"Housewive" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sooner had we turned homewards than a storm, making giant strides over the open moorland, was on us with an angry roar. I had no idea, while I was admiring the collyrium on the eyelashes of beauteous dame Nature, that she would fly at us like an irate housewife, threatening so tremendous ...
— Glimpses of Bengal • Sir Rabindranath Tagore
... way, and made herself so useful at home, that Dame Annora only wondered how it had been possible to spare her so long, and always wound up her praises by saying, that Berenger would learn in time how lucky he had been to lose the French puppet, and win the good English housewife. ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... who falsely pretended to lead monastic life, and led it without having natural faculty for it. But many more lamentable errors have arisen from the pride of really noble persons, who have thought it would be a more pleasing thing to God to be a sibyl or a witch, than a useful housewife. Pride is always somewhat involved even in the true effort: the scarlet head-dress in the form of a horn on the forehead in the fresco indicates this, both here, and in the ...
— Mornings in Florence • John Ruskin
... down the way the Fish-monger. Stands Miles's fish-shop, whence is shed So strong a smell of fishes dead That people of a subtler sense Hold their breath and hurry thence. Miss Thompson hovers there and gazes: Her housewife's knowing eye appraises Salt and fresh, severely cons Kippers bright as tarnished bronze: Great cods disposed upon the sill, Chilly and wet, with gaping gill, Flat head, glazed eye, and mute, uncouth, Shapeless, wan, old-woman's ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... crane aided the mother in swinging her kettles on or off the blazing fire. In every pretentious home there was a loom for the weaving of cotton and woolen cloth for family or neighborhood consumption; and late at night the steady thump of the beam proclaimed the industry of the busy housewife as she put in the last threads of her "fifth" or "sixth yard." Few were so wealthy that they could afford the broadcloth which came up the rivers from New Orleans or over the Erie Canal from New York; and when some migrating Virginia squire or Kentucky colonel, ...
— Expansion and Conflict • William E. Dodd
... mother of ten thousand blessings—thou cook of fat beef and dainty greens!—thou manufacturer of warm Shetland hose, and comfortable surtouts!—thou old housewife, darning thy decayed stockings with thy ancient spectacles on thy aged nose!—lead me, hand me in thy clutching palsied fist, up those heights, and through those thickets, hitherto inaccessible, and impervious to my anxious, weary feet:—not those Parnassian crags, bleak and ...
— The Letters of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... admiration would have satisfied her innocent ambition to have Martin's friends flock about her adoringly, and more than that, they knew her to be newly married, and left the young Lloyds to their presumably desired isolation. And very soon Cherry found herself a little housewife among other housewives, much more praised if she made a good shortcake than because the tilt of her new hat ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... the culinary process. The subject of cookery is too generally neglected by mistresses, as something beneath their notice; or if engaged in, it is to contrive a variety of mischievous compositions, both savoury and sweet, to recommend their own ingenuity. Yet it is quite evident that every good housewife ought to be well acquainted with this important branch of domestic management, and to take upon herself at least its entire direction and controul. This is a duty which her husband, children, and domestics, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... aunt (Louisa was her name), was in her kitchen when June was announced, organizing the cook, for she was an excellent housewife, and, as Baynes always said, there was 'a lot in a good dinner.' He did his best work after dinner. It was Baynes who built that remarkably fine row of tall crimson houses in Kensington which compete with so many others for the title of ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... been a very handsome woman, and still retained much of her good looks. She was a most exemplary housewife and manager. I was often astonished to witness the incessant toil she had to ensure in attending to the wants of such a ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... she would be making of hose and garments for others, and would bestow them upon them that had need.[144] And Mr. Brisk, not knowing where or how she disposed of what she made, seemed to be greatly taken, for that he found her never idle. I will warrant her a good housewife, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... cigarettes must be banished outright; and he limited himself to one pipe and one "peg" a-day. Stores of all kinds were ruthlessly cut down; and only the Anglo-Indian housewife knows what it means to be flung almost entirely upon the tender mercies of the Bazaar. Informal dinner-parties, for which the Desmonds were famous, became rare events; and nights at Mess—a favourite and justifiable ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... away upon the hearth, discoursing eloquent music, and servant after servant bustled in, one with a cold quail-pie, another with a quart jug of cream, and fresh eggs ready to be boiled by the fastidious epicures in person, he steadily worked on, housewife and saddler's silk, and wax and scissors ready to his hand; and when at last the door flew open, and the delinquent comrade entered, he flung his finished job upon the chair, and gathered up his ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... Her housewife's instincts rose jubilant as the shell took form, and she sang to herself as she stitched her flour sacks together for towels. No princess decked her palace with a blither spirit. All the little treasures that had ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... are three or four years older, the struggle becomes more severe: they want to do things. Those who observe them carefully discover that they have some "tendency." They wish to imitate what their mother does, if their mother is a housewife. They willingly follow her into the kitchen, they wish to share her work, to touch her things, and they try furtively to knead and cook and wash clothes, and sweep the floor. The mother feels wearied by them; she keeps ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori
... Christine. As a housewife I open my door to whom I may choose to receive. I should have closed it to you, had I been able to guess what ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... of Greece have long been addicted to the use of charms for the cure of various ailments. Following is the translation of a spell against colic which is in vogue amongst them: "Good is the householder, wicked is the housewife; she cooks beans, she prepares oil, vine-cuttings for a bed, stones for a pillow; flee pain, flee colic; Christ drive thee hence with his silver sword and his golden hand." According to Dr. N. G. Polites, this charm originated in a tradition that Christ when ...
— Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery • Robert Means Lawrence
... devils one meets carry tattered little scraps of paper, and fumble conscientiously with stumpy pencils. It's a comfort to see how you go, even if you do have to buy rubbish. 'If we have this so good, dear, I don't know how we shall manage in the kitchen,' says the careful housewife.... So it is we do our ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... sternly, to refuse them would be an affront to the cooking of these excellent ladies. A true housewife esteems her cooking only next to her virtue. You must eat ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, February 18th, 1920 • Various
... There, as she sits spinning alone, while her goodman is in the forest, she may brood on some thought and dream away. Her damp, ill-fastened cabin, through which keeps whistling the winter wind, is still, by way of a recompense, calm and silent. In it are sundry dim corners where the housewife ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... walk into the Kitchin or Parlour without being taken notice of, or giving any Interruption to the Business or Discourse of the Family. The Maid will ask her Mistress (tho' I am by) whether the Gentleman is ready to go to Dinner, as the Mistress (who is indeed an excellent Housewife) scolds at the Servants as heartily before my Face as behind my Back. In short, I move up and down the House and enter into all Companies, with the same Liberty as a Cat or any other domestick Animal, and am as little suspected of telling ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... have based their facts upon too high a plane. Their remedies are beyond the means and the understanding of the average poor mother. Their analogies are based upon conditions that exist among the better class. The average poor housewife gets no practical assistance or help from their deductions, because her environment precludes any utilization of the data furnished; the data is not practical ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... "you'll see that girl will have everything quietly tucked away in just the right place; not a word said. She is a born housewife; it's in her, as much as it is in a pointer to ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... Pardee, in tan shoes and a brown derby. An 1890 Villon handicapped by a home-loving wife; an incurable romantic married to a woman who judged as shiftless any housewife possessed of less than two dozen bath towels, twelve tablecloths, eighteen wash cloths, and at least three dozen dish towels, hand-hemmed. Milly Pardee's idea of adventure was testing the recipes illustrated in the How To Use The ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... the pond an orchard ran down hill to the water's edge, and at the nearer corner of the dam, among a clump of ancient willows, stood the Old Stone Mill, with house attached, and across the mill yard the shed and barn, all neat as a tidy housewife's kitchen. To the left of the mill, with its green turf-clad dam and placid gleaming pond, wandered off green fields of many shading colours, through which ran the Mill Creek, foaming as if enraged that it should have ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... the return of Marelle. Her mood had changed. A glow of cordial humanity chased away her melancholy. The hostess that lurks in every woman—that housewife-hostess sense which goes hand-in-hand with the mother sense—was alive in her. She was keenly anxious to play the good fairy simply, unostentatiously, to these exhausted men who had come to Mogar out of the jaws ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... had been performed by an elderly female relative who recognized that her mind was bent on higher things. Nevertheless, she had never doubted that when the time arrived to show her capacity as a housewife, she would be more than equal to the emergency. Assuredly she would, for one of the distinguishing traits of American womanhood was the ability to perform admirably with one's own hand many menial duties and yet be prepared to shine socially with the best. ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... recourse must be had to wardrobes, but as these are expensive, the busy fingers of the housewife must be depended upon to improvise substitutes. If there is a corner in the room with sufficient space (sometimes the architect denies us this small boon) it may be utilized ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... all the rest of them? Vinet and I know how to play boston, and we can easily find a fourth. Vinet might present his wife to you; she is charming, and, what is more, a Chargeboeuf. You will not be so exacting as those apes of the Upper town; you won't require a good little housewife, who is compelled by the meanness of her family to do her own work, to dress like a duchess. Poor woman, she has the courage of a lion and ...
— The Celibates - Includes: Pierrette, The Vicar of Tours, and The Two Brothers • Honore de Balzac
... how noble, how charitable, how judicious in her charities! In every action laudable! In every attitude attractive! In every appearance, whether full-dressed, or in the housewife's more humble garb, equally elegant, and equally lovely! Like, or resembling, Miss Clarissa Harlowe, they now remember to be a praise denoting the highest degree of excellence, with every one, whatever person, ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... And many a housewife, as she rewarded the singers, dropped a silent tear, wondering whether another spring would see the innocents anywhere save in a Persian slave-pen, or, better ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... comfort of the other. And for so much as we could perceiue, albeit they liued continually together, yet they did neuer vse as man and wife, though the woman spared not to doe all necessary things that appertained to a good housewife indifferently for them both, as in making cleane their Cabin, and euery other thing that appertained to his ease: for when he was seasicke, she would make him cleane, she would kill and flea the dogs for their eating, and dresse his meate. [Sidenote: The shamefastess and chastity of ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries of The English Nation, Vol. XII., America, Part I. • Richard Hakluyt
... noted that, no matter what he said, his words were listened to in gloomy silence or received with grunting monosyllables, while the Boers talked among themselves only about home and farming work or the sale of stock. More than once, too, I heard one of the men near me wonder how the housewife would be getting on with the beasts and sheep. The words were spoken in Boer Dutch; but in the course of years I had become pretty well acquainted with the expressions of ordinary life. Thus it seemed as if the men were anything but ...
— Charge! - A Story of Briton and Boer • George Manville Fenn
... making soap, pouring candles, quilting, and weaving cloth for the family's clothing, it was not uncommon for the women to join the men in the field at harvesttime. The domesticity of the American housewife may be one impact on American life made ...
— The Fair Play Settlers of the West Branch Valley, 1769-1784 - A Study of Frontier Ethnography • George D. Wolf
... reduces the roll to about the thickness of zephyr yarn. After being further doubled and twisted, the yarn, or roll, is ready for the mule spinner, which accomplishes by means of hundreds of spindles and wheels what the housewife once did with her spinning wheel. The mule, however, does the work of more than 1,000 hand spinners and takes up much less space. On this machine 900 spindles take the yarn from 1,800 bobbins, and by means of accelerating ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... Utter disproportions between the king's means and aims Valour on the one side and discretion on the other Walk up and down the earth and destroy his fellow-creatures We have the reputation of being a good housewife Weapons ...
— Quotations From John Lothrop Motley • David Widger
... he was as busy as an old housewife, and occupied his leisure time mending, stitching and darning. Many a morning my own toilet consisted of a face wash at the spring, but my guide seldom failed to spend as much time prinking as if ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... the housewife, who took care to wipe her own upon her apron in preparation for the ceremony. To the children he bade a comprehensive farewell, after which he turned again to Madge, advanced a step and then hesitated. He had doubtless meant to shake hands with her also but, at the last moment, probably feared ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... house has been coaxed by his womenfolk to take a holiday, and they descend upon the books, which he (the humbug) never reads, belabour and bang the dust out of them and flap them with dusters, and all with that vindictiveness which is the good housewife's right ...
— From a Cornish Window - A New Edition • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... only in regulating the weather, but as affecting all the affairs of man's daily life. The lower orders, and many of the better sort, will not fell a tree for agricultural purposes in the wane of that orb, lest it should shrink and decay; nor will the housewife then slaughter for her family, lest the meat should shrivel and melt away in the pot. The moon is the domestic deity, whom the household must fear: the Fortuna who presides over the daily doings of sublunary mortals. In the matter of birth, we find Francis Bacon affirming that "the ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... garret full of tangled silk threads of every kind and colour, when in comes Prince Percinet with a wand, whisks it over the miscellaneous mass, and lo! all the threads are as nicely arranged as in a seamstress' housewife. It has often happened to me that when I went to bed with my head as ignorant as my shoulders what I was to do next, I have waked in the morning with a distinct and accurate conception of the mode, good or bad, in which the plot might be extricated. It seems to me that ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... preparation of food, as well as labor-saving devices, are described, so as to enable beginners in the art of cookery to become acquainted with them quickly. In addition, this volume contains breakfast, luncheon, and dinner menus that will enable the housewife to put into practical, every-day use many of the ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 1 - Volume 1: Essentials of Cookery; Cereals; Bread; Hot Breads • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... feeding their horses and cattle in the barns, a matron drawing a pail of water with the help of one of those long well-sweeps still used in some remote districts, or a girl bringing a pail of milk from the cow-shed. In the houses, where one room served as kitchen, dining-room, and parlor, the housewife cooked the evening meal, children sat at their bowls of mush and milk, and the men of the family, their day's work over, gathered about the fire, while perhaps some village coquette sat in the corner with fingers busy at the spinning-wheel, ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman
... butternuts, and hazel nuts; and, best of all, his garden gives more than twenty varieties of toothsome and wholesome vegetables in profusion. The whole fruit and vegetable product of the temperate zone is at his door, and he has but to put forth his hand and take it. The skilled housewife makes wonderful provision against winter from the opulence of summer, and her storehouse is crowded with innumerable glass cells rich in the spoils of orchard and garden. There is scant use for the grocer and the butcher under ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... though, I could glean nothing, till finally, a good housewife, overhearing her man and myself conversing, cried out, 'Eh! but by my surely, there's that Red Tom o' the "Fisherman's Rest," nigh to Saltburn, that's new come there, who features him you speak of; but he's nowt but a "fondy," oaf-rocked, they say he is; why, ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... used as the symbol of renewed life—the type or sign of the generative principle—so the motion produced by the centripetal and centrifugal forces, seems to be that of nature. We are often told of the never-ending domestic duties of the faithful housewife, doomed— ...
— Ups and Downs in the Life of a Distressed Gentleman • William L. Stone
... in Medicinal Herbs. Borage, fennel, wild tansy, wormwood, etc. Methods of distillation. Aqua composita, barberry conserve, electuaries, salves, and ointments. A most important course for every housewife. ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... to him fondly for a moment, and he felt her tremble from head to foot. Then she broke from his embrace, and hurried out of the room. Leonard thought perhaps she had gone to improve her dress, or to carry her housewife energies to the decoration of the other rooms; for "the house" was Mrs. Fairfield's hobby and passion; and now that she worked no more, save for her amusement, it was her main occupation. The hours she contrived to spend ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... indeed strictly observed; there was little visiting, no picnicking, no heavy meals, no week-end parties, none of the entertainments so prevalent in our own day. The wife and mother was therefore spared the heavy tasks of Sunday so commonly expected of the typical twentieth-century housewife. But it is doubtful whether the alternative—attendance at church almost the entire day—would appear one whit more desirable to the modern woman. The Sabbath of those times was verily a period of religious ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... mouthharp, but nature, in six weeks, out of a little blue or brown egg constructs a feathered music-box that automatically conveys itself from tree to tree. But the mystery that has gone on in that tiny blue egg lying in the nest is just as great as if some housewife had planted an old spinning-wheel in the full expectation of reaping a Jacquard loom, or had buried a jew's-harp in the garden expecting in the fall to pick a grand piano. To the mystery that is involved in enlargement by growth must be added the mystery of intelligence. ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... given to social intercourse, the display of livestock, the exhibits of deft women fingers, of housewife skill, of the tradesman, of the merchant, of cotton—cotton, ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... little pots, half a barrel of sugar, and a small boy to pick the currants for her. With her pretty hair tucked into a little cap, arms bared to the elbow, and a checked apron which had a coquettish look in spite of the bib, the young housewife fell to work, feeling no doubts about her success, for hadn't she seen Hannah do it hundreds of times? The array of pots rather amazed her at first, but John was so fond of jelly, and the nice little jars would look so well on the top shelf, that Meg resolved to fill them all, and spent ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... down-stairs and wait for Daddy Captain, and perhaps he will think I am a real fairy. Oh, wouldn't that be fun? I am sure I look like one!" and down the stairs she flitted like a golden butterfly. Once in the kitchen, the housewife in her triumphed for a moment over the fairy: she raked up the fire, put on more wood, and swept the hearth daintily. "But Ariel did such things for Prospero," she said. "I'm Ariel just the same, so I may as well fill the kettle and put some apples down to roast." This ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... hurrying, chattering, and clattering, and had nothing in them to keep them steady, but are so light that they run after a gastric zephyr as after their quintessence. No; on the contrary, she was a good housewife, always sitting in her chair or sleeping in her bed, ready as a candlestick, waiting for her lover when her husband went out, receiving the husband when the lover had gone. This dear woman never thought of dressing ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... housewife runs to catch One of her feathered creatures broke away, Sets down her babe, and makes all swift despatch In pursuit of the thing she would have stay; Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, Cries to catch her whose busy care is ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... young folks would go miles out of their way rather than meet her, for she had some ill-word for everyone. Therefore, when Master Peter came along, and let himself be taken in by her boasted skill as a housewife, she jumped at his offer, and they were married the next day. But they had not got home before they began to quarrel. In the joy of his heart Peter had tasted freely of his own good wine, and as the bride hung upon his arm he stumbled and fell, dragging her down with him; ...
— The Crimson Fairy Book • Various
... at nothing, my friend; if your care can supply them with food, well; if not, we will find bread enough among the townsfolk. There is not a housewife in Coron, who would refuse me the contents ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... he, and immediately she cried to him, with no other thought than her pre-occupation as a good housewife: ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... ducats, I warrant thee.—Well, gossip," he said to his companion, "go before us, and tell them to have some breakfast ready yonder at the Mulberry grove; for this youth will do as much honour to it as a starved mouse to a housewife's cheese. And for ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... gentleman was still. Then when the candle of the waking housewife had burned low down to the socket, and the wasted flame on the hearth was expiring bluely in convulsive leaps, the head of the family resumed: "Jane, who said ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... it, I saw something, between door and jamb, which stayed my hand. The door led to a shed in which the housewife washed pots and the like. I felt some surprise, therefore, when I found a light there at this time of night; still more surprise when I saw ...
— Under the Red Robe • Stanley Weyman
... she married me that a woman ever had," continued the older man. "It only depended on herself. I didn't try to make a housewife of her or a drudge. She had all the healthy excitement and all the money she wanted, and she had a home here ready for her whenever she was tired of travelling about and wished to settle down. And I was—and a husband that ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... “Thou’st forc’d my housewife, and hast brought Distress and shame upon our head; But know one thing, my gracious King, Thy ...
— Marsk Stig - a ballad - - - Translator: George Borrow • Thomas J. Wise
... years of age, in the Poor Richard days, he saw that the forests were disappearing, and that there would be a need for the people to practice economy in the use of fuel. The fireplaces in the chimneys were great consumers of wood, and in many of them, to use the housewife's phrase, "the heat all went up the chimney." But that was not all; many of the chimneys of the good people smoked, and in making a fire rooms would be filled with smoke, or, to use again the housewife's term, "the smoke would all come out into ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... never had he seen so stout a man. He was dressed in a scarlet cloak beset with gold clasps, and was of very handsome appearance. Thorod heard him scold them for taking guests, when they had scarcely food for themselves. The housewife said, "Be not angry, brother; seldom such a thing happens; and rather do them some good too, for thou hast better opportunity to do so than we." Thorod heard also the stout man named by the name of Arnliot Gelline, and observed that the ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... 'is carried on. The same is true in the grinding of corn, and in preparing a whole host of other foods. The practice of "refining" is the great food crime of the age. In addition to this the average housewife adds to our difficulties when preparing vegetables and other foods, by "draining" off the water in which they are cooked, thus throwing away the invaluable mineral elements which have been dissolved in the liquor during the process of cooking. The ultimate result of these crimes ...
— Vitality Supreme • Bernarr Macfadden
... good Housewife sees a Rat In her Trap in the Morning taken, With Pleasure her Heart goes pit-a-pat, In Revenge for her Loss of Bacon. Then she throws him To the Dog or Cat, To ...
— The Beggar's Opera - to which is prefixed the Musick to each Song • John Gay
... pounding the bear meat, much as the white housewife would pound a steak, but with more vigor. Grizzly or any other kind of big bear was exceedingly tough, even after treatment, but, in the last resort, the Indians would eat it, and, despite their great stores of ordinary food, Xingudan feared they would not ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... the long, long summer hours, The golden light should lie, And thick young herbs and groups of flowers Stand in their beauty by. The oriole should build and tell His love-tale, close beside my cell; The idle butterfly Should rest him there, and there be heard The housewife-bee and humming bird. ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... water, and Mrs Beazeley never ventured over the bridge, it was gradually knocked away for firewood, and when it was low-water, one old post, redolent of mud, marked the spot where the bridge had been. The interior was far more inviting. Mrs Beazeley was a clean person and frugal housewife, and every article in the kitchen, which was the first room you entered, was as clean and as bright as industry could make it. There was a parlour also, seldom used; both of the inmates, when they did meet, which was not ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... may still be put there. Such a plant must have been a favourite with an excellent housewife buried in the churchyard, whose epitaph attracts ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Ness went down to trade with them. There was on board a Hebridean woman named Thorgunna, of whom her shipmates said that she owned some costly things, the like of which would be difficult to find in Iceland. When Thurid, the housewife at Froda, heard of this she was very curious to see the articles, for she was a woman that was fond of show and finery. She went to the ship and asked Thorgunna whether she had any woman's apparel that was ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... added that the silver tea-caddy was in the shape of a heart, and that it had a key. Very dear to the heart of a housewife is the tea-caddy ...
— Manners and Social Usages • Mrs. John M. E. W. Sherwood
... You are comparing me with Eve; but I am not in the least like Eve, I assure you. She was an excellent housewife, and, if we may believe Milton, knew how to prepare 'dulcet creams,' and all sorts of Paradisaical dainties for her husband's dinner. I, on the contrary, could not make a cream if Adam's life ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... had many virtues. Besides the cardinal one which has been particularly brought under the reader's notice—that of keeping her husband in due subjection—she also possessed, in an eminent degree, the excellent quality of being a most active housewife. In fact, she had the bump of rule and order, and personally ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... there learns that what of his own he had been led to believe was the best—whether in flocks or herds, or farm products—may be greatly improved, and his ambition and pride, as well as his interest, are at once excited to make an advance. At the same time the industrious housewife, and the blushing Miss, by an examination of the cloths and flannels—the carpets and quilts—the embroidered skirts and capes—the collars and slippers, discover that these articles are worthy not only of their admiration ...
— Address delivered by Hon. Henry H. Crapo, Governor of Michigan, before the Central Michigan Agricultural Society, at their Sheep-shearing Exhibition held at the Agricultural College Farm, on Thursday, • Henry Howland Crapo
... old age and childhood bend, with prying eyes, to glean the scattered ears. The master looks on his riches, and swells with satisfaction; the busy housewife loads the hospitable board, and hands the mantling ale around; age tells the tale of past times; and the loud laugh and rustic song burst from the lips of jocund youth. Oh! ever thus return to us, with plenty in thy ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... the unfortunate husband of a buyer of bargains. My wife has somewhere heard, that a good housewife never has any thing to purchase when it is wanted. This maxim is often in her mouth, and always in her head. She is not one of those philosophical talkers that speculate without practice; and ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume IV: The Adventurer; The Idler • Samuel Johnson
... meteors which we have been accustomed to consider trivial or incidental matters in planetary and stellar systems, no more important than the dust which the housewife raises from parlor and chamber, are really fundamental and basic elements of the Universe, capable of generating comets, planets, ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, January 1888 - Volume 1, Number 12 • Various
... H. 4019, Path. 218) Housewife, 37 years always cheerful, became the happiest woman in the world, hearing God's voice and being specially under God's direction. "Acute mania." Death from bilateral phthisis with numerous cavities and bilateral pleuritis. There were no other lesions except a small sacral ...
— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10
... kind Mrs. Smedley," said Helen, with the air of a housewife. "He is always in study, and must not ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Lew, looking tenderly at the ragged and ill- made housewife that Cris had given him, with a lock of her hair worked into a sprawling "L" upon ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... ghastly sense of depression coupled with a blind insensate rage at life. One man said he felt as if the world were closing in on him. Another that he felt the people around him were plotting his destruction. One housewife made her husband lock her in her room for fear she would injure the children. I pored over these case histories for a long time getting absolutely nowhere. Then finally a pattern ...
— Disturbing Sun • Robert Shirley Richardson
... of dreams went by and passed, leaving me very weak, but not ignorant of where I was, and of what had come and gone. My master had often been by my bedside, and Elliot now and again; the old housewife also watched me by night, and gave me drink when I thirsted. Most of the while I deemed I was at home, in the house of Pitcullo; yet I felt there was something strange, and that there was pain somewhere in the room. But at length, as was said, I came to knowledge of things, and could see ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... her romantic and historic name. To us boys—my brother Tom and myself—she was always Dina. She was our cousin. Her father had died when she was but a babe. So had my mother, and Aunt Patty thenceforth was the housewife with us. Father was one of those merchants and ship owners who have long passed away in Baltimore. No firm was better known around the Basin than that of Dunton & Jameson, and no clipper ships were faster than those with ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... assail him with their prayer; Deaf as my friend, he sees them press, Nor makes the hour one moment less, Will you (the Major's with the hounds, The happy tenants share his rounds; Coila's fair Rachel's care to-day, And blooming Keith's engaged with Gray) From housewife cares a minute borrow, (That grandchild's cap will do to-morrow,) And join with me a-moralizing; This day's propitious to be ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... suspected. It was in the midst of such a scene as this that dinner was announced, and the two generals passed to the mess-table. It so happened that Jackson had just received, as a present from a patriotic lady, some butter, upon the adornment of which the fair donor had exhausted her housewife's skill. The servants, in honour of General Stuart's presence, had chosen this to grace the centre of the board. As his eye fell upon it, he paused, and with mock gravity pointed to it, saying, "There, gentlemen! If that is not the crowning evidence of our host's sporting tastes. He even ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... The three words in life Which have meaning to me are home, mother and wife— Or, rather, wife, mother and home. Once I thought Men cared for the women who found home the spot Next to heaven for happiness; women who knew No ambition beyond being loyal and true, And who loved all the tasks of the housewife. I learn, Instead, that from women of that kind men turn, With a yawn, unto those who are useless; who live For the poor hollow world and for what it can give, And who make home the spot where, when other joys cease, One sleeps late ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... on her preparations that she scarcely let her nieces pause to eat their frugal midday dinner. Martin himself was out on business, and would dine abroad that day, and nothing better pleased the careful housewife than to dispense with any formal dinner when there was a company supper to be cooked, and thus save the attendant labour of washing up as well as the time wasted in the consumption of ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of floating island, while all the available remaining space was occupied by pies,—apple-pies, custard, berry-pies, cream-pies. To have a variety of pies on a festal occasion was the ambition of every housewife, seven different kinds of pies and three kinds of cake being not uncommon. If a map of the region where pie prevails is ever drawn up and printed, this section of the country will be shaded unusually dark. To have company ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... affectionately—"came to me in the ordinary way of trade and lay unredeemed in my shop for no less than eight years; nor when exposed for sale could it tempt a purchaser. 'You must do something with it,' said my Artemisia—an excellent housewife, gentlemen, who wasted nothing if she could help it. I remember her giving me the same advice about an astrolabe, and again about a sun-dial corrected for the meridian of Bury St. Edmunds. 'My dear,' I answered, 'there is but one thing to be done with a flute, and that is ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... excess often eat more than three times a day. They take a little candy now, a little fruit then, or they go to the drug store for a glass of malted milk or buttermilk, which they call drinks, or they take a dish of ice cream. The housewife nibbles at cake or bread. If a person is in fair health and wishes to evolve into self-mastery and good health, he should make up his mind never to eat more than three times a day. Nothing but plain water should enter his mouth except ...
— Maintaining Health • R. L. Alsaker
... woman and a true housewife, it was perhaps inevitable that she should think first, and, after due consideration given to everything else, including pitchforks and cayenne pepper, that she should think last and finally, of the unlimited potentialities of boiling water. To have it actually ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... stones, paddling her white feet in the ripples and throwing up water to sparkle in the sun! Wherever she laid her hands on grass and flowers, they would immediately be moist, as with morning dew. Then would she set about her labors, like a careful housewife, to clear the fountain of withered leaves, and bits of slimy wood, and old acorns from the oaks above, and grains of corn left by cattle in drinking, till the bright sand in the bright water were like a treasury of diamonds. But, should the intruder approach too near, he would find ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... direction; but our modern customs or household life show, among the ancestors of English folk, that the sun-wise circuit entered not only into the religious life, but also mingled with and directed the most ordinary actions. Little does the modern housewife, who in beating the egg instinctively stirs her spoon in one direction,—a form of movement usually recommended by no conscious association of ideas,—imagine that in the method of her action she is bearing testimony ...
— Current Superstitions - Collected from the Oral Tradition of English Speaking Folk • Various
... knew the tailors' slang and habits, down to the particular whistle and cry which in France tells so much to those of a trade. At this blacksmith's, as at most other solitary houses far away from a town, there was not only a store of men's clothes laid by as wanting mending when the housewife could afford time, but there was a natural craving after news from a distance, such news as a wandering tailor is bound to furnish. The early November afternoon was closing into evening, as we sat down, she cross-legged on the great table in the blacksmith's ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... dear," interrupted Bertram, in his turn. "We'll concede that point, if you like. But you do know now. You've got the efficient housewife racket down pat even to the last calory your husband should be fed; and I'll warrant there isn't a Mary Ellen in Christendom who can find a spot of ignorance on you as big as a pinhead! So we'll call that settled. What you need now is a good rest; and you're going to have it, too. I'm going ...
— Miss Billy Married • Eleanor H. Porter
... 'I am obliged to practise for an hour every day, and you must do the same. See what a pretty piano I have given you. You need not mind its being meant for a housewife and pincushion; the notes are marked, and that is all you want. Now practise your scales, and be very careful to play right ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... go yourself, To win the berries from the thickets wild, And housewife skill, instead, has filled the shelf With blackberry jam, "by best receipts compiled,— Not made with country sugar, for too strong The flavors that to maple juice belong; But foreign sugar, nicely mixed 'to suit The taste,' spoils not ...
— Summer on the Lakes, in 1843 • S.M. Fuller
... store grew in importance. Its shelves accumulated dress goods, dry goods, clothing, hardware; its rafters dangled with tinware and kettles, with rope, harness, webbing; its bins overflowed with various food-stuffs unknown to the purveyor of a lumber camp's commissary, but in demand by the housewife; its one glass case shone temptingly with fancy stationery, dollar watches, and even cheap jewelry. There was candy for the children, gum for the bashful maiden, soda pop for the frivolous young. In short, there sprang to being in an astonishingly brief ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... granted him as a privilege the indulgence of his whim, and as such alone had Duncan regarded it; but by and by, when they found their lamps burn so much better from being properly attended to, they began to make him some small return; and at length it became the custom with every housewife who accepted his services, to pay him a halfpenny a week during the winter months for cleaning her lamp. He never asked for it; if payment was omitted, never even hinted at it; received what was given him thankfully; and was regarded with ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... housewife out of divers fleeces weaves one piece of cloth (saith Saevius Nicanor), I have laboriously collected this Cento out of divers Writers, and that sine injuria, I have wronged no authors, but given every man his own; which Sosimenes so much commends in Nicanor, he stole not whole verses, pages, ...
— Taboo - A Legend Retold from the Dirghic of Saevius Nicanor, with - Prolegomena, Notes, and a Preliminary Memoir • James Branch Cabell
... out for a seamstress or a housewife, Paul. Tell Ruth not to try to force those things on her. Turn her loose out of doors; give her good books, and leave her alone. You won't be disappointed in the woman ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... housewife was already up, and anxiously awaiting the return of her husband and his brother. A cheery fire crackled on the hearth, and the coffee-pot was simmering beside it. When Gilbert had been partially revived ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... good housewife," said the old goblin, and then saluted her with his eyes instead of drinking her health; for he ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... what a clever workman will do with very modest tools, or again how far a thrifty housewife will make a very small sum of money go, or again in like manner how many ideas an intelligent brute can receive and convey with its very limited vocabulary; but no one will pretend that a dog's intelligence can ever reach the level ...
— The Humour of Homer and Other Essays • Samuel Butler
... the dwelling, the housewife's handy-work is displayed in a pole hung with many a skein of snow white yarn, glistening in the sunlight. Four years have passed since Sybel was a bride—-her cheek has lost the bloom of girlhood, and has already assumed the hollow form of New Brunswick matrons; her dress is home-spun, of her ...
— Sketches And Tales Illustrative Of Life In The Backwoods Of New Brunswick • Mrs. F. Beavan
... doubtless, Alfieri's views of the case. Mme. d'Albany, on the other hand, had evidently no vocation as a housewife or a mother; marriage was full of disagreeable associations to her: a husband might beat one, and a lover might not. She, probably, also, guessed instinctively that to Alfieri a Laura must always be a mere ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... on the broad mysterious ocean leans The sailor o'er his vessel's side, and feels The buzzing joys of home; wondering if fate Will bear him on to end his being there. Now pleased the housewife down the path descries Her husband's footsteps hitherward; his meal Prepared, the children each made tidy; she With smiling comfort means to soothe her man, By labour wearied, through the evening hours. They ...
— My Beautiful Lady. Nelly Dale • Thomas Woolner
... around Fellside in the evenings, when all the shutters were shut, and the outside world seemed little more than an idea: that mystic hour when the sheep are slumbering under the starry sky, and when, as the Westmoreland peasant believes, the fairies help the housewife ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... The clock has struck ten, Praised be God, our Lord! Now it is time to go to bed. The housewife and her maid, The master as well as his lad. The wind is south-east. Hallelujah! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 285, December 1, 1827 • Various
... that they shall endeavor, not to shirk difficulties, but to overcome them; not to seek ease, but to know how to wrest triumph from toil and risk. The man must be glad to do a man's work, to dare and endure and to labor; to keep himself, and to keep those dependent upon him. The woman must be the housewife, the helpmeet of the homemaker, the wise and fearless mother of many healthy children. In one of Daudet's powerful and melancholy books he speaks of "the fear of maternity, the haunting terror of the young wife ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... that she has not yet come back to us? Is every thing right with that dear spouse of mine in the forest? Separated from her, this my home appears to me empty! A house-holder's home, even if filled with sons and grandsons and daughters-in-law and servants, is regarded empty if destitute of the housewife. One's house is not one's home; one's wife only is one's home. A house without the wife is as desolate as the wilderness. If that dear wife of mine, of eyes fringed with red, of variegated plumes, and of sweet voice, does not come back today, my life itself ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... frequent experience of the housewife living in the country or suburbs these days to receive unexpected visits from friends who are touring in automobiles, and she finds she must have something attractive, dainty and nourishing ready at a moment's notice to supplement the cup of tea or coffee so welcome after a hot, dusty trip. ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... we are both free, and we can set our peasants an absolutely respectable example. You shall be farmer and I will be housewife. Nigel, ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... written for the specialist, but for that restless, seething multitude known as "the masses." It is written for busy people, for workers, such as the shop-girl, the factory-girl, the clerk, the mechanic, the farmer, the merchant, and the busy housewife; but ministers, lawyers, and doctors may find food ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... convenient to "put up with the Haneys" while visiting the town. They were, in fact, very curious to study her in her new and splendid setting; and though some of them peeked and peered amid the beds, and thumped the mattresses in vulgar curiosity, the young housewife merely laughed. All her life had been spent among folk of this directly inquisitive sort. She expected them to act as they did, and, being a hearty and generous soul, as well as a very democratic one, she ...
— Money Magic - A Novel • Hamlin Garland
... National Coffee Roasters' Association tells how to make good coffee the housewife is naturally interested, no matter how fervently the family may praise her own brew. Coffee is the business of these gentlemen. They know it from the scientific standpoint as well as practically. ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... little package of needles, thread, extra shoelaces, and buttons. When a button comes off Tommy's trousers, instead of going to his housewife he looks around for ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... Early in the morning I took leave of my kind hostess, who, like a truly careful housewife, had wrapped up a roasted fowl, manioc flour, and a cheese for me, so that I was well provisioned on ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... described by the historian Green: "The theory of government wrought out in the cell and lecture-room was carried over the length and breadth of the land by the Mendicant brother begging his way from town to town, chatting with the farmer or housewife at the cottage door and setting up his portable pulpit in village green or market-place. The rudest countryman learned the tale of a king's oppression or a patriot's hope as he listened to the rambling, passionate, humorous discourse ...
— A Short History of Monks and Monasteries • Alfred Wesley Wishart
... suggest also that every one who creates or cultivates a garden helps, and helps greatly, to solve the problem of the feeding of the nations; and that every housewife who practises strict economy puts herself in the ranks of those who serve the nation. This is the time for America to correct her unpardonable fault of wastefulness and extravagance. Let every man and every woman assume the duty of careful, provident use and expenditure ...
— Why We are at War • Woodrow Wilson
... needful water from the spring; 20 When wrinkled news-page, thrice conn'd o'er, Beguiles the dreary hour no more, And darkling politician, cross'd, Inveighs against the lingering post, And answering housewife sore complains 25 Of carriers' snow-impeded wains; When such the country cheer, I come, Well pleased, to seek our city home; For converse, and for books, to change The Forest's melancholy range, 30 And welcome, with renew'd delight, The busy day and ...
— Marmion • Sir Walter Scott
... 'brat'{112}; 'halt' and 'hold'; 'sad' and 'set'{113}; 'card' and 'chart'; 'medley' and 'motley'. Or there has grown up, besides the rigorous and accurate pronunciation of a word, a popular as well; and this in the end has formed itself into another word; thus is it with 'housewife' and 'hussey'; 'hanaper' and 'hamper'; 'puisne' and 'puny'; 'patron' and 'pattern'; 'spital' (hospital) and 'spittle' (house of correction); 'accompt' and 'account'; 'donjon' and 'dungeon'; 'nestle' and 'nuzzle'{114} (now obsolete); 'Egyptian' and 'gypsy'; 'Bethlehem' and 'Bedlam'; 'exemplar' ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... race. We can picture the day when our dooryards, our roadsides, our fields and hills shall be shaded by grand nut trees, showering sustenance and wealth on our descendants, and all people, and bearing the names of their originators; when the housewife of the future shall send her wireless call to the grocer for a kilo of Hales' Papershells, the Rush, the Jones, the Pomeroy Persian walnuts, the Black Ben Deming butternut, the Craig Corean chestnut, the Morris Hybrid hickory, the Close ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Second Annual Meeting - Ithaca, New York, December 14 and 15, 1911 • Northern Nut Growers Association
... a little? Well, I promise you, Cousin Louisa Henrietta, they will love you, and whoever shall look into your good, truthful eyes will feel himself fortunate and glad, just as I do now. Keep your beautiful eyes, Louisa, and your innocence and harmlessness, and be a good housewife, then your people will love you very much. But tell me, cousin, for whom is that wreath which is hanging on ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... somewhat softened the housewife. "Lord Hastings is known to us," continued Sibyll, perceiving the impression she had made; "suffer us to rest here till he pass this way, and ye will find yourselves repaid for ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... black currants is limited, but the prices are fair. As to picking would say we pick them when not quite ripe, as the average housewife claims they jell better than when over-ripe. They must be picked by the stem and not stripped off—all defective, over-ripe and bruised berries should be ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... into ladies of high degree and women of the people. The former were naturally fitted by their training to take their part in the spectacle of feudal life with proper dignity; more than that, they were often skilled in all the arts of the housewife, and many times they showed themselves the careful stewards of their husbands' fortunes. The women of the people, on the other hand, were not shown any special consideration on account of their sex, ...
— Women of the Romance Countries • John R. Effinger
... virtuosas, free-thinkers, and disputants; nay, there was then hardly such a creature even as a coquette: but vanity had quite another turn, and the most conspicuous woman at that time of day was only the best housewife. Were it possible to bring into life an assembly of matrons of that age, and introduce the learned Lady Woodby into their company, they would not believe the same nation could produce a creature so unlike anything they ever saw in it. But these ancients would be as much astonished ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... as if nothing uncommon were happening, the housewife retreated toward the door in question, and slipping one hand behind her opened it without turning her head. She was instantly relieved of the drag upon her skirts, and quietly shut the door again upon her self-imprisoned charges. Then she drew a ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... up to the Daggetts' flat I was dimly conscious of another problem. My wife was growing fretful and nervous. Our rooms would not have satisfied a Dutch housewife, but if "order is heaven's first law" a little of Paradise was in them as compared to the Daggetts' apartments. "Yes," I was told, in response to my inquiries; "Winnie is ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... should make it a negligible matter whether or not a permanent "houseband" were enlisted with a "housewife" in building a home in which to place a child desired must tend toward a reversion, not an advance, in social organization. Or so it seems to many students of the evolution of ...
— The Family and it's Members • Anna Garlin Spencer
... not listening to her father's stories or helping her mother with the housework, which, good housewife that Mrs. Barton was, she took great pains to teach her youngest daughter how to do well, Clara was as busy as possible in some other way. In that household there were no drones, and the little girl was not even allowed to waste time in playing with dolls, ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... spare his housekeeper, but the housekeeper was untoward, she was "busied in her housewife skep," and would not stir. Alick was gone to Timber End, and Rachel was just talking of getting the schoolmaster's wife as an escort, when Mr. ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... manual for young hostesses. If so, it must have been a good one. But to say this is to belittle Mary's powers of intuition. It was they, sharpened by her adoration of William, and by her intensity for everything around him, that made her so efficient a housewife. ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... asked me if whistling would do. She was a busy housewife and said that was her rule. I have gone to singing myself. But maybe whistling is just as good. I'm inclined to favor giving it a place within ...
— Quiet Talks on Service • S. D. Gordon
... no sech thing," said the housewife. "I jest nachelly borrowed him—jest for over night. And now you've got him, I hope you're satisfied. And you kin jest clear out o' my house, do you hear? And I can't scrub and sweep too soon where your lazy, dirty old boots has been on ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... corn-granary, which held ten harvests, spacious cellars for the wine-vats and corresponding wine-presses; now the master keeps flocks of peacocks, and causes his doors to be inlaid with African cypress-wood.—Formerly the housewife turned the spindle with the hand and kept at the same time the pot on the hearth in her eye, that the pottage might not be singed; now," it is said in another satire, "the daughter begs her father ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... said the Witch, "I will give you work in which you will be associated with intellect—you will come in contact with brains. I shall present you to a housewife." ...
— Fantastic Fables • Ambrose Bierce
... be past eighty. She was a big woman—thrifty and domestic—big enough to take "Granther" up in her arms and walk off with him. She did more to bring up her family than he did; was a practical housewife, and prolific. She had ten children and made every one of them toe the mark. I don't know whether she ever took "Granther" across her knee or not, but he probably deserved it. She was quite uneducated. Her maiden name was Lavinia ...
— Our Friend John Burroughs • Clara Barrus
... such Fairs have degenerated into yearly displays of giants, dwarfs, double-bodied calves, and gorgeous works in gingerbread. To our ancestors, with their simpler habits of living, supply and demand, these annual meetings served as permanent divisions of the year. The good housewife who bought her woollens and her grocery, the yeoman who chose his frieze-coat, his gay waistcoat, and the leathern integuments of his sturdy props, once only in twelve months, would compute the events of his life ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... was almost not far-fetched. There was a blue-and-white spick-and-spanness about Mrs. Lipkind's kitchen which must lie within the soul of the housewife who achieves it—the lace-edged shelves, the scoured armament of dishpan, soup-pot, and what not; the white Swiss window-curtains, so starchy, and the two regimental geraniums on the sill; the roller-towel too snowy for mortal hand to smudge; the white sink, hand-polished; ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... blocks, dates from a very remote age; it stands on the remains of the heathen temple. Each of the hills is a little mountain, yet each was raised by human hands. Letters an ell long, and whole names, are cut deep in the thin greensward, which the new sprouting grass gradually fills up. The old housewife, from the peasant's cot close by the hill, brings the silver-bound horn, a gift of Charles John XIV., filled with mead. The wanderer empties the horn to the memory of the olden time, for Sweden, and for ...
— Pictures of Sweden • Hans Christian Andersen
... meal Windy McPherson had talked voluminously, ranting and shouting about the house. He said that a housepainter who had a real sense of colour had no business trying to work in a hole like Caxton. He had been in trouble with a housewife about a colour he had mixed for painting a porch floor and at his own table he raved about the woman and what he declared her lack of even a primitive sense of colour. "I am sick of it all," he shouted, going out of the house and up ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... invited to Mademoiselle Hulot's wedding. To enable him to receive his future mistress in his drawing-room, the great official was obliged to invite all the clerks of his division down to the deputy head-clerks inclusive. Thus a grand ball was a necessity. The Baroness, as a prudent housewife, calculated that an evening party would cost less than a dinner, and allow of a larger number of invitations; so Hortense's wedding ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... anxiously at the sea and sky, and increases his zeal and activity, to be enabled to reach Sweden by Christmas. The houses everywhere are open, and the table is always spread. All is made scrupulously clean, for at this season, every housewife loves to display her order and carefulness. The rich display damask and rich hangings. The poor strew pine branches on the floor, and white curtains newly bleached, deck the windows. You reach the family-hearth. One of the servants ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... was, was hard enough and full of all sorts of trouble? She fancied she was not young enough for me, that she was not industrious nor energetic enough to begin a new life, and she often talked to her husband of the importance of my marrying a girl of intelligence and merit who would be a capable housewife and a help to me—and she would immediately add that it would be difficult to find such a ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... day passed, and others followed in which women, who had known Jean Myles, did her children kindnesses, but could not do all they would have done, for Aaron forbade them to enter his home except on business though it was begging for a housewife all day. Had Elspeth at the age of six now settled down to domestic duties she would not have been the youngest housekeeper ever known in Thrums, but she was never very good at doing things, only at loving and being loved, and the observant neighbors thought her a backward girl; they forgot, like ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... altogether superfine, so utterly magnificent in my life," cried the king; "stewed peacocks' tongues from the Baltic, are not to be compared with it! Call out the housewife immediately!" ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... quiet gray eyes. She just missed being beautiful, and in missing it was not even pretty. But when Stroeve spoke of Chardin it was not without reason, and she reminded me curiously of that pleasant housewife in her mob-cap and apron whom the great painter has immortalised. I could imagine her sedately busy among her pots and pans, making a ritual of her household duties, so that they acquired a moral ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... afoot, and return over the same route with her load of flour. Certainly comfort was not the ruling consideration in those days of our forefathers. A ten-mile walk through the snow for a bag of flour would be an unmentionable hardship to a nineteenth-century housewife. ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... there an ancient apple-tree, bent down and bowed to the ground with age, offers a mossy, shady seat upon one of its branches which has returned to the earth from which it sprung. Some wooden posts grown green and lichen-covered, standing at regular intervals, show where the housewife dries her linen. Right before the very door a great horse-chestnut tree rears itself in all the beauty of its thousands of blossoms, hiding half the house. A small patch of ground in front is railed in with wooden palings to keep out the pigs, and poultry, and dogs—for almost every visitor ...
— The Toilers of the Field • Richard Jefferies
... hitherto represented to her mind by the man in blue who used to watch over her miserable alley. Before she became accustomed to receiving food at regular intervals, she fairly touched the hearts of her foster-parents by one queer request. The housewife was washing some Brussels sprouts, when the little stray said timidly, "Please, may I eat a bit of that stalk?" Of course the stringy mass was uneatable; but it turned out that the forlorn child had been very glad to worry at the stalks ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... young housewife does not know That the woman beside her was first his choice, Till the fates ordained it could not be so . . . Betraying nothing in look or voice The guest sits smiling and sips her tea, And he throws her a ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... back comfortably set against a folded clothes-reel, was a greasily fat tramp, gobbling a hand-out lunch which a housewife ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... the [12] meal Was ended, Luke (for so the Son was named) And his old Father both betook themselves To such convenient work as might employ 105 Their hands by the fire-side; perhaps to card Wool for the Housewife's spindle, or repair Some injury done to sickle, flail, or scythe, Or other implement of house ...
— The Poetical Works of William Wordsworth, Vol. II. • William Wordsworth
... Rome, to conquer the city in his turn, his wife had been compelled to assist his devouring ambition by dressing well and opening a salon; and, although she was still a little awkward, she rendered him many real services, being very economical and prudent, a thorough good housewife, with all the sterling, substantial qualities of Northern Italy which she had inherited from her mother, and which showed conspicuously beside the turbulence and carelessness of her husband, in whom flared Southern Italy with ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Passion—like the Jews, who at Passover search diligently for and cast out the old leaven—the Russian housewife likewise searches out every corner, most remorselessly sweeps from its hiding-place every particle of dust. Everything is done to make the house and its contents fit to meet a risen Saviour. The streets, always very clean, receive special attention, even the lamp-posts are carefully washed ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care; No children run to lisp their sire's return, Or climb his knees the envied kiss ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... taken with an apoplexy. I wish above all things then, to see her safely married before I go—to some solid man who will care for her. There is a plenty of Protestants about here that would have her; for she is a wonderful housewife, and as ...
— Oddsfish! • Robert Hugh Benson
... close to its edges,—and have you not, in obedience to a kind of feeling that told you it had been lying there long enough, insinuated your stick or your foot or your fingers under its edge and turned it over as a housewife turns a cake, when she says to herself, "It's done brown enough by this time"? What an odd revelation, and what an unforeseen and unpleasant surprise to a small community, the very existence of which you had not suspected, until the sudden dismay and scattering ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... We hoped for peace, but it was not to be. A sudden thought struck him. He would sew his scattered leaves of MS. together. With dreadful deliberation he took needle and cotton from a little pocket housewife that he carried with him; and then began one of the most maddening performances I have ever watched. Carefully he held the needle to the light, carefully he wetted and trimmed his cotton to a point. And for ten stricken minutes we saw him miss the eye of the needle, sometimes by an inch, ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... Vinegar's famous club, which he had inherited from Hercules, and which had the enviable property of falling of itself upon any knave in company, and there is a dash of the Tom Jones manner in the noisy activity of that excellent housewife Mrs. Joan. Some of the lighter papers, such as the one upon the "Art of Puffing," are amusing enough; and of the visions, that which is based upon Lucian, and represents Charon as stripping his freight of all their superfluous incumbrances in order to lighten his boat, has a ...
— Fielding - (English Men of Letters Series) • Austin Dobson
... Though she would not have acknowledged it for worlds, even to her inmost heart, the good woman took much satisfaction out of that awkward, patient presence in the doorway. When things went wrong with her, in that perverse way so trying to the careful housewife, she could ease her feelings wonderfully by expressing them without reserve to the young moose, who never looked amused or attempted ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... containing both emergency and the day's rations, and his pack, strapped to shoulders and waist in such a way that the weight of it was equally distributed. His pack contained the following articles: A greatcoat, a woolen shirt, two or three pairs of socks, a change of underclothing, a "housewife,"—the soldiers' sewing-kit,—a towel, a cake of soap, and a "hold-all," in which were a knife, fork, spoon, razor, shaving-brush, toothbrush, and comb. All of these were useful and sometimes essential articles, particularly the toothbrush, which Tommy regarded as the best little instrument for ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... a two pronged fish spear, a fisherman's knife in its sheath with belt, a paternoster, invaluable for the fathoms of fishing line attached, a small American axe with the head vaselined, a canvas housewife with sail-needles, a few darning needles and some pack thread, and a number of odds and ends including ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... of boasting and malice has as much force over our Scottish bosoms, as the blast possesses over the autumn fruits; but it is not so. While we choose to remain concealed, they may as vainly seek to descry us, as a housewife would search for the needle she has dropped among the withered foliage of yon gigantic oak. Yet a few hours, and the lost needle shall become the exterminating sword of the Genius of Scotland, avenging ten thousand injuries, ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott |
