"Washerwoman" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... poor washerwoman, had seen better days; but the drunken dissipation of a husband, who was now in his grave, had reduced her to abject, despairing poverty. Her unfortunate marriage and persistence in clinging to the man ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the Sweet Gum Spring they saw Delphy, the washerwoman, standing in her doorway, quarrelling with her son-in-law, Moses, who was hoeing a small garden patch in the rear of an adjoining cabin. Delphy was a large mulatto woman, with a broad, flat bosom and enormous hands that ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... work—no need of charity—man got to be blame shiftless if he don't get ahead." But now that the summer mask of leaves and grass was gone, Carol discovered misery and dead hope. In a shack of thin boards covered with tar-paper she saw the washerwoman, Mrs. Steinhof, working in gray steam. Outside, her six-year-old boy chopped wood. He had a torn jacket, muffler of a blue like skimmed milk. His hands were covered with red mittens through which protruded his chapped raw knuckles. He halted ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... will you?" said Schaunard, opening his bundle, "these are not hairs, they are shirts, and I am taking them to my washerwoman, who lives next door to the ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... with a broad oval wicker-basket covered with a white cloth, which burden she bore round to the back door. Of course, she washed for his own household: he had not thought of that. In the morning sunlight she appeared rather as a sylph than as a washerwoman; and he could not but think that the slightness of her figure was as ill adapted to this occupation as ...
— The Well-Beloved • Thomas Hardy
... already great talent for drawing, and in almost every letter came two or three childish but spirited little pictures, all labelled "Drawn for papa!" "The true picture of our courier in a rage, for papa to see." "The washerwoman's dog, for papa," etc., etc. Again and again I sat by, almost trembling with delight, and saw John spend an entire evening in looking over these little missives and reading Ellen's letters. Then again I sat alone and anxious through an ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... not take me for a rich English Coelebs in search of a wife. I am an unfortunate scapegrace, have run out all my means, and am not worth a York shilling to jingle on a tombstone. I was obliged to borrow money of my landlord—he's a capital fellow—to pay my washerwoman's bill this morning. So don't fall in love with me. I assure you, on my honour, it would be ...
— Life in the Clearings versus the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... to the conservatory is violently thrust open, and a peasant woman, her face bluish red with rage, bursts in. She is not much better dressed than a washerwoman: naked, red arms, blue cotton-skirt and bodice, red dotted kerchief. She is in the early forties; her face is hard, sensual, malignant. The whole figure ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... to suspect that at the bottom of the pan to be poison?—I found it very gritty, and had no smell. When I went down and saw the old washerwoman, that she had tasted of the water gruel and was affected with the same symptoms as Mr. Blandy, I then suspected he was poisoned, and said I was afraid Mr. Blandy had had foul play; but I did not ...
— Trial of Mary Blandy • William Roughead
... then nearly forty years of age. She had hired her time for more than twenty years, during which time she had lived in Richmond. In her younger days Currer had been the housekeeper of a young slaveholder; but of later years had been a laundress or washerwoman, and was considered to be a woman of great taste in getting up linen. The gentleman for whom she had kept house was Thomas Jefferson, by whom she had two daughters. Jefferson being called to Washington to fill a government appointment, Currer was left ...
— Clotel; or, The President's Daughter • William Wells Brown
... fidelity came under my notice when I was a student of medicine in 1819. I boarded at a good old Frenchman's, whose few domestics were French creoles. One of these was the washerwoman. When quite young she had left St. Domingo with her old mistress, who had been kind to her in the days of prosperity on the island. The old lady managed to save a small portion of her wealth, and lived ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. July, 1878. • Various
... relief to an unwonted freedom. She was in her sitting-room, busily engaged in taking from a large basket, the plebeian appearance of which contrasted strangely with the magnificent Turkish carpet on which it stood, the folded clothes which the washerwoman had just delivered. The appearance of Madame Mere herself was also in some contrast with the gorgeous surroundings amid which ...
— NAPOLEON AND BLUCHER • L. Muhlbach
... explain to the reader that this lady was in effect a native of Ireland; her station I do not pretend to fix: she boldly declared that she had "had the bringing-up of the son and daughter of a marquis." I think myself, she might possibly have been a hanger-on, nurse, fosterer, or washerwoman, in some Irish family: she spoke a smothered tongue, curiously overlaid with mincing cockney inflections. By some means or other she had acquired, and now held in possession, a wardrobe of rather suspicious splendour—gowns ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... gallant signor. He gives himself the airs of a young dandy, tries to be lithe and frisky and to disguise his ugly face; he might try all he knew, he always smelt of the musty lawyer. He was not so clever as the pretty washerwoman of Portillon who one day wishing to appear at her best before one of her lovers, got rid of a disagreeable odour in a manner well known to young women of an inventive turn of mind. But our crafty fellow fancied himself the nicest ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... just as if a lion had his paws on a couple of human creatures, devouring them; we heard his jaws, the cracking of bones, shrieks, and the voracious in-and-out of his breath edged with anger. A girl by my side exclaimed, 'It's not the Bench, after all! Would I have run to see a paltry two-story washerwoman's mangling-shed flare up, when six penn'orth of squibs and shavings and a cracker make ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... for the insult put upon her favorite daughter. In all that General Grant has done in the way of omission, nothing approaches the inactivity which has wrung my heart, as wet blankets are twisted in the strong hands of a washerwoman. ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... was afterwards corrupted to Dangi. There can be little doubt that the caste are an offshoot of Rajputs of impure blood, and with a large admixture of other classes of the population. Some of their sept names indicate their mixed descent, as Rakhya, born of a potter woman, Dhoniya, born of a washerwoman, and Pavniya, born of a weaver woman. In past times the Dangis served in the Rajput and Maratha armies, and a small isolated colony of them is found in one village of Indora in the Nagpur District, the descendants of Dangis who engaged in military ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... rewarded him, and he promptly obeyed it. A woman was bending over a pile of straw and rags, and an object lying on top of them; and a squalid child, curled in one corner, with a wild, frightened look in his eyes. The woman turned as the door opened, and John Birge recognized her as his mother's washerwoman. ...
— Three People • Pansy
... utterances, and Lincoln's character. One of the golden words of the Republic is the word "opportunity." Here, all the highways that lead to office, land and honour must be open unto all young feet. A banker's son may climb to the governor's mansion, or the White House, but so may the washerwoman's. The widow's son practices eloquence in the corn fields of Virginia, but he has ability and patriotism, and we bring Henry Clay to the Senate chamber. A child out in Ohio goes barefooted over the October grass, driving an old red cow to the barn lot, but ...
— The Battle of Principles - A Study of the Heroism and Eloquence of the Anti-Slavery Conflict • Newell Dwight Hillis
... The steps (or path) which lead down to a watering-place. Hence the Hindi saying concerning the "rolling stone"—Dhobi-ka kutta; na Gharka na Ghat-ka, a washerwoman's tyke, nor of the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... the water, lying dormant here, flashing there, making the silvery streaks in the shadow of the boats tremble, touching up a mast or a rudder, or resting on the orange-coloured handkerchief or pink jacket of a washerwoman. The country, the outskirts of the town, and the suburbs all met together on both sides of the river. There were rows of poplar trees to be seen between the houses, which were few and far between, as at the extreme limit ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... to appear at a ball, which was given that night in the neighbourhood, by some "gentleman's gentleman." The waistcoat was rather too tight for the servant: he tore it, and instead of sending it to the washerwoman's, to have the stain washed out, as his master had desired, he was now obliged to send it to the tailor's to ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... old washerwoman up the lane," said the mother, as she looked out of the window; "the poor woman can hardly drag herself along, and now she had to drag a pail of water from the well. Be a good boy, Tuk, and run across and help ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... bootblacks that infest the corner near the P. R. R. station. He claimed to be eleven, and looked it. But having already served time for burglary and horse-stealing, his conviction for stealing a gold necklace from a negro washerwoman of San Miguel left the Chief Justice no choice but to send him to meditate a half-year at Culebra. There is no reform school on the Zone. The few American minors who have been found guilty of misdoing have been banished to their native land. When the deputy warden had ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... fruits and flowers with friends and neighbors, as well as to distribute roots and seeds to those who have not the means of procuring them. A woman or a child, by giving seeds or slips or roots to a washerwoman, or a farmer's boy, thus inciting them to love and cultivate fruits and flowers, awakens a new and refining source of enjoyment in minds which have few resources more elevated than mere physical enjoyments. Our Saviour ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... seeing it"; and he thought, blushing beneath the bedclothes, of the unregenerate and blatant days when he would steam to office, down the Hudson, in his twelve-hundred-ton ocean-going steam-yacht, and arrive, by gradations, at Bleecker Street, hanging on to a leather strap between an Irish washerwoman and a German anarchist. If any of his guests had seen him then they would have said: "How distinctly American!" and—Wilton did not care for that tone. He had schooled himself to an English walk, and, so long as he did not raise it, an English voice. He ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... not large, but it was select. It included a washerwoman with very red arms; a care-taker who had obviously failed to take care of herself; a couple of chimney-sweeps with partially washed faces; a charwoman with her friend the female greengrocer, who had been burned out of the opposite side of the court; two or three coster-mongers, a ...
— The Garret and the Garden • R.M. Ballantyne
... are driving at," said the washerwoman sharply, "and make a clean breast of it. For some days, my man, I have observed that you have some maggot twisting in your poor brain. Come up, then, and have it all out. You must be a pretty coward indeed if you fear any harm when you ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... names at their fingers' ends. They can tell you of the supposed sister of an English queen, who married an American officer and dwelt in Oldport; of the Scotch Lady Janet, who eloped with her tutor, and here lived in poverty, paying her washerwoman with costly lace from her trunks; of the Oldport dame who escaped from France at the opening of the Revolution, was captured by pirates on her voyage to America, then retaken by a privateer and carried into Boston, where ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... somethin', but I couldn't see what it all was till my eyes got used to the darkness. There was a row of nails goin' all round the wall, and old clothes hangin' on every one of 'em. And down on the floor there was piles of old clothes, folded smooth and laid one on top o' the other jest like a washerwoman would fold 'em and pile 'em up. Harvey's old clothes and Mary's and the children's, things that any right-minded person would 'a' put in the rag-bag or given away to anybody that could make use of 'em; there ...
— Aunt Jane of Kentucky • Eliza Calvert Hall
... 'He's gone, too,' he replied, in a low voice. My friend gave me a look, and told me afterwards that Abednego had ran away, and that his family considered it a disgrace, and never spoke of him. I hear of a negro boy who absconded, and when he was found and being brought home, an old washerwoman watched him as he went up the street. 'La,' said she, 'who'd a thought he'd a beginned to act bad so young,' But let us leave off Abolition and take a walk. Our cigars are out and we will resume the subject to-morrow afternoon, when we light ...
— Aunt Phillis's Cabin - Or, Southern Life As It Is • Mary H. Eastman
... aimed at me then, and now, by God, you've done worse than the fellow who ruined poor Thomson. Look up there, and you'll see your father's portrait. He was a merry lad in his day, but he wouldn't have intrigued with a washerwoman. That's about what you have done. However, we'll have no more scolding. Of course, you understand that the affair is to be ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... Marion Sapples, the washerwoman, with a pickle tea and sugar tied in the corners of a napkin, and two measured glasses of whisky in an old doctor's bottle, had been sent with the foul clothes the night before to the washing-house, and by break of day they were up and at their work; nothing particular, as ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... the Ponte Navi; and if no one thought any the worse of her, none, unhappily, thought any the better—at least in the way of marriage. It is probable that no one thought of her at all. Giovanna was a beauty and a very good girl; but she was a washerwoman for all that, whose toil ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... an old washerwoman than a young goddess. Ovid calls her rutilis Aurora capillis. ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor, Vol. I, No. 5, May 1810 • Various
... tells a story of another pasquinade, which exhibits the temper of Sixtus. One morning Pasquin appeared clothed in a very dirty shirt, and, upon being asked by Marforio, why he wore such foul linen, replied, he could get no other, for the Pope had made his washerwoman a princess,—meaning thereby the Pope's sister, Donna Camilla, who had formerly been a laundress, but was now established with a fortune and a palace. "This stinging piece of raillery was carried directly to his Holiness, who ordered a strict search to be made for the author, but ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... would be just as good if it wasn't better, just as bad if it wasn't worse, and just as new if it wasn't worn out. Bid for the working model of the old Cheap Jack, who has drunk more gunpowder-tea with the ladies in his time than would blow the lid off a washerwoman's copper, and carry it as many thousands of miles higher than the moon as naught nix naught, divided by the national debt, carry nothing to the poor-rates, three under, and two over. Now, my hearts of oak and men of straw, what do you say for the lot? Two shillings, a shilling, tenpence, eightpence, ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... each other with pre-eminent energy. The poorest man, half starving, would hardly do a job for a farmer because—because—because he did not know why, except that nothing was too bad to be said of him; the poorest washerwoman with hungry children would not go and do a day's work for Mrs. So-and-so, because 'she beant nobody, she beant no better than we; beant a-going to work for her.' This malice was not directed towards strangers, against whom it is natural to heave half a brick, but against ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... children were playing at their usual game on the turnpike road, and waiting for nurse, who had gone into a cottage near by to speak to the washerwoman. Nurse was a long time, and Ralph, who was horse, was quite out of breath with his long trot on the hard road. Lily touched him up with the whip, but all to no avail—he could ...
— Our Young Folks at Home and Abroad • Various
... mothers that the scalding water was ready for application if they did not take their baskets of babies away on short order. It may be well for the reputation of Tinkletown to mention that one of the donors was Mrs. Raspus, a negro washerwoman who did work for the "dagoes" engaged in building the railroad hard by; another was the wife of Antonio Galli, a member of the grading gang, and the third was Mrs. Pool, the widow of a fisherman who had recently drowned ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... do you see the geranium or rose so carefully nursed in the old cracked teapot in the poorest room, or the morning-glory planted in a box and twined about the window? Do not these show that the human heart yearns for the beautiful in all ranks of life? You remember, Kate, how our washerwoman sat up a whole night, after a hard day's work, to make her first baby a pretty dress to be baptized in." "Yes, and I remember how I laughed at you for making such a tasteful ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... contains such passages as these: "Friday. Go to the Club... Am treated. Expenses one shilling." "Saturday. Bid my servant get all things ready for a journey to the country: mend my breeches; hire a washerwoman, making her allow for old shirts, socks, dabbs and markees, which she bought of me... Six coaches of quality, and nine hacks, this day called at my lodgings." "Thursday. The Earl looked queerly: left him in a huff. Bid him send for me when he ...
— The Journal to Stella • Jonathan Swift
... a somewhat similar verse to my own mind. Why should not our washerwoman's work have ...
— A New England Girlhood • Lucy Larcom
... an aged colored woman, who was employed as a washerwoman in her father's family. The daughter of this woman married a slave. She was a remarkably active and capable young woman, and, by her industry and thrift, and the most persevering self-denial, raised nine hundred ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... I will observe, that, when I first saw these ingenious contrivances to escape the washerwoman's bill, as well as the cuffs made by the same process for ladies' use, they both struck me so favorably, while their cheapness was so surprising, that my curiosity was inflamed to see and know how they were made. In company with my sister, I visited the manufactory. It was ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... settlers degraded the name to its present form, and that so hopelessly, that the other day an old Negress in Port of Spain puzzled the officer of Crown property by informing him that she wanted to buy 'a carre in what you call de washerwoman's.' It had been described to me as possibly the remotest, loneliest, and unhealthiest spot in Her Majesty's tropical dominions. No white man can live there for more than two or three years without ruin to his health. In spite of ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... meet to-day but Meredith! My washerwoman, Ellen Blount, is ill, So ill I fear she never will be well. 'Tis the old story, every day renewed: A little humble, tender-hearted woman, Tied to a husband whom to call a brute Would be to vilify the quadrupeds! A fellow, who must have his pipe, ...
— The Woman Who Dared • Epes Sargent
... it's true. I can't deny it. I was a washerwoman for a whole year. I washed all Granger's shirts and starched them and ironed them, and put them away and got them out and washed them again for months and months. Every one went through the mill pretty often, too; there weren't ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... brows and in the corners of my eyes, stepping back ever and anon to observe the effect. It galled me raw, yet I must perforce submit. When the whole job was finished, and I was allowed to sit, I gained no comfort. My clothes were too tight in some places, while in others I rocked about as loose as a washerwoman's arm in her ...
— The Black Wolf's Breed - A Story of France in the Old World and the New, happening - in the Reign of Louis XIV • Harris Dickson
... ask because my foster mother had her head smashed just exactly like yours. It was her man who did it for her once, with a last—he was a shoemaker, you see. She was a washerwoman and he was a shoemaker. It was after she had taken me as her son that she found him somewhere, a drunkard, and married him, to her great misfortune. He beat her—I tell you, my skin almost burst ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... of "steps" all the latest will be on exhibition. You will see the cow-trot, the rabbit-jump, the broom-stick, the washerwoman's dip. Everyone who is anyone will be here, if not on one night then on another, in a jovial fraternity steeped in the spirit of democracy. Revelry will be sustained on lemonade and a resinous astringent known locally as beer, while a sense of doing the ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... carried contagion in his clothes, he instantly changed them, and met with no more cases of the kind. [Footnote: A similar anecdote is related by Sir Benjamin Brodie, of the late Dr. John Clark, Lancet, May 2, 1840.] A woman in the country who was employed as washerwoman and nurse washed the linen of one who had died of puerperal fever; the next lying-in patient she nursed died of the same disease; a third nursed by her met the same fate, till the neighbourhood, getting afraid of ...
— The Harvard Classics Volume 38 - Scientific Papers (Physiology, Medicine, Surgery, Geology) • Various
... Bet you she's empty—broke away from her moorings and riding down with the current. Bet you half a dollar. My second bet," he said, warming to the work, "is an old washerwoman and her little boy, out on their rounds collecting clothes. It's Monday. In case both firsts are wrong, second choices ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... while it is yet night and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens,"' he quoted. 'She is apt to be more industrious than her husband. She works all day and often a part of the night. She is weaver, knitter, spinner, tailor, cook, washerwoman, teacher, doctor, nurse. While she is awake her hands are never idle, and their most important work is that of slowly building up the manhood of America. Ours is to be largely a ...
— In the Days of Poor Richard • Irving Bacheller
... wish my duns would do the same, even if it were only my washerwoman; but there's no more tick for me here, except this old watch of my father's, which serves to remind me of what I cannot obtain from others—time; but, however, there is a time for all things, and when the time comes that my romance ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... first glimpse of it, was the swarming negro population pervading every part of it—the slouching plantation negro, the smart mulatto girl with gay raiment and mincing step, the old-time auntie, the brisk waiter-boy with uncertain eye, the washerwoman, the hawkers and fruiterers, the loafing strollers of both sexes—carrying everywhere color, abandon, a certain picturesqueness and irresponsibility and good-nature, and a sense of moral relaxation in a too ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the eatables. I did not know this until I observed that every time the sugar-basin came to the table it was empty. On visiting my patient by night, I passed along a corridor, and unexpectedly came upon the washerwoman eating pine-apples and sugar. All the sweetmeats were devoured, and it was difficult for me to get even bread and butter until I took the precaution of locking the pantry door. Probably the slaves thought that, as both they and the luxuries were the ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... Manilla. As we start some days sooner than we anticipated, we had made no provision for getting our washed clothes on board, and grave fears are entertained that we shall be compelled to sail without it, for as yet there is not so much as the ghost of a washerwoman in sight. Will they, can they by any fortuitous combination of circumstances, put in an appearance before we leave? Despair, we are off! But surely no, it can't be? Yes, by jove, there are boats pulling after us with all the might the rowers can command. We lie to, the proas come nearer. Hurrah! ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith
... there, we passed the place where Madame's washerwoman lives. A little girl peeped out at us through the hedge. Madame told her to show the American ladies the doll that she had in her arms. She held it out, and then snatched it back as if she were jealous ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... splendid, and becoming a publisher of high degree. Mr. Concanen (the translator) will be delighted, and pay his washerwoman; and, in reward for your bountiful behaviour in this instance, I won't ask you to publish any more for Drury Lane, or any lane whatever, again. You will have no tragedy or any thing else from me, I assure you, and may think yourself ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... see, sar," said Billy, peering over his shoulder. "Yes, sar, all right—I count em. Tell washerwoman put plenty ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... that from the washerwoman," laughed Mrs. Sherman. "I should think the poor thing would be dizzy from whirling ...
— The Little Colonel • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the progress of genius? Louis's was not to be kept down. He was sixteen years of age by this time—a smart, lively young fellow, and, what is more, desperately enamored of a lovely washerwoman. To be successful in your love, as Louis knew, you must have something more than mere flames and sentiment;—a washer, or any other woman, cannot live upon sighs only; but must have new gowns and caps, and a necklace every now and then, and a ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... senses, cousin? Say nothing about it to your old husband. How could he make his hands pleasant like mine? They are as hard as washerwoman's beetles, and his piebald beard would hardly please this centre of bliss, that rose in which lies our wealth, our substance, our loves, and our fortune. Do you know that it is a living flower, which should be fondled thus, and not used like a trombone, or as if it were a catapult of war? ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... says she as well as she could. "I'm not a washerwoman nor a barber. So take that for ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... any satisfaction or anything else out of him. Judging from the goings on about the office in the two weeks I was there, he must have been extensively in debt to all sorts of people who were trying to collect. When, on my second deferred pay-day, I met him on the stairs, propelled by his washerwoman, who brought her basket down on his head with every step he took, calling upon the populace (the stairs were outside the building) to witness just punishment meted out to him for failing to pay for the washing of his shirts, ...
— Modern American Prose Selections • Various
... it, Monsieur Piquedent, I met the little washerwoman! You know the one I mean, the woman who had the basket, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... even to have desired to omit technical beauty, so that he might concentrate all thought on the poetic synthesis he was gathering from the earth. Degas, on the contrary, draws for the sake of the drawing-The Ballet Girl, The Washerwoman, The Fat Housewife bathing herself, is only a pretext for drawing; and Degas chose these extraordinary themes because the drawing of the ballet girl and the fat housewife is less known than that of the nymph and the ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... everything that a schoolmaster could wish. Now "Joe" is a palaeontologist not to be sneezed at. This confirms the opinion of General Cunningham that the mounted figure in the neighbourhood of Lahore represents a Bengali washerwoman riding to the Ghat to perform a lustration. Because unless the os coccyx were all right it would be as difficult to ride a bullock as to get educated by ...
— Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series • George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
... live in one; but I don't know in what quarter of the globe I shall find a society so constituted. Besides, it would soon pall: imagine asking for three-kreuzer cigars in recitative, or giving the washerwoman the inventory of your dirty clothes in a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... neighboring upholsterer. I had got on so fast of late, that I had even started a boy in boots,—top boots,—in bondage and slavery to whom I might have been said to pass my days. For, after I had made the monster (out of the refuse of my washerwoman's family), and had clothed him with a blue coat, canary waistcoat, white cravat, creamy breeches, and the boots already mentioned, I had to find him a little to do and a great deal to eat; and with both of those horrible requirements he haunted ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... easily found, and delivered the letter to him, drank tea at his house, and then Mr. Sereno Dwight carried me to Mr. Davis's who had agreed to take me. While I was at Dr. Dwight's there was a woman there whom the Dr. recommended to Sam. B. and me to have our mending done, and Mrs. Davis or a washerwoman across the way will do my washing, so I am very agreeably situated. I also gave the letter to Mr. Beers and he has agreed to let me have what you desired. I have got Homer's Iliad in two volumes, with Latin translation ...
— Samuel F. B. Morse, His Letters and Journals - In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Samuel F. B. Morse
... clothes three days hence, at midnight, at cock-crow, or at the full of the moon, but nowhere can the new arrival find the phrase for the next night or the day after to-morrow. The book implores the washerwoman to use plenty of starch, but the new arrival wishes scarcely any, or ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... you have lost your master and have had nothing to eat since God knows when, and I've just chased out my wife, yes, yes, and she went away yesterday. Yes, yes, she's going to try to shift for herself as a washerwoman down in Winnipeg this winter, yes, yes, that's how it is now. Yes, yes, we packed up and left a fairly decent living there at home and came here into this damnable log-cabin existence, yes, yes. ... Well, try that in your chops, you miserable cur, you can gobble that up, I tell you. Oh, this ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... exclaimed our hostess, in exultation, and with an air which said, You must be gratified now; "Voila! this is the famous fountain where all the linen of La Rochelle is washed! and there is the chateau where my washerwoman lives,—a very respectable mother of a family;—and there are her turkeys and her farm-yard; and there is her market-garden! Oh! ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... disease; two more of his lying-in patients, in rapid succession, met with the same fate; struck by the thought, that he might have carried contagion in his clothes, he instantly changed them, and 'met with no more cases of the kind.' A woman in the country, who was employed as washerwoman and nurse, washed the linen of one who had died of puerperal fever; the next lying-in patient she nursed died of the same disease; a third nursed by her met with the same fate, till the neighborhood, getting afraid of her, ceased ...
— Medical Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... on the alert, for the dowager Princess had heard from her maid, who had heard it from her sister in Rome, who had learned it from the washerwoman, who had been told the secret by the porter's wife, that the celebrated Malipieri was exploring the north-west foundations of the palace. The Princess had repeated the story, and the legend which accounted ...
— The Heart of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... means I scarcely apprehend, but I fancy it is intended to signify (in an actress) something sweet, pretty, soft, appealing, gentle and underdone. Is it possible that I convey that impression when I try to assume the character of a washerwoman or a fisherwoman? If so I am a ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... Some one had noticed that the white beach sand at Santa Cruz turned pink when heated. Seizing upon this fact, McLaren and Guerin used it to give a final touch to their scheme of color. They drew another lesson from the washerwoman. A familiar laundry device was used to give sparkle and brilliance to the waters of the pools and lagoons. They were blued, not by dumping indigo into the water, but by tinting ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... that when I was a very young man (many, many years ago, as the story-books say) and wanted cheering up, I used to go and dress myself in all my best clothes. If I had been annoyed in any manner—if my washerwoman had discharged me, for instance; or my blank-verse poem had been returned for the tenth time, with the editor's compliments "and regrets that owing to want of space he is unable to avail himself of kind offer;" or I had been snubbed by the woman ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... Duke of Devonshire, or even as a member of the governing classes like Mr. Chamberlain. Men thought of her as something nearer to them even in being further off; as one who was a good queen, and who would have been, had her fate demanded, with equal cheerfulness, a good washerwoman. Herein lay her unexampled triumph, the greatest and perhaps the last triumph of monarchy. Monarchy in its healthiest days had the same basis as democracy: the belief in human nature when entrusted with power. A king was only the first citizen ...
— Varied Types • G. K. Chesterton
... really manage me," she had once confided to Delphy, the washerwoman, "but I jes' plays ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... stay in Turin, no amorous fancy disturbed the peace of my soul, except an accident which happened to me with the daughter of my washerwoman, and which increased my knowledge in physics in a singular manner. That girl was very pretty, and, without being what might be called in love with her, I wished to obtain her favours. Piqued at my not ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... servants, Mr. and Mrs. Scherman are gracefully removing their breakfast dishes from the dining-room to the kitchen, and Marmaduke, left to the sugar-bowl and his own further devices, comes tumbling down the stairs just in time to meet Mrs. M'Cormick, the washerwoman, arrived for the day. She, used to her own half dozen, picks him up as if she had expected him, shuts him up like an umbrella, hustles him under her big, strong arm, and bears him summarily to the cold-water faucet, which, without uttering a syllable, ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... King had finished chopping her up, he began to wash the pieces. And each piece, as he washed it, called out, "The King scours and scrubs like a washerwoman, but ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... couple of shirts, and these will last me, with the help of the washerwoman, until you can make me some new ones. Then I will go to Bookair's tomorrow, and take Jimmy with me and buy ...
— Slow and Sure - The Story of Paul Hoffman the Young Street-Merchant • Horatio Alger
... myself in speaking to you; persons of position like me ought not! Will you wash my clothes? I will pay you well. Do you suppose I do not know you are a washerwoman?" ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... little oak dining room, quite a glitter of new cut glass on the sideboard and the round table white and immaculately spread. There was a little maidservant, Lena Obendorfer, the fifteen-year-old daughter of the Kemble washerwoman, shy and red rims about her eyes from ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... imprisoned in a stall Broke boldly the confining wall, And found himself, when out of bounds, Within a washerwoman's grounds. Where, hanging on a line to dry, A crimson skirt inflamed his eye. With bellowings that woke the dead, He bent his formidable head, With pointed horns and gnarly forehead; Then, planting firm his shoulders horrid, Began, ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... before the Revolution, a journeyman printer, and married to a washerwoman, whose industry and labour alone prevented him from starving, for he was as vicious as idle. The money he gained when he chose to work was generally squandered away in brothels, among prostitutes. To supply his excesses he had even recourse to dishonest ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... his pleasure. He began, too, to feel that words had passed between him and Leonard which could not be well forgotten by either, and would render their close connection less pleasant than heretofore. He, the great Richard Avenel, beg pardon of Mrs. Fairfield, the washerwoman! No; she and Leonard must beg his. "That must be the first step," said Richard Avenel; "and I suppose they have come to their senses." With that expectation, he unlocked the door of his parlour, and found himself ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... burst over bounds at some unusual indignity; and he played a practical joke on the king. Meeting an old woman in the palace one day near the door of the royal sanctum, she asked him where she could find the court-washerwoman. "There," said the reckless Weber, pointing to the door of the king's cabinet. The king, who hated old women, was in a transport of rage, and, on her terror-stricken explanation of the intrusion, had no difficulty in fixing the mischief in the right quarter. Weber was thrown into prison, and had ...
— The Great German Composers • George T. Ferris
... eagerly as you New Yorkers watched the Woolworth Building. When they are graduated from high school we are all there with bouquets and presents, and we have an equity in the whole brood. Molly Strawn, the washerwoman's daughter, got more flowers than any one last year. And when they leave town to get a job, if they are boys, or when some rude outsider breaks in with a marriage license and despoils us of them, if they are girls, we all feel ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... visitor who steps into the little house made untidy by the vigorous efforts of her hostess, the washerwoman, is no longer sure of her superiority to the latter; she recognizes that her hostess after all represents social value and industrial use, as over against her own parasitic cleanliness and a social standing attained ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... raiment. Surely a young man in such a condition had no right to be lingering on at Oakhurst, and was bound by every tie of duty and convenience, by love, by relationship, by a gentle heart waiting for him, by the washerwoman finally, to go to Tunbridge. Why did he stay behind, unless he was in love with either of the young ladies (and we say he wasn't)? Could it be that he did not want to go? Hath the gracious reader understood the meaning of the mystic S with which the last chapter commences, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Angelo's fame, I would die in it at the stake: for instance, here is the Blessed Virgin, not the "Vergine Santa, d'ogni grazia piena," but a Virgin, whose brick-dust coloured face, harsh unfeminine features, and muscular, masculine arms, give me the idea of a washerwoman, (con rispetto parlando!) an infant Saviour with the proportions of a giant: and what shall we say of the nudity of the figures in the back-ground; profaning the subject and shocking at once good taste and good sense? A little farther on, the eye rests on the ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... ye, Teddy; though it's you was alluz the good b'y to shtop at home, an' niver ax fur coompany savin' yer poor owld mother," said the washerwoman, looking fondly at ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... mentioned, and that Manginot, who was at the "Grand-Ture," was looking for her. The young woman began to cry. She implored Mme. Chauvel to keep her, promised to pay her, and appealed to her pity, so that the washerwoman was touched. She had an attic in the third story, some bedding was thrown on the floor, and from that place Mme. Acquet wrote to tell her mother that she had found ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... tolerant as he was, he saw things as they were (except in the case of his wife), never misstated and rarely overstated. For all that, she set out on Saturday afternoon prepared to meet the typical washerwoman of fiction—worn, bedraggled, shapeless, and forlorn. She was prepared to go into a steaming kitchen with puddles on the floor and dirty children all about, and have this red-faced personage take a scarlet hand out of the tub, dry it on a dirty apron, and hold it out to her. And for her part ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... you do not know about them. The first Vanderwater was a slave, even as you and I. Have you got that? He was a slave, and that was over three hundred years ago. His father was a machinist in the slave pen of Alexander Burrell, and his mother was a washerwoman in the same slave pen. There is no doubt about this. I am telling you truth. It is history. It is printed, every word of it, in the history books of our masters, which you cannot read because your masters will not permit ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... was converted in Rio through the agency of his washerwoman. This faithful woman is a member of the First Baptist Church. She decided she would attempt to lead Thomaz to Christ. So on Saturday when she would bring his laundry she would invite him to come to her house on the following ...
— Brazilian Sketches • T. B. Ray
... aged 40, washerwoman, applied to me on July the 10th, 1820, with severe inflammation and ulceration of the middle finger, arising from a puncture by a pin or needle some time before; there was much painful tumefaction, ...
— An Essay on the Application of the Lunar Caustic in the Cure of Certain Wounds and Ulcers • John Higginbottom
... control as for achievement, there were twenty pickaninnies, all black, under Mirtilla as "driveress," who had borne and lost seven children of her own. Thirty-nine other children were too young for the weeding gang, at least six of whom were quadroons. Two of these last, the children of Joanny, a washerwoman at the overseer's house, were manumitted ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... able women of the day. Mrs. Hoffman on her serene heights is mortified. Mother Underhill is sure Ben has to go to a restaurant, that his stockings are never mended, his buttons always off. But patent buttons are invented, and collar-buttons that cannot be ironed off by the "washerwoman," supply a long-felt want. Ben is stout and comfortable-looking, and the same grave, affectionate fellow. The children seem to come up without much sickness or trouble. When Mother Underhill feels disposed ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... are a great man, for with them it is become a fashion. Let ruffians go their own way. Let gentlemen be your companions, and never fail to show them that you can at least be their equal in courteous demeanor. Always pay your washerwoman; be not ashamed to acknowledge your father, and remember that the fonder you speak of your mother, the more you will be beloved by strangers. Avoid politicians, who are come to be great vagabonds, who drink bad liquor and give their thoughts to base designs ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... and shortly after this it happened that a young girl came down to the lake for water to wash with; and dipping her pail just above the Nix's head, in a moment he jumped in, and was brought safe to land. The maid was Bess, the washerwoman's daughter; and as she had had one good scolding that morning for oversleeping herself, and another about noon for dawdling with her work, she took up the pail and ...
— Old-Fashioned Fairy Tales • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... Sunday evening, and a Sunday in Paris always puts me in mind of your story about somebody who said, "Bless you! they make such a noise that the Devil couldn't meditate." All the extra work and odd jobs of life are put into Sunday. Your washerwoman comes Sunday, with her innocent, good-humored face, and would be infinitely at a loss to know why she shouldn't. Your bonnet, cloak, shoes, and everything are sent home Sunday morning, and all the way to church there is such whirligiging and pirouetting ...
— The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe • Charles Edward Stowe
... (a terrible supposition both for Punch and its readers), I should have done my best to illustrate the lower walks and phases of London existence, which attracts me as much as any other. It is just as easy to draw a costermonger or a washerwoman as it is a gentleman or lady—perhaps a little easier—but it is by no means so easy to draw them as Keene did! And to draw a cab or an omnibus after him (though I have sometimes been obliged to do so) is ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... lavender of the court alway: a "lavender" is a washerwoman or laundress; the word represents "meretrice"in Dante's original — meaning a courtezan; but we can well understand that Chaucer thought it prudent, and at the same time more true to the moral state of the English Court, to change the character assigned to Envy. He means that Envy is perpetually ...
— The Canterbury Tales and Other Poems • Geoffrey Chaucer
... with complacency. Poverty, their most cherished possession, spoke for itself in their case. The notary blinked and fumbled at his lips with yellow fingers in hasty thought. He was a Royalist notary because there existed in the country of the Deux Sevres a Royalist clientele. In France, even a washerwoman must hold political views and stand or fall by them. It was astounding how poor every one felt at that moment, and it rested, as usual, with a woman's intuition to grasp the only rope within reach. "The vintage," this lady murmured. The vintage promised to be a bad one. Nothing, assuredly, ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... concludes not so well fit for a lyrical ballad. Their volubility is great, nor few their flowers of speech. But who ever heard them, but by the merest accident, spout verses? Rhyme do they never—the utmost they reach is occasional blanks. But their prose! Ye gods! how they do talk! The washerwoman absolutely froths like her own tub; and you never dream of asking her "how she is off for soap?" Paradise Lost! The Excursion! The Task indeed! No man of woman born, no woman by man begotten, ever yet in his or her senses spoke like the authors of those poems. Hamlet, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... heerd tell of him, sir, a young and gallant naval ossifer like yerself, 'specially that yarn consarnin' him and the washerwoman as was going into the dockyard one mornin' when he were ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... unpleasant vices by the plea that they are the necessary complement of unusual powers,—as if the path to immortality were through the kennel, and fine verses were to be written only at the painful sacrifice of bilking your washerwoman. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, Issue 35, September, 1860 • Various
... the little woman, her eyes brightening. She caught at the word as though she had descried a new star in the firmament. "I wish I could have them. They cost so much to buy. I might have my washerwoman come and help with the cooking. She cooks pretty well, and I could help her beforehand, but she couldn't wait on table, to save her life. I wonder if you know much about menus. Could you help me fix out the courses and say what you think I ought ...
— The Mystery of Mary • Grace Livingston Hill
... behind us—Fanny Meyrick's voice. She was just coming out of one of the small houses on the roadside. "Don't you want some company? I've been to call on my washerwoman, and I'm so glad I've met you. Such an English morning! Shall ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... child to get ginger snaps. I never quite fancied the restriction of musical instruments in visions of heaven to harps alone. They at first blister the fingers until they are calloused. The afflicted washerwoman, whose only daughter had just died, was not in the least consoled by the assurance that Melinda was perfectly happy, playing a harp in heaven. "She never was no musicianer, and I'd rather see her a-settin' by my tub as she used to set when I was a-wringin' out the clothes ...
— Memories and Anecdotes • Kate Sanborn
... have still three little brats of my son's to feed, for his wife, who was a washerwoman, was eaten by a crocodile while she was at work. Poor folks must work for themselves, and not for others. If the princess did not pay us, I could not think of the wounds of the soldiers, who do not belong to me. I am no longer strong, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... brave, Pat," said Mrs. O'Callaghan. Then a rough little hand was laid on his head—the hand of an honest washerwoman—and in a reverent tone came the words, "Your father ...
— The Widow O'Callaghan's Boys • Gulielma Zollinger
... so cold carrying the clothes!" Teddy's eyes fell to his own hands, which were always snug and warm in their red mittens. The washerwoman's little boy had ...
— The Goody-Naughty Book • Sarah Cory Rippey
... to all eyes, though in fact it was quite mysterious. He lived in a lodging that was modest, to say the best of it, in the rue du Cours, on the second floor of a house belonging to Madame Lardot, the best and busiest washerwoman in the town. This circumstance will explain the excessive nicety of his linen. Ill-luck would have it that the day came when Alencon was guilty of believing that the chevalier had not always comported himself as a gentleman ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... but she didn't trouble about his vagaries and never loved him better than when he went off to catch some trout for her that dark afternoon in March. But he didn't return, and when she came down after dark to her aunt, Maria Pardoe, the washerwoman at Little Silver, and made a fearful stir about the missing man, the people felt sorry for her, and a dozen chaps went down the river to find Spider and fetch him along. His rod they found, and his basket and his bottle of lob-worms on the ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... then he cried: "Master, I cannot give that message, I am a poor unlearn'd man. And if I should go to England and cry aloud, they would say, 'Who is this, who comes preaching to a great people? Is not his mother with us, and a washerwoman; and was not his father a day labourer at two shillings a day?' and they would laugh me to scorn. And, in truth, the message is so long I could not well remember it; give me other ...
— Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland • Olive Schreiner
... believes what one wishes to be true; besides, in twenty-four hours, all doubt on the subject would be at an end; added to which, the young man was ostensibly a student of medicine, and had the credit in the house of having cured the washerwoman's ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... own remorse, and the reassurance of his half frankness, she walked back to the station and waited, in the midday heat, for the returning car. Her head had begun to ache, but she said to herself that she must not disappoint little Donny. So she went, in the blazing sun, to the old washerwoman's house, climbed three flights of stairs, and found the boy in bed, flushed with worry for fear "Miss Eleanor" wasn't coming. She took the little feeble body in her arms, and sat down in the steamy kitchen by an open ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... her feet; clutching and throwing to the earth any gods that came to her rescue. (Iliad, XV., 15-24.) Rank does not exempt the women of the heroic age from slavish toil. Nausicaea, though a princess, does the work of a washerwoman and drives her own chariot to the laundry on the banks of the river, her only advantage over her maids being that they have to walk.[296] Her mother, too, queen of the Phoeaceans, spends her time sitting among the waiting maids spinning yarn, while her husband sits idle and "sips his wine like an ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck
... A washerwoman has 'all her sins blotted out' in the twinkling of an eye, and while reeking with suds is received in the family of the Redeemer's kingdom. Surely this is a most abominable profanation of all that ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... elderly woman, poorly clad, blind of one eye, lame on one leg, and with her hair brushed into one large curl to hide the blind eye—but in vain, the defect was only the more conspicuous. This was "Lame Maren," as the neighbors called her, a friend of the washerwoman's. "Poor thing, slaving and toiling away in the cold water! it is hard that you should be called names"—for Maren had overheard the sheriff speaking to the child about his own mother— "hard that your boy should be ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... observed the rogue hiding himself under a stone, fifty yards from the house. 'Dang my buttons,' said he, 'if here is not master's snake. He came back and told my wife, who told him to go and kill it. It happened to be washing-day: the washerwoman gave him a pailful of scalding soapsuds to throw on it; but whether he was most afraid of me or of the snake is still a question: however, the washerwoman brought it home with the tongs, and dropped it into the dolly-tub. It dashed round the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 19, - Issue 549 (Supplementary issue) • Various
... horses for 'shafters'; a stunted colt, that I'd bought out of the pound for thirty shillings; a light, spring-cart horse; an old grey mare, with points like a big red-and-white Australian store bullock, and with the grit of an old washerwoman to work; and a horse that had spanked along in Cob & Co.'s mail-coach in his time. I had a couple there that didn't belong to me: I worked them for the feeding of them in the dry weather. And I had all sorts of harness, that I mended and fixed up myself. ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... to us as "muy honrado;" not from his last place, but from one before. He was a well-dressed, sad-looking individual; and at the same time we took his wife as washerwoman, and his brother as valet to our attache, thus having the whole family under our roof, wisely taking it for granted that he being recommended as particularly honest, his relations were "all honourable men." An English lady happened to call on me, and a short time ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... wholesome-minded creatures who, having to battle vigorously for the bare necessaries of life in the face of many adverse circumstances, carry on the war with a degree of hearty, sweet-tempered resolution which might put to shame many who are better off in every way. Mrs Martin was a widow and a washerwoman, and had a ne'er-do-well brother, a fisherman, who frequently "sponged" upon her. She also had a mother to support and attend upon, as well as a "bad leg" to endure. True, the attendance on her mother was to ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... Bruce without mentioning that other Golden Deed, more truly noble because more full of mercy; namely, his halting his little army in full retreat in Ireland in the face of the English host under Roger Mortimer, that proper care and attendance might be given to one sick and suffering washerwoman and her new-born babe. Well may his old Scotch ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... labor. The Negro, however, either by contact or in the schools of theory, has learned something about applied science, and as his old trades have been elevated and dignified by machinery, he would like to be elevated with them. The washerwoman would like now to enter the steam laundry, since it has captured her business; the blacksmith would like to enter the foundry, where they are now molding the plowshares he once made with his hammer; ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... was continued between Smallbones and the corporal. The latter had received instruction to take on shore Mr Vanslyperken's dirty linen to the washerwoman, and of course, as a corporal, he was not obliged to carry it, and would take Smallbones for that purpose. Then he could easily excuse taking the dog on shore, upon the plea of taking care of it. It was therefore so arranged; the dog would follow the corporal in the absence of his master, ...
— Snarleyyow • Captain Frederick Marryat
... prematurely. Then, his hone in one hand and his scythe in the other, he stood and watched Meldon, The handkerchief waved again, and Meldon started walking briskly across the lawn. The hone rasped harshly against the scythe blade, and "The Irish Washerwoman" rang out shrilly. Miss King woke with a start. Callaghan turned away from her, and still whistling vigorously, began ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... a home for him yet, I assure you," said my mistress. "Our washerwoman wants him, and she is a most kind-hearted and respectable person, but she has got ...
— Brothers of Pity and Other Tales of Beasts and Men • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... and while my friend paused at one of the fishily-fragrant houses by the way, to interview her washerwoman, I went on to the hill-top, where a nautical old gentleman with a spy-glass, welcomed ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... at the Crown, he came here and asked me to show him the house, and when he see'd the garden and the condition it was in, he asked me to let him set to work in it and put it to rights; and a deal he has done in it to be sure for the time. He got Madge, the washerwoman, to come over one day and tell him how it all was when them people as lived in it last were here. And a power of work he did to put up that arbour there, as she told him it was afore the neighbour's boys had got in and ...
— Ellen Middleton—A Tale • Georgiana Fullerton
... an expensive thing in every phase. The event that robbed Rudd of his wife, his child, his hope, had taken also his companion, his cook, his chambermaid, his washerwoman, the mender of his things; and in their place had left an appalling monument of bills. The only people he had permitted himself to owe money to were the gruesome committee that brought him his grief; the doctor, the druggist, the casket-maker, ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... back from the river, that had flowers growin' in the front; an' sure enough, the floor was as clane as a dhrawin' room, an' a dacent tidy little woman kneadin' a cake on the table. "Ma'am," sez I, "I'm obliged to turn washerwoman, an' I don't know how;" but she only curtseyed, and said ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... look after our houses there, so they can't pay frequent visits to the capital. Her brother is the Wen-hsiang, who acts at present as our senior's accountant; but her sister-in-law too is employed in our worthy ancestor's yonder as head washerwoman." ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... Hall, the thrilling voices of poor hunted colored people went up, in an agony of supplication, to the Lord, from Zion's church. Many families, who had lived in the city for twenty years, fled from it now. Many a poor washerwoman, who, by hard labor, had made herself a comfortable home, was obliged to sacrifice her furniture, bid a hurried farewell to friends, and seek her fortune among strangers in Canada. Many a wife discovered a secret she had never known before—that her husband was a fugitive, and ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... hit upon a scheme to get rid of their importunities, by acquainting them, that, if he did such things, they must be paid the perquisites usually given to the servants of other fighis. Clapperton's washerwoman positively insisted on being paid with a charm in writing, that would entice people to buy earthen-ware of her, and no persuasion of his could either induce her to accept of money for her service, or ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish
... music has a strange capacity for refining stage characters as well as for making them colorless. Giordano could not do himself justice as a composer without refining the expression of Caterina Huebscher, and so his Duchess of Dantzic talks a musical language at least which Sardou's washerwoman could not talk and remain within the dramatic verities. Therefore we have "Madame Sans-Gene" with a difference, but not one that gave any more offence than operatic treatment of other fine plays have ...
— A Second Book of Operas • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... a small laundry she was keeping, her aunt supported her children as well as her husband. She offered Maslova work as a washerwoman, but seeing what a hard life the washerwomen at her aunt's establishment were leading, she searched through the intelligence offices for a position as servant. She found such a place with a lady who was living with her two student boys. A week after she had entered ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... smiles and graces that you never saw before, yet the houseboater soon learns that each delightful, new-found pocket in the watery world means necessity for several other new-found things. There must be a new-found washerwoman, and new-found somebodies who can supply meats, eggs, vegetables, ice, milk, and water—the last two separate if possible. True, the little harbour is beautiful; but as you lie there day after day watching waving trees and ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... Miniver never stated an argument clearly, that she was never embarrassed by a sense of self-contradiction, and had little more respect for consistency of statement than a washerwoman has for wisps of vapor, which made Ann Veronica critical and hostile at their first encounter in Morningside Park, became at last with constant association the secret of Miss Miniver's growing influence. The brain tires of resistance, and when it meets again and again, incoherently active, ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... had forged through the crowd and brought his stumbling beast to a stand not a rod away from Axel Peterson's side. Peterson had viewed the proceeding with a disturbing qualm. Boyle, as talkative before as a washerwoman, now grew suddenly silent. His mouth stood open impotently; the gray of a sinking heart came over his face as he looked long at the battered man, who had dropped the reins to the ground and was coming toward them on ...
— Claim Number One • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... quickly behind her to see that Lucy was not listening. 'And Cecile was a fairy, with spangled wings—the sweetest thing you ever saw. We were both in the illustrated papers the week after, but as nobody took any notice of Madame de C—she has behaved like a washerwoman to me ever since. As if I could help ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the future which necessitates the employment of one's time for one's own ends. But they were happy, and had no enemies; and each year saw some mild improvements in their studiously clean house and tiny back garden. Mrs. Gerhardt, who was cook, seamstress, washerwoman, besides being wife and mother, was almost notorious in that street of semi-detached houses for being at the disposal of any one in sickness or trouble. She was not strong in body, for things had gone wrong when she bore her first, but her spirit had that peculiar power of seeing things as they ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... kept it, why she kept it, and what a good time she had playing cook, and washerwoman, and ironer, is told as only Sophie May can tell stories. All the funny sayings and doings of the queerest and cunningest little woman ever tucked away in the covers of a book will please little folks and grown ...
— Little Prudy • Sophie May
... were working at the ruins,—among them some of the strikers of yesterday. They found poor Mrs. Rooney's little Johnny, burned to a crisp; and in the house next to Keppler's they exhumed the body of Biddy Brady, a good-natured, efficient washerwoman, whose greatest fault was her intemperance. She and her son had gone to bed very drunk, after having a good time through the evening. The boy had been roused in season, but she had perished. It was as vivid and fervent a temperance-lecture ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... but to have me declare that the majority of ballet-dancers have villas in the Regent's Park, and to convict me of "deliberate falsehood." Suppose, for instance, I had chosen to introduce a red-haired washerwoman into a story? I might get an expostulatory letter saying, "Sir, in stating that the majority of washerwomen are red-haired, you are a liar! and you had best not speak of ladies who are immeasurably your superiors." Or suppose ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... approve; a use that he does not make of it himself. How beauty and money are scattered everywhere. God's saints are not the richest and most beautiful. He does not lavish beauty and money upon those he loves the best. I called last week on an Irish washerwoman and I was struck with the beauty of her girls—four of them, the eldest seventeen, the youngest six. The eldest had black eyes and black curls; the second soft brown eyes and soft brown curls to match; the third curls of gold, as pretty as Prue's, and black eyes; the youngest blue eyes ...
— Miss Prudence - A Story of Two Girls' Lives. • Jennie Maria (Drinkwater) Conklin
... like that," Hugh said at last, sitting down on the edge of the hole they had dug. "Gold is the most gambly stuff imaginable. We know a lady who was as poor as a washerwoman one day, and then at breakfast one morning she got a letter to say her goldmine shares had struck a reef, and she got so rich she simply didn't know what to do with her money. She came to see Papa about it. She was an old maid, so naturally ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton |
