know that we couldn't get along at all around here without Aunt Sally. We'll go down to her house this afternoon and ...
— The Dragon's Secret • Augusta Huiell Seaman
... said Miss Wren, 'I have to scud about town at all hours. If it was only sitting at my bench, cutting out and sewing, it would be comparatively easy work; but it's the trying-on by the great ladies that ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... the hall, and stand your umbrella there also, with full assurance that you will find them there when you want them, if it be the next morning or the next week. Instead of that petty tyrant the hotel clerk, a young woman sits in the office with her sewing or other needlework, and quietly receives you. She gives you your number on a card, rings for a chambermaid to show you to your room, and directs your luggage to be sent up; and there is something in the look of things, and the way ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... little one in both her own, and said, smiling, yet with meaning in her eyes, as she tapped the small fore-finger, rough with impatient and unskilful sewing— ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... it. Yet you seemed to want to make a man mollancholy mad. You was always at it—if not with your right hand, with your left. What was they a doing in the Yard? Why, take a look at 'em and see. There was the girls and their mothers a working at their sewing, or their shoe-binding, or their trimming, or their waistcoat making, day and night and night and day, and not more than able to keep body and soul together after all—often not so much. There was people of pretty ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... inclination for the milinery business, and at the time we introduce her to our readers she was Chief Engineer of a Millinery Shop and Boss of a Sewing Machine. ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... was fortunate in getting an interest in a patent motor for use on sewing machines. He told Wood all about it and of one weak feature in connection with the battery, which, however, he thought was ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... she explained. "All the costly needlework of the shops means nothing to me alongside of my own work on my own designs. Dick used to fret at my sewing. He's all for efficiency, you know, elimination of waste energy and such things. He thought sewing was a wasting of time. Peasants could be hired for a song to do what I was doing. But I succeeded in making my viewpoint clear ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... length twisted round the little finger work 2 D, L, 2 D, then put the second round the little finger, leave a little space, and work 2 R D, L, 2 R D; repeat until there are 66 Ls on each side. Fasten it neatly into a circle, by untying the first knot and sewing the threads ...
— The Bath Tatting Book • P. P.
... of it," says Sadie. "She seems to live for her work. Goodness knows how early she's up and at it in the morning, and at night I have to drive her out of the sewing room!" ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... and at the same time a telegram recommending that I leave at once. I shall write you from Paris all that I learn to your interest. If this letter should not reach you sealed in red wax, with small indentations made with a sewing thimble and my initials, which I always sign, it is that our ...
— True Stories of Crime From the District Attorney's Office • Arthur Train
... Every night the report from the Harlings was the same—Louise could find nothing to do. Even Mrs. McGregor who was ordinarily able to straighten out every sort of tangle had no remedy for the present pitiable dilemma. The only employment it was in her power to secure for the girl was fine sewing and Louise, restricted by her factory training, could not sew. A week went by and still nothing presented itself. Mrs. Harling and the aged grandfather, from whom the calamity had been kept as long as it was possible to conceal it, at length took up ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... unexpected and overwhelming thing happened. Mother was sitting with her work on the little raised platform in the drawing-room, in front of the sewing-table with its many little compartments, in which, under the loose mahogany lid, there lay so many beautiful and wonderful things—rings and lovely earrings, with pearls in them—when the door to the kitchen opened and the ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... alone in his beautiful house in Brakely Square. His butler, the cook, and one sewing maid and the chauffeur were attending the servants' ball which the Manley-Potters were giving. Louder grew the ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... the sewing society of the Union Church missed "Marm" Parraday's brown face and vigorous tongue. It was said that she strongly disapproved of the change at the Inn, but Lem had overruled her ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... papers are lying on a small table in front of him. AXEL is on another couch drawn up in a similar position on the right-hand side. A newspaper, which he is not reading, is lying on his knee. The MOTHER is sitting, sewing, in an easy-chair drawn up beside a table in the ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson
... Gray, dropping her sewing into her lap and looking fixedly at her husband, who leaned back in his big chair watching the smoke from his cigar. "How can you bring yourself to utter such treasonable language in your son's hearing? You know you do not believe a word ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... my finger with a needle while I was sewing, and—and the blood came!" she replied. "And now I'll have blood-poisoning, and the doctors will cut off my finger, and that will give me a fever and ...
— The Emerald City of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... the foundation of his system, or because he wished to conceal it from the uninitiated. The Rarey system substitutes for severe longeing, for whipping and spurring, blinkers, physic, starving, the twitch, tying the tail down, sewing the ears together, putting shot in the ears, and all the cruelties hitherto resorted to for subduing high-spirited and vicious animals (and very often the high-spirited become, from injudicious treatment, the most ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... had given her country a mild emotion of the same sort. But the strife, the danger, the anxiety of the time, set new currents of feeling in motion. Life became something other than the three meals a day, the round of cooking, washing, sewing, and church going. Personal gossip vanished from the village conversation. Big things took the place of trifling ones,—sacred sorrows of wives and mothers, pangs of fathers and husbands, self-denials, sympathies, new desire ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... fulfilling either task is pleading to be allowed to enter my intelligence. My task is its task. My success will be its success. My failure will react on it, since failure sets back by that degree the whole procession of the ages. Whether I am painting a great masterpiece or sewing on a button my success is essential to the Holy ...
— The Conquest of Fear • Basil King
... to Randall's to a special meeting of the sewing society. Not only were the women going to cut out and make up little aprons and dresses for the inmates of the nearest orphanage but they intended to discuss several new social problems that confronted Green Valley. The two most vital being "What do you make of that new saloon keeper ...
— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds
... sacred trees, and sang songs to the "good people" who might not drink of the fountain because of their sins. Jeanne loved the forest; its birds and beasts came lovingly to her at her childish call. But at home men saw nothing in her but "a good girl, simple and pleasant in her ways," spinning and sewing by her mother's side while the other girls went to the fields, tender to the poor and sick, fond of church, and listening to the church-bell with a dreamy passion of delight which never left her. This quiet life was broken ...
— History of the English People, Volume III (of 8) - The Parliament, 1399-1461; The Monarchy 1461-1540 • John Richard Green
... and de cloth. They had spinnin' wheels. Person turn de wheel wid de hand and walk back'ards and for'ards, drawing out de thread. Dis kind of thread, her say, was rough. Later they got a thing de spinners operate wid deir foots, settin' by de wheel and workin' it wid deir foots, sorta lak a sewing machine is run. Her 'low de thread dat come to her in de weave-room from dis kind of spinnin' was smoother and more finer than de other kind. After de yarn was spin, it was reeled off de spools into hanks and then took to de warper. Then she woofed it, warped it, and loomed it into ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves • Works Projects Administration
... rent a room in a business quarter, and, aided by a typewriting machine, copy MSS. at the rate of six annas a page. Only a woman can operate a typewriting machine, because she has served apprenticeship to the sewing machine. She can earn as much as one hundred dollars a month, and professes to regard this form of bread-winning as her natural destiny. But, oh! how she hates it in her heart of hearts! When I had got over the surprise of doing ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... chairs. The beds were well constructed, a great deal better than some of the beds the ex-slave saw during these days. Regarding mattresses she said, "We took some tick and stuffed it with cotton and corn husks, which had been torn into small pieces and when we got through sewing it looked like a mattress that was bought ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... they go to the gardens near to the outskirts of the city both for collecting the plants and for cultivating them. In fact, all sedentary and stationary pursuits are practised by the women, such as weaving, spinning, sewing, cutting the hair, shaving, dispensing medicines, and making all kinds of garments. They are, however, excluded from working in wood and the manufacture of arms. If a woman is fit to paint, she is not prevented from doing so; nevertheless, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... it. He says yes is everything and no is nothing. I don't think that means much, but we call him that for fun...." But Mary could not remember what the child's real name was. What difference did it make? As if she could have a child meddling round the house while she was sewing. But of course this was not the real reason. The real reason was that she could not bring up a ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... not immediately decide to apply for the situation, but the more she thought of it the more she felt inclined to do so. The little experience she had had with Dodger satisfied her that she should enjoy teaching better than sewing or writing. ...
— Adrift in New York - Tom and Florence Braving the World • Horatio Alger
... woven by the power-loom in America, and perhaps in the world, was produced at Central Falls, R. I., in 1829. Calico printing began at Lowell the same year, also the manufacture of cutlery at Worcester, of sewing-silk at Mansfield, Conn., of galvanized iron in New York City. With the new decade chloroform was invented, in 1831, being first used as a medicine, not as an anaesthetic. Reaping machines were on trial the same year, and three years later machine-made wood screws were ...
— History of the United States, Volume 3 (of 6) • E. Benjamin Andrews
... saleswomen, teachers, and laborers' wives and daughters, scattered in the garrets and tenements of great cities and in cottages all over the country, who are paying the tax which keeps the mill going and pays the extra wages? If the sewing-women, teachers, servants, and washer-women could once be collected over against the thread-mill, then some inferences could be drawn which would be worth something. Then some light might be thrown upon the obstinate fallacy of "creating an industry," and we might begin to understand the difference ...
— What Social Classes Owe to Each Other • William Graham Sumner
... he angrily scolded her for her mistakes: then she lost her head altogether: he fumed, wrung his hands, declared that she would never do anything properly, and that she had better occupy herself with cooking, sewing, anything she liked, only, in Heaven's name, she must not go on with her music! It was not worth the trouble of torturing people with her mistakes. With that he left her in the middle of her lesson. He was furious. ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... Caroline, I made the dozen I sent Mary Caroline for you. See the little slips fold over and hold up the petticoats," and Mrs. Buchanan held up a tiny garment for Caroline Darrah to admire. They sat by the sunny window in her living-room and both were sewing on dainty cambric and lace. Caroline Darrah's head bent over the piece of ruffling in her hand with flower-like grace and the long lines from her throat suggested decidedly a very lovely Preraphaelite angel. Her needle moved slowly and unaccustomedly ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... straw—which is their bed at night. The sacks which form their counterpane are rolled aside, and they have half the barn for their nursery. If it is wet, at least one great girl and the mother will be there too, gravely sewing, and sitting where they can see all that goes along ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... homespun, hanging full and short about her ankles. Her manner was different from that of those people he had been lately meeting, for it had that gentle reserve and formality that bespeaks training. She ushered him into a good-sized room, where three other girls like herself were engaged in sewing. Sitting at a table with a book, from which she had apparently been reading to them, was the woman in the nun-like dress whom he had met before. The walls of the room were of unpainted pinewood, planed to a satin finish, and adorned with festoons of gray moss such as hangs from forest boughs. ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... which seemed necessary. In this way much pleasure and profit was extracted from the tales Ben and Thorny read, and much unexpected knowledge as well as ignorance displayed, not to mention piles of neatly hemmed towels for which Bab and Betty were paid like regular sewing-women. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... excuse of ample means nor of social culture. The wife of a poorly paid clerk, or of a young man just starting in business, aims at dressing as stylishly as does the wealthiest among her acquaintances. The sewing girl, the shop girl, the chambermaid, and even the cook, must have their elegantly trimmed silk dresses and velvet cloaks for Sunday and holiday wear, and the injury done by this state of things to the morals and manners of ...
— Our Deportment - Or the Manners, Conduct and Dress of the Most Refined Society • John H. Young
... crackers alone, and my informant went on to say that the only case he knew of where marriage had been really successful was that of the fair-haired carpenter, who was married and asked all the bosses on the place, who each gave something, with which he was able to buy a sewing machine for the eldest girl, ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... country a mild emotion of the same sort. But the strife, the danger, the anxiety of the time, set new currents of feeling in motion. Life became something other than the three meals a day, the round of cooking, washing, sewing, and churchgoing. Personal gossip vanished from the village conversation. Big things took the place of trifling ones,—sacred sorrows of wives and mothers, pangs of fathers and husbands, self-denials, sympathies, new desire to bear one another's burdens. Men and women ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... bought and paid for, they all go to the store, where they buy whatever they need or think they need. The native of the coast districts to-day goes beyond needs to luxuries; he buys costly silks, such as he may once have seen in Queensland, and he samples sewing-machines or whatever else tempts him. In consequence of competition, the prices for coprah and the wages of labour are unreasonably high, and the natives might profit greatly by this state of things if they knew the value of ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... l3.—We had our first sewing-class this afternoon. Thirteen girls came. Nearly all produced thimbles, and their sewing was very much better than I expected. Ellen superintended the little ones, while I read aloud a book lent by Mrs. Susan Swain. We sat ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... and herds of untamed insects wandered over the Eddingses' beds. Best of all I loved to go to Josie's, and sit on the porch, eating peaches, while the mother bustled and talked: how Josie had bought the sewing-machine; how Josie worked at service in winter, but that four dollars a month was "mighty little" wages; how Josie longed to go away to school, but that it "looked like" they never could get far enough ahead to ...
— The Souls of Black Folk • W. E. B. Du Bois
... neighbors were circulating concerning her; and, as she knew their eyes were constantly upon her house, she managed to invite the clergyman and his wife, with a few others whom she had met in church circles, to dinner, and manifested such an interest in the sewing society that the principal ladies of the congregation called on her in succession; and although they never got beyond an interchange of formal visits, yet it served to puzzle the gossips in the streets, and one or two who had "forgotten" to call on Mrs. McClintock ...
— The Mysteries of Montreal - Being Recollections of a Female Physician • Charlotte Fuhrer
... till three in the morning, he says, preparing his speech; and would have done all kinds of things with the affidavits. It certainly was a splendid subject. We have heard nothing from the vagabonds yet. I once thought of printing the affidavits without a word of comment, and sewing them up with Chuzzlewit. Talfourd is strongly disinclined to compromise with the printers on any terms. In which case it would be referred to the master to ascertain what profits had been made by the piracy, and to order the same to be paid ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... shall it be bravely done. I will give orders at once for the cutting and sewing. I will back our white coats against Master Hampden's green coats, or Essex's swarm in orange-tawny. Have you conveyed my message to my two ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... wintry sunshine smiled in at all the windows of her handsome house, and made it cheerful even though the blinds were drawn down. The robins twittered in the evergreens outside, and the maids had their little jokes as usual over their sewing, though they spoke in lowered tones. No great and terrible change seemed to have happened to any one but Hetty, except indeed to Scamp, and it was plain that he ...
— Hetty Gray - Nobody's Bairn • Rosa Mulholland
... distance. There was only one girl from the village living in the house, Alyona, and she stayed because her whole family—old people and children—were living upon her wages. This Alyona, a pale, rather stupid little thing, spent the whole day turning out the rooms, waiting at table, heating the stoves, sewing, washing; but it always seemed as though she were only pottering about, treading heavily with her boots, and were nothing but a hindrance in the house. In her terror that she might be dismissed and sent ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... his daughter, and after it was over, and she sat near the lamp sewing with deft fingers, he kept his eyes on her. She was a handsome girl, and there was plenty of excuse for the male youth of Birralong losing their hearts to her. She was both tall and well formed, with ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... boat I threw my leg directly across the edge of the knife, which left a decent mark of nearly four inches long, and more than one inch deep. It was then up anchor and away. Our first port was Dayton's ferry, where Dr. Bennet happened to be, but without his apparatus for sewing, to the no small disadvantage of me, who was to undergo the operation. Mrs. Dayton, however, furnished him with a large darning-needle, which, as soon as I felt going through my skin, I thought was more like a gimlet boring into me; but, with the help of a glass of wine, I grinned and bore ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... with the delicious little smile of superiority which the youngest woman and even the merest girl can wear, when she is sure that she is right and that the man she loves is wrong. It may be only about sewing on a button, or about the weather, or it may concern great issues; but it is always the same when it comes: it exasperates weak men, and the stronger sort like it, as they more especially delight in all that is womanly in woman, from heroic virtue ...
— The White Sister • F. Marion Crawford
... well as the present court-yard, was laid out in grass plats, overshadowed by trees and bordered by a wrought-iron fence. Now, the old aristocratic edifice hides its time-worn visage behind an upstart modern building; at one of the back windows I observed some pretty tailoresses, sewing and chatting and laughing, with now and then a careless glance towards the balcony. Descending thence, we again entered the bar-room, where the elderly gentleman above mentioned, the smack of whose lips had spoken so favorably for ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... again upon their regular course, with the plan of taking up the study of cider in October. And after the little boys had gone to school, now it was one thing, now it was another,—the china-closet to be cleaned, or one of the neighbors in to look at the sewing-machine. She tried after dinner, but would fall asleep. She felt that evening would be the true time, after the cares of ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... Alice Arabella Angelina Andal, Why do you talk for ever, such a tittle-tattling scandal? Betsy Bertha Bridget Belinda Bowing, Will you be quiet and go on with your sewing? Cora Caroline Christina Clarinda Clare, Now do look in the glass at your untidy hair. Dorah Dinah Dorothy Dorinda Dresson, You really must get on with your short drawing lesson. Edith Ellen Evelina Elizabeth Eadle, This makes this day your nineteenth broken needle. Fanny Florence Frederica Florinda ...
— Cole's Funny Picture Book No. 1 • Edward William Cole
... and potatoes very quietly and 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 ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... narrated, is the "Clever King's Daughter", who evidently in the original story had to choose her suitor by his feet (as the giantess in the prose Edda chooses her husband), and was able to do so by the device she had practised of sewing up her ring in his leg sometime before, so that when she touched the flesh she could feel the hardness of the ring beneath ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... After sounding the profound cloistral silence, she seemed to be listening to remote, inarticulate revelations of the life of passion, which accounts feelings as of higher value than things. And at such moments her cheek would flush, her idle hands would lay the muslin sewing on the polished oak counter, and presently her mother would say in a voice, of which even the softest tones were sour, "Augustine, my treasure, what are you thinking about?" It is possible that two ...
— At the Sign of the Cat and Racket • Honore de Balzac
... produce the results he aimed for. He carefully removed from her knowledge books, pictures, music, all those creations of art which awaken thought. Aided by his mother he interested Gabrielle in manual exercises. Tapestry, sewing, lace-making, the culture of flowers, household cares, the storage of fruits, in short, the most material occupations of life, were the food given to the mind of this charming creature. Beauvouloir brought her beautiful spinning-wheels, finely-carved ...
— The Hated Son • Honore de Balzac
... agree to do them all at 7s. 6d. a piece. The Jew employed all the poor people who were at work for the slop warehouses in Houndsditch and its vicinity. This Jew makes on an average 500 paletots a week. The Jew gets 2s. 6d. profit out of each, and having no sewing trimmings allowed to him, he makes the work-people find them. The saving in trimmings alone to the firm, since the workmen left the premises, must have realized a small fortune to them. Calculating men, women, and children, I have heard it said that the cheap house ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... he found her very feeble, lying back upon her cushions, alone, and working at some little bits of baby-clothes. He was not slow to perceive that she was very glad to see him. She flushed with pleasure as he came into the room, and, dropping her sewing, held out to him two little, thin hands, white as wax. "Take that footstool—sit down there—what a great, great pleasure it is to see you back again!" She was more expansive than she had been formerly; ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... together tin goods, soiled enamel tumblers and plates, silvered glass balls for ceiling decoration, and the vilest oleographs that the human mind can devise, only matched by the vileness of the frames. Small looking-glasses play an important part in these displays, and occasionally a hand sewing-machine. Tinned provisions, wine and liquor shops are numerous, but unfortunate is the man who may have to depend upon them for his food. The goods are the remnants of the oldest stocks that have gradually drifted, unsold, down to Baku, and have eventually been shipped ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... into the adjoining room, where the cobblers sat cross-legged, sewing and patching and ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... How often she had longed to see the "young leddy of Kirklands," as she still called her, how many times she said to her husband that she would be sure to know her anywhere, though it was so many years since she had looked into her face. But now, as Jean sat matron-like with her sewing, in front of her cottage, while her children played near, she wondered what "strange lady" could be coming along the path. She called her straying little ones to her, in case they should be in the way, but she noticed that the stranger did not seem to think so, for ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae
... or even casa, but there is a shop where they sell wine, and black tumour-covered sausages, and white bread, and algobra beans, and Scotch sewing cotton. The whole village knew of their arrival, and were gathered in this shop to meet them when they came in. Few questions were asked. The Spaniard of the lower orders has a most Hibernian weakness for anything smacking of conspiracy, or any enterprise ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... her hand they have taken the shining ring, They have brought the linen her shroud to make; O, the lark she was never so loath to sing, And the morn she was never so loath to awake! And at their sewing they hear the rain,— Drip-drop, drip-drop, over the eaves, And drip-drop over the sycamore-leaves, As if there would ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... Of course, being moderately intelligent I read everything that came in my way, but merely for amusement. It had been laid up against me as a persistent fault, which was not profitable; I should peruse moral, and pious works, or take up sewing,—that interminable thing, "white seam," which filled the leisure moments of the right-minded. To the personnel of writers I gave little heed; it was the hero they created that charmed me, like Miss Porter's gallant Pole, Sobieski, or the ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... earnest money was paid, d'Artagnan took possession of his lodging, and passed the remainder of the day in sewing onto his doublet and hose some ornamental braiding which his mother had taken off an almost-new doublet of the elder M. d'Artagnan, and which she had given her son secretly. Next he went to the Quai de Feraille to have ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... fit her only for the fancy work of Life: plain sewing she must learn of Life itself. School had made her highly ornamental: Life must make her useful. School had developed her capacity for pleasure and enjoyment: not until Life had developed her capacity ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... all, is better furnished that that of a white man of equal earning power, but it is on the installment plan. He is loath to buy a house, because he has no taste for responsibility nor faith in himself to manage large concerns; but organs, pianos, clocks, sewing-machines and parlor suits, on time, have no terrors for him. This is because he has been accustomed to think in small numbers. He does not regard the Scotchman's "mickle," because he does not stop to consider that ...
— The Negro Problem • Booker T. Washington, et al.
... that during her cousin's visit, her daughter should spend part of every morning, sewing and reading. Hence, after the notes were nicely put away, Jessie took out her famous piece of patchwork, and began sewing. She laughed heartily as she did so this morning, because she found pieces of paper pinned to the articles intended for Uncle Morris with these ...
— Jessie Carlton - The Story of a Girl who Fought with Little Impulse, the - Wizard, and Conquered Him • Francis Forrester
... body, what a state she was in, between joy and grief, love and terror, heart and brain. She never wavered in her maternal eagerness to go to "poor little Henry," but what did she not imagine as to Botany Bay? She began sewing up sovereigns in chamois-leather bags to be dispersed all over her person against the time when she should have to live among the burglars; and Dora, who was desperately offended, failed to convince her that she might as well expect robbers at home. However, the preparations ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... to another he passed unweariedly, cutting off portions of torn flesh, extracting bullets, setting broken bones, taking up and tying severed arteries, sewing together the edges of gaping wounds, and completing the amputation of limbs, in regard to which the operation had been begun—sometimes nearly ...
— Under the Waves - Diving in Deep Waters • R M Ballantyne
... If some one was sewing for you, you would not think of shutting her up in a little place where she could not move her hands freely. The lungs are breathing for you, and need room ...
— Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes • Jane Andrews
... were willing to come back to school, bringing their younger sisters with them. They had, however, forgotten nearly all they had learned, and were at first very unruly. No assistance beyond that of an ignorant woman to help keep order and teach a little sewing was obtainable, while Miss Whately's still imperfect acquaintance with Arabic increased the difficulties which are everywhere experienced in the conduct of a ragged school. The younger children were ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... Waldemar Ingebertsen, to Charles Jonsen, and even to John Hontvet himself, at different times, that "he must have money if he murdered for it." He loafed about Portsmouth eight weeks, doing nothing. Meanwhile Karen left our service in February, intending to go to Boston and work at a sewing-machine, for she was not strong and thought she should like it better than housework, but before going she lingered awhile with her sister Maren—fatal delay for her! Maren told me that during this time Karen went to Portsmouth ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... "But, however," he continued, "I might as well finish up this business now. There is Rachel Doolittle. Who knows but she'd make a likely wife? Lyddy sot a good deal by her. She never had a quilting or a sewing bee but what nothing would do but she must give Rachel Doolittle an invite. Yes; I wonder I never decided on her before. She will be glad of a home sure enough, for she haves to live around, as it ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... especially we French and English), were so far from stooping to so base an example, that there never passed, till this very hour, six words between us. For our horses were of our own breeding, our arms of our own forging, and our clothes of our own cutting out and sewing." Plato was by chance up on the next shelf, and observing those that spoke to be in the ragged plight mentioned a while ago, their jades lean and foundered, their weapons of rotten wood, their armour rusty, and nothing but rags underneath, he laughed loud, ...
— The Battle of the Books - and Other Short Pieces • Jonathan Swift
... in keeping up and which she herself taught to her children, ten in number, besides teaching them the piano, the harp and drawing. Instead of fancy work the young ladies were taught to repair their clothes and do plain sewing; this did not prevent them from making most brilliant matches. The family left Spencer Wood in 1828, to spend a year in Italy, at Florence, intending to return, but the Hon. M. H. Perceval, died at sea on the 12th Oct., 1829, and the ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... alone; for their mother had gone to a sewing society, and Grashy, the girl, was up-stairs in her kitchen-chamber-bedroom, with a nail over the door-latch to keep them out while she "fixed over" ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... holiday over the mummies, and no official suppresses his professional objections to the coffins. The weaver observes the looms of the olden time: the soldier compares the Indian's blunt instrument with his own keen and deadly bayonet. The poor needlewoman enjoys her laugh at the rude sewing-instruments of barbarous tribes: the stone-mason perhaps compares his tombs with the sarcophagi of ancient masters. No attendant is deputed to dog the heels of five visitors and to watch them with the cold eye of a gaoler; no bell warns the company from one ...
— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold
... home on the Three-Notched Road. Mammy Chloe, in white apron and kerchief and coloured turban, presented herself with a curtsy, delivered kindly messages from the ladies of the house, and sat down with her sewing in the little adjoining room. The morning advanced, sunny and peaceful, with vague sounds, faint laughter from distant rooms, droning of bees, and rustling ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... keep them from bundling back home. Then we talked about you, Stoltz, and about the farm; and when would I be giving you Kinner to help with all the work," she said. Martha fiddled with the cloak she was sewing for her husband. "It was largely their heathen speech we used, so I understood only what they pointed at; but they ate hearty of anything without vinegar in it, and I laughed with them like with friends at a quilting-bee. ...
— Blind Man's Lantern • Allen Kim Lang
... well out with it now as later," she observed, as she took up her sewing. "What has ...
— The House of Toys • Henry Russell Miller
... has been here nearly all morning. She wouldn't let anybody else hold your head while the doctor was sewing it up." ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... certainly are a quick one," exclaimed the good woman as she gave up her seat to the girl. "Now if you can finish that job for me, I can get a little sewing done before dark." ...
— The Bishop's Shadow • I. T. Thurston
... among the soldier-classes, as the Demon Newswriter imagines to himself; nor productive of the results lamented. Prussian soldiers are not encouraged to marry, if it will hurt the service; nor do their wives march with the Regiment except in such proportions as there may be sewing, washing and the like women's work fairly wanted in their respective Companies: the Potsdam First Battalion, I understand, is hardly permitted to marry at all. And in regard to lamentable results, that of "LIEBSTEN-SCHEINE, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... named Jacquard and an Englishman named Arkwright made men warm for their work in winter. Garments within the reach of the poor man in forest and factory, field and mine, means the cotton gin, and that gin is the gift of an American. The sewing machine changed woman's position, but the world owes that to our ...
— The Blot on the Kaiser's 'Scutcheon • Newell Dwight Hillis
... became certain at last. Of not much more manly pastimes did the Bonn student have to tell, for the slitting of noses was then in high favor, and a bit of advice was gravely recounted as having come from a doctor to an obstinate duellist, "not to get his nose cut off a fifth time, as the sewing had got so shaky by repetition that he could not answer for the nose sticking on if touched once more." The house was really beautiful, and furnished with a taste which had something Parisian, and yet also something individual, about it. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... information about the usual operations in binding books; folding; gathering, collating, sewing, forwarding, finishing. Case making and cased-in books. Hand work and machine work. Job and blank-book binding. Illustrated; ...
— Division of Words • Frederick W. Hamilton
... in the papers, and then had left the room. So Fanny looked over the marriages and deaths, and read about the weather in New York and Chicago, and some other things that she thought would interest us while we were sewing. Suddenly I looked up, towards where Miss Agnes was sitting, far away at the other end of the room. She was leaning back in her chair, and, all in a moment, I thought she looked white, as though she had fainted. I did not say ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 19, May, 1859 • Various
... Judith's establishment, and presently returned with her answer. Would I mind waiting in the dining-room? I entered. The table was littered with sheets of her statistical work and odd bits of silk' and lining. A type-writer stood at one end and a sewing-machine at the other. On the writing-desk by the window, in the midst of a mass of letters and account-books, rested a large bowl filled with magnificent blooms of white and yellow chrysanthemums. A volume ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... o'clock. Cabin breakfast, as I knew very well, would be at eight. I could expect to be called at half past seven. I put the two flaps of the satchel evenly together, removing all traces of the thread used in the earlier sewing. Then I very trimly sewed the two flaps with my sail-needle, using all my strength to make secure stitches. I used some brown soap in the wash-stand as thread wax, to make the sewing more easy. "There," I thought, "no one will suspect ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... languages of their long-separated descendants in Europe and India, scholars infer that they roamed over the grassy steppes with their cattle, making long halts to raise crops of grain. They had tamed most of the domestic animals; were acquainted with iron; understood the arts of weaving and sewing; wore clothes, and ate cooked food. They lived the hardy life of the comparatively temperate zone; and the feeling of cold seems to be one of the earliest common remembrances of the eastern and the western branches ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various
... that Mr. Shrewsbury really wished to teach them, and that he was ready to assist those who wanted to get on. In the afternoon the schoolmaster's wife started a sewing class for the girls and, a week or two after he came, the master announced that such of the elder class of boys and girls who chose to come, in the evening, to his cottage could do so for an hour; and that he and the boys would read, by turns, some amusing book while the ...
— A Final Reckoning - A Tale of Bush Life in Australia • G. A. Henty
... Industrial Department nearly two hundred and fifty girls sew from a half hour to an hour every day. Excellent work is being done and they are very much interested, some of them begging for the privilege of sewing at other times than those designated for that purpose. The industrial teacher finds difficulty in keeping the supply of work equal ...
— American Missionary, Volume 44, No. 6, June, 1890 • Various
... scraped smooth with a case-knife; then rinse, and wipe and dry it, and return it to the cheese-room, and turn it often until dry enough for market. Rich cheeses are apt to spread in warm weather; this is prevented by sewing them in common cheap cotton, ...
— Soil Culture • J. H. Walden
... bother about sewing it; I'll lend you one of mine," exclaimed Johann. "I'll carry this one home for you, for I'm not going to stay here alone—I'd be afraid. I'm going to a friend's house. You can find me there any time you need me. You'd better take ...
— The Case of the Golden Bullet • Grace Isabel Colbron, and Augusta Groner
... lace in a very few hours. She did the same by Hollands cloth, and made coarse strong lace, with which all my lady's napkins and table-linen were trimmed. We worked under her during a great part of the day, either in the still-room, or at our sewing in a chamber that opened out of the great hall. My lady despised every kind of work that would now be called Fancy-work. She considered that the use of coloured threads or worsted was only fit to amuse children; ...
— My Lady Ludlow • Elizabeth Gaskell
... sisters dear! O men with mothers and wives! It is no linen you're wearing out, But human creatures' lives! Stitch! stitch! stitch, In poverty, hunger, and dirt,— Sewing at once, with a double thread, A shroud as well ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... Britannia's power Have decreed a blissful hour, When the mellow bugle-note Sounds in every ship afloat, And you see the forrard decks Littered up with leathernecks, Seamen sprawling on the hatches, Darning socks and fitting patches, Cleaning jumpers, sewing, smoking, Writing, fighting, sleeping, joking, Baiting foe and twitting friend— Sailors ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156., March 5, 1919 • Various
... Cairo as wife of a British corporal. Since no children had resulted to require her care and the corporal maintained his distaste for thrift, Mrs. Hendricks had resumed her old trade, and had become a familiar figure to many fashionable Turkish harems, slipping in and out morning and evening, sewing busily away behind the bars upon frocks that would have graced a court ball, and lunching in familiar sociability with the family, sometimes having a bey or a captain or a pasha for a vis-a-vis when the men in the family dropped ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... perfectly, and remained sound and dry. From this we perceived that had we employed buffalo instead of elk skins, not singed them so closely as we did, and carefully avoided cutting the leather in sewing, the boat would have been sufficient even with the present composition; or had we singed instead of shaving the elk-skins, we might have succeeded. But we discovered our error too late; the buffalo had deserted us, and the travelling season was so fast advancing ...
— First Across the Continent • Noah Brooks
... a good many wise ones," observed Mother Pepper, over in her little old rocker in the west window, where she used to sit sewing up coats and sacks for the village storekeeper. "You kept us together many a time, Polly, when nothing ...
— Five Little Peppers Midway • Margaret Sidney
... one in the morning; Hortense had expected him ever since half-past nine. From half-past nine till ten she had listened to the passing carriages, telling herself that never before had her husband come in so late from dining with Florent and Chanor. She sat sewing by the child's cot, for she had begun to save a needlewoman's pay for the day by doing the mending herself.—From ten till half-past, a suspicion crossed her mind; she ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... killed and quartered him. Two days afterwards his brother went to look for him, brought home the severed body, and got a tailor to sew the quarters together. Next day the dragons called on the tailor to make them coats and shoes (sic), and heard of his sewing together the body. He showed them the house, and forty-eight dragons got into chests, which the forty-ninth deposited with the poor man. The children, playing about he chests, heard the dragons say, "Would that it were night, that we might eat them all!" So the father ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... back her chair, "this afternoon you can help me cut out some underclothes and get 'em basted together." She never attempted any sort of housework, being pathetically vain of her one beauty—her small, white hands. Even the family sewing ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... form was on the table, with head shaved. She was to go into his cerebellum and take out a tumor which had caused deafness, dumbness, and blindness. She would probably have to make two hundred stitches or more in sewing him up, but she always had been good at needlework, and it gave her no concern. She picked up her saw—but to her horror she found she couldn't bear to ...
— Tutors' Lane • Wilmarth Lewis
... her nest, sewing together the leaves by passing through them a cotton thread twisted by the creature herself, leaps from branch to branch to testify her happiness by a clear and merry note; and the Indian weaver[2], a still more ingenious artist, ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... be put on. Mrs. Bilter took eager pleasure in dressing her pretty sister in the daintiest of gowns. When she looked up she saw her husband coming through the gate for his noon dinner. She put down her sewing and moved to meet ...
— The Little Immigrant • Eva Stern
... mother, waiting in silence for some time. Finally I asked them if I had "ever been converted," told them I "wanted to be," and immediately we knelt in prayer. How I did weep, and how badly I felt! I can see the back of that little sewing-rocker now swimming in my tears. (I wonder where that rocking-chair is now! The last I knew it was in California, having left us at an auction—an occasion not unfamiliar to most of preacher-families.) They ...
— The Heart-Cry of Jesus • Byron J. Rees
... rest should be cut through by friction. It is commonly used to fasten slips of canvas, called parsling, upon the surface of a rope, to prevent its being galled, or to attach the foot of a sail to its bolt-rope, &c., with marling hitches, instead of sewing it. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... a job, my gentleman sat withinside tailor-wise and busily stitching. I say, when he had a job; but such customers as came were rather for Secundra, and the Master's sewing would be more in the manner of Penelope's. He could never have designed to gain even butter to his bread by such a means of livelihood: enough for him that there was the name of Durie dragged in the dirt on the placard, and the sometime heir of that proud family set up ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. XII (of 25) - The Master of Ballantrae • Robert Louis Stevenson
... half its width, runs the open front of the house, like a covered gallery: the interior sometimes neat and almost elegant in its bareness, the sleeping space divided off by an endlong coaming, some bright raiment perhaps hanging from a nail, and a lamp and one of White's sewing-machines, the only marks of civilisation. On the outside, at one end of the terrace, burns the cooking-fire under a shed; at the other there is perhaps a pen for pigs; the remainder is the evening lounge and al fresco banquet-hall of the inhabitants. To some houses water ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a short laugh, "what c'n I do with such an obst'nit critter 's he is? He jest backed into the britchin', an' I couldn't do nothin' with him." Aunt Polly sat over her sewing for a minute or ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... animals are before a storm, father invited them to spend the afternoon with him in the study, and Martha Corkle, who mounts guard during my brief holidays, saw that their paws were scrubbed, and then relaxed her vigilance, joining Evan in the sewing room. ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... More than five hundred of these engines, with cylinders varying from a diameter of six inches to one of forty inches, are now in successful operation. It is applied to purposes of pumping, printing, hoisting, grinding, sawing, turning light machinery, working telegraphic instruments and sewing-machines, and propelling boats. No less than forty daily papers (among which we may mention the "National Intelligencer") are printed by means of this engine. In Cuba it is used for grinding sugar-cane, on Southern plantations for ginning ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... didn't catch the name,—an unobtrusive, even an indistinct, middle-aged person in black. A companion. All very proper. She came and went and even sat down at times in the room, but a little apart, with some sewing. By the time she had brought in a lighted lamp I had heard all the details which really matter in this story. Between me and her who was once Flora de Barral the conversation was not likely to ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... delayed you so long?" she inquired, folding away her sewing; for it was becoming too ...
— Apples, Ripe and Rosy, Sir • Mary Catherine Crowley
... the display of exhibit material. The wall space above the cabinets was used for the display of especially meritorious and attractive material, while below was a countershelf upon which, here and there, rested a showcase for the display of sewing, clay modeling, botanical specimens, etc. Underneath the counters were shelves for bound books and cupboards for the storage of printed matter and supplies. All work was mounted uniformly upon a Scotch gray cardboard and ...
— New York at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis 1904 - Report of the New York State Commission • DeLancey M. Ellis
... haunts your door ... the town Marks coming and marks going ... You seem to have stitched your eyelids down To that long piece of sewing! ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... utilization of the forces of Nature, particularly in the development of this country. We, although young in years, have become the greatest railroad builders in history, and have put into use mechanical machines like the harvester, the sewing machine, the telephone, the wireless telegraph, and almost numberless applications of electricity. Ships have been built of late years greatly departing from those immediately preceding them, so that at the present time ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXX, Dec. 1910 • John A. Bensel
... workhouse, built about 1775, and adjoining is a solid, well-built stone edifice containing the offices of the Guardians of the Poor. At the north-east corner of the street is the Cripples' Home and Industrial School for Girls. The inmates are taught sewing, basket-making, and ...
— Hampstead and Marylebone - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... others, as the true occupation of life; but she cowered in the gloomy dreariness of finding in it no food for the fancy that lay crouching in her heart like an insect at the bottom of a calyx. Meanwhile she sat tranquilly sewing garments for the children of the poor, and listening abstractedly to the grumblings of Monsieur Latournelle when Dumay held the thirteenth card or ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... Radbourn's office, he saw a young lady seated at a desk, manipulating a typewriter. She had the ends of a forked rubber tube hung in her ears, and did not see Bradley. He observed that the tube connected with a sewing-machine-like table and a swiftly revolving little cylinder, which he recognized as a phonograph. At the window sat Radbourn, talking in a measured, monotonous voice into the mouthpiece of a large flexible tube, which connected with another phonograph. His back was toward Bradley, ...
— A Spoil of Office - A Story of the Modern West • Hamlin Garland
... Teresa lost all patience with her, exclaiming, as she saw the strange ragged ends she had left in her sewing, "Drop that work, and go where you please; but remember this, never will you be called a 'Dorcas.' Never will you be able to sew and provide garments for the poor. It's not enough to tell them you love them, you must show it by your works—and the best ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... so good, you could do anything," she whispered, and clasped the worn hand on which the needle-pricks had left the marks of many long years of patient sewing. "I should like to see the paper so much," continued the child, after a thoughtful pause. "I wish I could walk there, but it is so long since I walked, and the snow is so deep ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... of an efficient person to assist you in taking charge of your domestic affairs, Enna," said a maiden aunt of mine to me one evening. I pulled my little sewing-table toward me with a slight degree of impatience, and began very earnestly to examine the contents of my work-box, that I might not express aloud my weariness of my aunt's favorite subject. I had been in want of just such an article ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... challenged Jean, searching in a big chintz bag where she kept her handiwork for a piece of unfinished sewing. (Jean's domesticity was always a source of ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... and in the long afternoon Mary Adams sat sewing as Rhoda Kollander rambled on. For the third time Rhoda came back to comment upon the fact that Grant Adams had quit working in the printing office—a genteel trade, and had stopped delivering papers for Mr. Brotherton's ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... a winter gown and a summer gown, a hat and gloves, for her L2. These are not fancy figures. The miracle is performed by tens of thousands of German women every year. They buy a few yards of cheap stuff and get in a sewing-woman to make it up, for as a rule they are not nearly as clever and capable as Englishwomen about making things for themselves. Your English maid-servant will buy a blouse length at a sale for a few pence, make it up smartly, and wear it out in a month of Sundays. Your German ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... before six bells, Captain Marston was on the poop looking at the land through his glasses, Mrs. Marston was in her cabin sewing, Villari, with the boatswain and three A.B.'s (all Englishmen), were with the steward and third mate engaged in the lazzarette overhauling and re-stowing the provisions. Suddenly the captain was felled by a blow on the head dealt him from behind, and the mate and those with him were at ...
— John Frewen, South Sea Whaler - 1904 • Louis Becke
... for many things: its antiquity, its religious history, its Roman remains, and the geniality of its toddling old dealer in sewing-machines (of American make, of course), who, as a "side" line, sells gasoline and oil at considerably under the prevailing rates elsewhere. Truly we were in the ideal touring-ground ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... bright afternoon in early autumn, that Annie sat sewing by a window in the luxuriously furnished parlor of Colonel Stuart, her uncle, who was the practicing physician of the village, that she was started by a loud ringing of the door bell. Supposing it was some one after her uncle, she paid little heed ...
— Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland • Abigail Stanley Hanna
... this be confined to the males alone. The girl-women raise poultry, small fruits and vegetables very successfully. They pickle and can the products of the land, and in winter do knitting, netting and sewing ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson
... could be more comfortably situated on a hot summer day; at least, so her mamma thought, as she tied Lily-toes securely in her chair with a soft scarf, and went back to the sitting-room and the busy sewing and talking with her dear old girlhood friends. I presume if Lily-toes had been a first baby, her mamma would have hesitated about leaving her there. She would have feared—may be—that the chickens would ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... required in the manufacture of shoes,—the rearing of cattle, the preparation of their hides, and the cutting and sewing. If the hide, on leaving the farmer's stable, is worth one, it is worth two on leaving the tanner's pit, and three on leaving the shoemaker's shop. Each laborer has produced a portion of the utility; so that, by adding all these portions together, we get the value of the article. To obtain any quantity ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon
... was next to theirs, and as she sat sewing she could hear the children's talk, for they soon forgot to whisper. At first she smiled, then she looked sober, and when the prattle ceased she said to herself, as she glanced about her ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... this. Esther deals it out with full hands. She takes a very pretty interest in her simple outfit,—showing me triumphantly certain of her purchases, and making a great mystery about others, which she is pleased to denominate tablecloths and napkins. Last evening I found her sewing buttons on a tablecloth. I had heard a great deal of a certain gray silk dress; and this morning, accordingly, she marched up to me, arrayed in this garment. It is trimmed with velvet, and hath flounces, a train, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various |
