"Housework" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Tommy. It would be a great advantage to me to have someone I could send on a message without feeling I was interfering with the housework." ...
— Tommy and Co. • Jerome K. Jerome
... work, it was the woman's duty—one more added to so many others—to bring water indoors. In times of drought water had often to be carried long distances in pails, and it may be imagined how the housework would go in such circumstances. For my part I have never wondered at roughness or squalor in the village since that parching summer when I learnt that in one cottage at least the people were saving up the cooking water of one day to be used over again ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt
... and golden joys. A Libyan longing took us, and we would have chosen, if we could, to bear a strand of grotesque beads, or a handful of brazen gauds, and traffic them for some sable maid with crisped locks, whom, uncoffling from the captive train beside the desert, we should make to do our general housework forever, through the right of lawful purchase. But we knew that this was impossible, and that, if we desired colored help, we must seek it at the intelligence office, which is in one of those streets chiefly inhabited by the orphaned children and grandchildren of slavery. ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... that the girls should not lack more homely knowledge. Each took her share in the day's work, and learned all details of it as accurately as any German maiden at her cookery school. Emily took very kindly to even the hardest housework; there she felt able and necessary; and, doubtless, upstairs, grimly listening to prim Miss Branwell's stories of bygone gaieties, this awkward growing girl was glad to remember that she too was of importance to the household, despite ...
— Emily Bront • A. Mary F. (Agnes Mary Frances) Robinson
... same on the following days; her talks, her manners, everything changed. She took interest in the housework, went to church regularly, and looked after her servant ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... splendours accumulated for the setting-up of their housekeeping, but had never invited her to an inspection. No human eye was to behold them till Harry had his first look. In fact, nobody had ever been inside his cottage; he did his own housework, and he guarded his son's privilege so jealously that the small objects of domestic use he bought sometimes in the town were smuggled rapidly across the front garden under his canvas coat. Then, coming ...
— To-morrow • Joseph Conrad
... hall, which,—unaltered since the days of its original building,— was vaulted high and heavily timbered, she went first into the kitchen to see Priscilla, who, assisted by a couple of strong rosy-cheeked girls, did all the housework and cooking of the farm. She found that personage rolling out pastry and talking volubly ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... The vacuum cleaner and the fireless cooker are not even mentioned. The efficient kitchen devised in such an interesting and clever way has no place in it. Its exclusive object is to suggest a satisfactory and workable solution along modern lines of how to get one's housework efficiently performed without ...
— Wanted, a Young Woman to Do Housework • C. Helene Barker
... two domestics did the housework, and helped the farm-hands in haying, harvest, and potato-digging; and over all presided Mrs. Sims, a tall, stout, and resolute widow, with a heavy hand and a shrewish temper. With a huge bunch of keys at ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... a help," she said eagerly, "if you could be just a little less attentive to her. I know you do ever so much of the housework because she is not fond of it; and if she has a headache you sit with her all day; and you beg her to play and sing to you, though you really dislike music. Oh, there are scores of things you do for her, and if you were to do them a little less willingly, in such a way as to show her ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... twice his own age, and would not rest until he had won his affection. He does not much care what form the sexual relation takes. He is sensitive and feminine by nature, gentle, and affectionate. He is neat and orderly in his habits, and fond of housework; helps his mother in washing, etc. He appears to think that ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 2 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... and miles about, except the scrawny scrub-oaks, cotton-woods, and wild plums that flanked the infrequent creeks,—creeks which in Summer, save in deepest holes, reverted to mere dry runs. Beneath its shade Rankin had constructed a rough bench, and therein Ma Graham, day after day when her housework was finished, dozed and sewed and dozed again, apparently as forgetful as the cowboys upon the prairies that beyond her vision were great cities where countless thousands of human beings sweltered and struggled in desperate ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... the house at lunch time, Miss Bean was in the midst of a stream of gossip. Her usual surroundings gave rise to no more varied subjects than the personal appearance of her companions, and the routine of the housework, in which they all had a share. Doubtless it was partly for this reason that the worthy woman made the most of her brief outings, to gather up any bits of information which might serve to enliven the days to come, and render her an object of admiration in the community where ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... housework Ruth had developed a system that would have made a fortune for any man if applied in the same degree to his business. I learned a lot from her. Instead of going at her tasks in the haphazard fashion of most women or doing things just because her grandmother and her mother ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... to get up and go away half a dozen times already—no, she really could not stand it any longer, she had a frantic headache, it had got on her nerves, it was certainly much easier to stand at the fire and cook or do housework than play with a child—but her sense of duty and her love ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... planning on eight tents all together, and there'll be ever so many things people will want to buy. Do you suppose, mother, that Mr. Peckham would let Sally manage anything like that up here? She's just dying to do something besides housework all her life." ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... my mother holds me back from the gay doings in the town. I have my long walks, my fishing and rowing, and sometimes hunting, with Juste and my sweet sister Georgette, my drawing, painting, music, and needlework, and my housework. ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the sound of Nutty busy in the next room with a broom and a dustpan, for in the simple lexicon of Flack's there was no such word as 'help'. The privy purse would not run to a maid. Elizabeth did the cooking and Claude Nutcombe the housework. ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... in one of the big hotels in Halifax, and my youngest sister teaches school in Moncton. But I'm so strong, you know, and I like to move things round so,—and everything,—maybe—I could get a position somewhere as general housework girl." ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... whom I knew well, and whose recent death I deplore, was cured of a bad attack of neuritis by being cut off all domestic assistance, except her cook's, and set to do her own housework. Therefore it is probable that we should all be the better for the same treatment; but, as I asked just now, will the girls be the better for it? The disengaged philosopher can only answer that question in one way. That feverish community-work which they ...
— In a Green Shade - A Country Commentary • Maurice Hewlett
... was careful to ridicule it. Whenever I tried to break away and start on my own, he prevented it. There were a thousand other things—ways in which he fettered me. My only sister he kept at home to do the housework. He forbade her to marry. She and I never had enough money to do anything, to go anywhere, or to buy anything. Now, to be quite frank, I longed for him to die so that I could get free. To me he was ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... twenty-two dollars apiece, so with my half of the rent—eighteen dollars—I'd have less than nothing left out of my salary to pay my share of the groceries for all the breakfasts and luncheons. You see you'd not only be doing all the housework and cooking, but you'd be paying more of the expenses ...
— The Magnificent Ambersons • Booth Tarkington
... as I to the chills and blasts of a cold climate, and fully as unfurnished to meet them. I had seen her draw her thin checked shawl around her, when I knew it was not enough to save her from the weather, and that she had no more. And her gowns, of thin cotton stuff, such as she wore about her housework at Magnolia, were a bare provision against the nipping bite of the air here at the North. Yet nobody spoke of any addition to her stock of clothes. It was on my heart alone. But now it was in my hand too, ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... "Richter's study and sitting-room offered about this time," says Doering, his first biographer, "a true and beautiful picture of his simple yet noble mind, which took in both high and low. While his mother bustled about the housework at fire or table he sat in a corner of the same room at a plain writing-desk with few or no books at hand, but only one or two drawers with excerpts and manuscripts. * * * Pigeons fluttered in and out ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IV • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... with a sigh; "now I will dry the dishes for you.... You didn't mention the fact, when you engaged me, that I was also expected to do general housework." ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... of wrinkles and gray hairs. When I came home that day and discovered how unimportant I was, how weak had become my applause, instead of trying to play a new part by making myself useful and necessary—helping with the housework, putting away laundry, mending, and so on—I went about concocting ways and methods of filling ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... and sewing, or a milliner by creating her own bonnet. The house helper will not be incompetent, because the development and training of woman for her best and truest work will have extended to her also, and she will do housework because she loves it and is better adapted to it than to any other employment. She will preside in the ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... have left quite a blank in their lives, although they had often pretended to themselves and to each other that they hated housework. But now that Mother had no writing and no housework to do, she had time for lessons. And lessons the children had to do. However nice the person who is teaching you may be, lessons are lessons all the world over, and at their best are worse fun than peeling ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... a sudden spirit of rebellion. Why shouldn't she have some fun? She would enjoy herself! She wasn't going to go on like this, letting people in to the promenade, doing housework, practising typewriting. Why did some girls get everything, like Laura Temple, and others nothing? It was not fair. It was ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... learn easily and show an interest and surprising care in the performance of these actions. In classes where there are many children it is necessary to arrange for the children to take turns in the various household duties, such as housework, serving at table, and washing dishes. The children readily respect such a system of turns. There is no need to ask them to do this work, for they come spontaneously—even little ones of two and a half years ...
— Dr. Montessori's Own Handbook • Maria Montessori
... on the top of Black Hill looked long at the Reid home. In his mind he could see Kitty dressed in some cool, simple gown, fresh and dainty after the morning's housework, sitting with book or sewing on the front porch. The porch was on the other side of the house, it is true, and the distance was too great for him to distinguish a person in any case, but all that made no difference to Phil's vision—he could see her ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... express, harness horse, away to factory mile away—get whey return. Now 9 o'clock, wife has machines down and washes, hubby hose down shed. Drive whey down to paddocks and feed 40 pigs, returns, unharness horse, wash cart down, yoke team to plough, disk, &c. Wife to start housework about 10 o'clock, dinner at 12.30 to be ready, or taken down to paddocks (if harvesting 3 or 4 men are working). Usual times fencing, repairing sheds, fixing yards, besides other farm duties till 3.30—afternoon tea—children given something to eat on returning from school. Husband ...
— Report of the Committee of Inquiry into the Various Aspects of the Problem of Abortion in New Zealand • David G. McMillan
... you would," said Esther. "You would soon get tired. But perhaps you don't like doing housework. I ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... take her out with us day after tomorrow—she's not going back to the Academy—and I'm going to get work for her. There's where you can help. She's a good sewer, she says, though she'd rather live with someone and do housework." ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... history is void of thrills and simply an average ex-slave's story. As a slave, she was well fed, well clothed, and well treated, as were her brother and sister slaves. Her mother was a weaver, her father—a field hand, and she did both housework and plantation labor. ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... strong as formerly, and of late the toil of the farm taxed her endurance. There was milking, sewing, the housework, and the care of the chickens; enough to keep ten pairs of hands busy, let alone one. Oh, Lucy should earn her ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... one of the most interesting treatises on cooking and housework that we have ever read. It contains much useful information to the general reader, and is one we would ...
— Carving and Serving • Mrs. D. A. Lincoln
... again against two fresh tears. "I spoiled two cakes this afternoon. Elice tried to show me how to make them; and I burned my finger"—she held up a swaddled member for inspection—"horribly. I just can't do this housework, Harry, ...
— The Dominant Dollar • Will Lillibridge
... pity," I remarked, "that the kitchen, and the housework generally, cannot be left out of our system altogether! It is odd enough that the kind of labor which falls to the lot of women is just that which chiefly distinguishes artificial life—the life of degenerated mortals—from ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... little girl!" I said, and hobbled away to finish the housework, but my heart seemed to take on a pair of pure white wings, like dove's wings. I forgot withal ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... Woman. Now all my housework is done I think I will make some gingerbread. There is nothing quite so good for lunch as warm gingerbread and a glass of milk, or a cup of hot tea. I can make pretty good gingerbread, too, all of my friends say. Here is the flour and butter ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook
... surgeon that I wanted another team. He replied that he thought he knew of one that would suit, and that he would let me know the next day. I also telephoned two "want ads." to a morning paper, one for an experienced farm-hand, the other for a woman to do general housework in the country. Polly was to interview the women who applied, and I was to look after the men. That night I ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... within reach of the family bed. He or she is waked up at intervals through the night to let into and out of a court full of studios those to whom the night is ever young. Or perhaps your concierge will be like old Pere Valois, who has three pretty daughters who do the housework of the studios, as well as assist in the guardianship of the gate. They are very busy, these three daughters of Pere Valois—all the morning you will see these little "femmes de menage" as busy as bees; the artists and poets must be ...
— The Real Latin Quarter • F. Berkeley Smith
... have my way for an hour here, will you? I want you to go back to Lottie and do up the housework; I see your breakfast dishes are still unwashed. Leave me alone here and let me do as I ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... she and Mrs. Saunders knelt down and said a prayer together. Then Esther said she would make up her room, and when that was done she insisted on helping her mother with the housework. ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... get noisy"—he lifted a toe—"out he goes! I aim to keep my place straight." He shoved his thumbs deep into the belt of his breeches. "Not much doin' at this time of day. The girls in school or helping with the housework; the boys in the mines. Don't step out till after supper. Then look out! The young bucks shake a heel and the girls put on their lipstick. Them that can't afford a permanent go around all day with their hair done up in curlycues till they look ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... good-for-nothing; I was good for something then, it seems, before I had known so much trouble. The wedding was at Candlemastide, and our first year all went well; my husband had apprentices, and you, Maren, helped me in the housework." ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... station, superintending the transportation of the new stock, which had come by the early local; Betty was busy with her housework upstairs; and only old ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... bad for both of us!" Jenny did not think so really; but she said it. She thought Emmy had the bread and butter pudding nature, and that she did not greatly care what she ate as long as it was not too fattening. Jenny thought of Emmy as born for housework and cooking—of stew and bread puddings. For herself she had dreamed a nobler destiny, a destiny of romance, of delicious unknown things, romantic and indescribably exciting. She was to have the adventures, because she needed them. Emmy didn't need them. It was ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... leave off mending stockings in order to look after me. Susan and I worked in a mill when she was ten and I was eleven. We were 'tenters.' We used to get up at four or five in the morning and help with the housework, and then put on our clogs and shawls and be at the mill at six. We worked till twelve, and then in the afternoon we went to school. The next day we went to school in the morning and to the mill in the afternoon. When we were thirteen we left school ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... their door, To zee em in their pleace, A-doen housework up avore Their smilen mother's feace; You'd cry—"Why if a man would wive An' thrive, 'ithout a dower, Then let en look en out a wife In ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... Four. Doctor? Never had one in the house. Why? He didn't believe in them. No proper kitchen utensils, none of the devices that lighten the deadeningly monotonous drudgery of housework. Everything went to make his work easier—new harrows, plows, tractors, wind mills, reapers, barns, silos. The story would come out, bit by bit, as the woman sat there, a worn, unlovely figure, her hands—toil-blackened, seamed, calloused, ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... newspaper and hands it over to Doctor Kirby, as proud as a kid with copper-toed boots. The doctor reads it all the way through, and then he hands it back without saying a word. The old lady goes away to fiddle around about the housework purty soon and the old man looks at the ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... somewhat precarious living by giving lessons in the use of the rapier, and in teaching German; and gladly accepted the offer to move out to Kilgowrie, where he was established in a cottage close to the house, where his wife aided in the housework. He became a companion of Fergus in his walks and rambles and, being an honest and pleasant fellow, the lad took to him; and after a few months their conversation, at first somewhat disjointed, became easy and animated. He learned, too, much from ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... The housework was all done and the kitchen swept and as neat as a new pin when the gay tooting of the Cameron automobile horn called Ruth to the porch. There was only Helen on the front seat of the car; but in the tonneau was a bundled-up figure surmounted by what looked to be a scarlet cap which ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... Slyme meet Crass as if by appointment and as the two men went away together she returned to her housework wondering what it meant. ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... to come along another boy like the old Harry, who would take all the barn-yard responsibility on his shoulders. Besides, mother is crippled with rheumatism, and can hardly get around to do her housework, let alone to make butter. We are not any too well off since the Union Bank failed; for, besides losing all my stock, I have had to help pay the depositors' claims. But we have enough to keep us comfortable, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... stories on your violin, too, uncle Tony, even if the ladies don't faint away in heaps, and if the kitchen doesn't look like a battle-field when you've finished. I'm glad it doesn't, for my part, for I should have more housework to do than ever." ...
— A Village Stradivarius • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the piano. As sure as Miss Grimes came to give Ray his lesson, he declared the place was a pigsty and tried to shame her by taking off his coat and dusting the room himself. Not that she blamed Miss Grimes. She was quite a lady in her way, and had won Ada's heart by telling her that she hated housework. She thought Ada must be a born housekeeper to do without a servant, and Ada didn't trouble to put her right. Anyhow, Jonah should keep a servant. He pretended that their servants in Wyndham Street had made ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... "It's hard to get anyone to do housework these days—not to mention gardening. Besides, in addition to the servant problem, there's another consideration—human nature. When you've lived in a shack all your life and you suddenly acquire a palace, you cease caring very much ...
— The Servant Problem • Robert F. Young
... ought long ago to have told her. By her daily visits she had become so familiar with all the wants and sufferings of the fisherman's family that she had been led on to undertake more and more, till at last she had come to do nearly all the housework of the poor little dwelling. But gradually had grown upon her the conviction that Mrs. Stanhope would be extremely displeased if she knew of her conduct. In great agony she now started after Aunt ...
— Gritli's Children • Johanna Spyri
... any disgrace connected with work of any sort—it never entered my head. From a child I had been taught that work was honorable, and especially for a woman housework and cooking were respectable and healthy service. So I had no pride whatever in the matter; it was only a question of finding the work, and I did not doubt my ability to find ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... and more difficult to induce girls to learn or practice housework. For the average woman this is still necessary, and the more advanced schools have taken it up. For the girl whom neither the home nor the school has been able to reach, Scouting offers a most successful and attractive means of getting the practical ...
— The Girl Scouts Their History and Practice • Anonymous
... they in the first three days been able to hear of another servant, Mrs. Rexford would have abruptly cancelled her agreement with Eliza. At the end of that time, however, when there came a day on which Mrs. Rexford and Sophia were both too exhausted by unpacking and housework to take their ordinary share of responsibility, Eliza suddenly seemed to awake and shake herself into thought and action. She cleared the house of the litter of packing-cases, set their contents in order, and showed her knowledge of the mysteries ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... of prisoners she recommends such occupations as patchwork, knitting stockings, making articles of plain needlework, washing, ironing, housework, cooking, spinning, and weaving. It should in all cases be constant, and in the worst cases, disciplinary labor. She recommends, under strict limitations, the treadmill for hardened, refractory, and depraved women, but only for short periods. All ...
— Elizabeth Fry • Mrs. E. R. Pitman
... happy, peaceful days. I had Kaetchen to help me in the housework, and whatever we did pleased my brave old father, who was always gentle and indulgent towards us women, though he was stern enough with the apprentices in the mill. Karl, the oldest of these, was his favourite; and I can see now that my father wished him to marry ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... Betty had assured her resembled soap suds), so enthralled had she become with the summer plan. If her parents could be persuaded to allow her to stay in camp with the girls during the summer, why then surely she need not be bothered with having to take exercise and help with the housework, as her mother insisted, she could simply give up all her time to her drawing and painting. You see Eleanor, like a good many other girls, did not at once grasp the meaning of ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... in the person of Maudie Stevens, aged fourteen, who lived a few doors lower down. Fresh from school the week before, she cheerfully undertook to do the housework and cooking, and to act as nursemaid in her spare time. Her father, on his part, cheerfully under-took to take care of her wages for her, the first week's, payable in advance, being banked the same evening at ...
— Deep Waters, The Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... afraid to use my hands. I might even be of some slight use," and she smiled at him till his own slow smile responded, troubled and amazed though he evidently was by her determination. "I've roughed it a good deal with daddy-prof. I can cook—some things. And I can do housework——" ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... lonesome-looking place enough. But Barbara had been too busy all day to sit down and realize the loneliness. She lived on the Saucel Ranch with her married brother and his wife, she and her sister-in-law doing all the housework between them—servants or "helps" being unattainable luxuries in those parts. Mr. and Mrs. Thorne had gone out for all the day and all the night; a nervous woman might well have shrunk from being thus left alone and unprotected ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Frontier is hard on women and cattle? This isn't the frontier, but in some respects it's worse, because we have all the luxuries and appearances—the pretty glass and silver to put on the table. We have to dust, polish, and arrange 'em after we've done our housework. I don't suppose that means anything to you, but—try it for a month! We have no help. A Chinaman costs fifty or sixty dollars a month now. Our husbands can't always afford that. How old would you take me for? I'm not thirty. Well thank God, I stopped my sister coming out West. ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... trying to have the spiritual superiority and control, or even her respect for his conscious or public life. He lived simply by her physical love for him. And he served the little matriarchy, nursing the child and helping with the housework, indifferent any more of his own dignity and importance. But his abandoning of claims, his living isolated upon his own interest, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... window on the hillside, saw the merry little figure, bareheaded, the long yellow curls floating out behind him, as he half knelt, half sat on the sliding plank ready to jump off at the proper moment. She had no thought of danger as she resumed her housework. Neither had Stevie. At length it happened, however, that just as he was nearing the end of the descent, an eagle came sailing low overhead, caught the little fellow's eye, and diverted his attention for a moment. It was the fatal moment. Just ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... teaches how to live honestly and in peace. He has a word for all—for boys as well as old men, for merchants as well as princes, for mistresses as well as for maids, for the rich as well as for the poor. He teaches how to spend, to save, to do housework, to govern a family, and to educate children. He is at the same time a friend, a father, a spiritual director, a master, an economist, a doctor, and a lawyer. He loves modest nature, the gardens, the meadows; he adores his wife, does his work, and is satisfied with himself and ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... knitting with her, and seldom ceased the incessant twist, twist of the shining steel among the white cotton meshes. She might put down the needles and lace into the spool-box long enough to open oysters, or wrap up fruit and candy, or count out wood and coal into infinitesimal portions, or do her housework; but the knitting was snatched with avidity at the first spare moment, and the worn, white, blue-marked fingers, half enclosed in kid-glove stalls for protection, would writhe and twist in and out again. Little girls just learning to crochet ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... young literary man had hired a buxom Dutch girl to do the housework. Several weeks passed and from seeing her master constantly about the house, the ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... The housework had coarsened the mother's hands. Her nose had lost its shape and her temples had fallen in. Constant stooping over the kitchen range had made her a little round-shouldered. Father and mother met only at meals and at night. They did not ...
— Married • August Strindberg
... and tried to copy the Chardins and Latours. She went there alone. It was a little imprudent, she was so pretty; but Louise had no time to go with her, and her mother had to be at home to attend to the housework and cooking. Maria's appearance had already excited the hearts of several young daubers. There were several cases of persistent sadness and loss of appetite in Flandrin's studio; and two of Signol's pupils, ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... was done, dried and replaced, she retired to her bedroom and turned her attention to her hands and nails, minutely solicitous, always in dread of the effects of housework. ...
— Athalie • Robert W. Chambers
... good deal of heat and made a cosey appearance with the glow of the burning coal visible; and because the kitchen and pantry contained everything that is necessary for life, and a little more. Frederick refused to have anybody share his quarters with him or help with the housework. As he said, he wanted to settle his accounts and take his trial balance, and the presence of another person might be ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... him games will not produce vitality. Games are the spontaneous product of a healthy body, active mind, and a joy in living. Give the children parks and piers, roof gardens and playgrounds in which they may play, and leave the rest to them. Give them time away from school and housework, and leave the rest to them. Instead of lamenting the necessity for playing in the streets, let us reserve more streets for children's play. There are too many students of child welfare whose reasoning about play and games is like that of a lady of Cincinnati, who, upon reading the notice ...
— Civics and Health • William H. Allen
... locked her bookcase, and went at housework as if it were a five-barred gate; of course she missed the leap, but scrambled bravely through, and appeared much sobered by the exercise. Sally had departed to sit under a vine and fig-tree of her own, so Di had undisputed sway; but if dish-pans ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... had not the manners of a French valet. He was grave and taciturn for the most part, he never bowed and rarely smiled, but was always at work in the daytime, and always reading in the evening. He was hostler, and did all the housework that a man could properly do, would go to the door or "tend table," bought the provisions for the family,—in short, did almost everything for them but get their clothing. There was no office in a perfectly appointed household, from that of steward down to that of stable-boy, which he did not ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... tale, but found little time to work on it, with school, sewing, and housework. My ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... somewhere in this house where for hours now I have been sitting and writing. She is a tall woman with black hair, turning a little grey. Listen, she is going softly up a flight of stairs. All day she goes softly about, doing the housework in our house. ...
— Triumph of the Egg and Other Stories • Sherwood Anderson
... radiate from the big hotel. Most of the cottagers take dinner and supper at the hotel, being, like ourselves, in a servantless condition. Belle said she could get along perfectly well without Margaret, when she had Mary Mason to help her with the housework, and, indeed, there was not much to be done. The four bedrooms open into one central room that we call the sitting-room, but it is only in wet weather it justifies the name, for, as a rule, we sit in rockers or swing in hammocks on the broad veranda that runs round three ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... never forget how mean old Master Nolan Barr was to us. I was about fourteen years old and my sister was a little younger. We lived in an old log cabin. The cracks was filled with mud. My Mother done the housework for Master Barr's house. My father and sister and me had to work in the fields. He had a big farm, and owned lots of slaves, and when the old master got mad at his slaves for not working hard enough he would tie them up by their thumbs ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Kentucky Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... much dramatic power and loved to transform herself into Hamlet and declaim in mock heroic style. From sixteen to twenty-three was her apprenticeship to life. She taught, wrote for the papers, did housework for pay as a servant, and found sewing a pleasant resource because it was tranquillizing, left her free, and ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... table could be put for such studies as were to be prosecuted at home. Ethel could have her typewriter in the subterranean breakfast-room. Mrs. Chaffery and Ethel must do the catering and the bulk of the housework, and as soon as possible, since letting lodgings would not square with Lewisham's professional pride, they must get rid of the lease that bound them and take some smaller and more suburban residence. If they did that without leaving any address it might ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... flamed. The radiance lit her pale cheek, and made her dark eyes, that had once been handsome, seem handsome anew. 'Yes,' she resumed, 'see if she is dark or fair, and if you can, notice if her hands be white; if not, see if they look as though she had ever done housework, or ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... had come from school with the small flock belonging to the poor widow, who sat just opposite our friends. She finished her dinner before any one else, and pushed her chair back; she always helped with the housework,—a thin, sorry, bad-tempered-looking poor soul, whom grief had sharpened instead of softening. "I expect you feel too fine to set with common folks," she said ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... think of it, and listened when she did not. Susanna had been hired to do the waiting and the dish-washing during Campbell's brief visit. It was I who hired her. If I had had my way she would have been a permanent fixture in the household, but Hephzy scoffed at the idea. "Pity if I can't do housework for two folks," she declared. "I don't care if you can afford it. Keepin' hired help in a family no bigger than this, is a sinful extravagance." As Susanna's services had been already engaged for the weekend ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... it served daintily in the class. Encourage the pupils to bring a dish to school in order to take the results of their work home for the family meal, if a school lunch is not served or if they do not need a lunch. Give careful directions for washing the dishes and supervise the housework carefully. (See pages 52, ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Household Science in Rural Schools • Ministry of Education Ontario
... bit of housework above another that Mary Jane loved to do, it was to clean the bathroom washstand; and she could do it beautifully, too. Mrs. Merrill gave her a soft cloth and the box of cleaning powder and she went to work. First she cleaned the soap dish; then she ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... and thousands of our own men still straggling home through Germany and Belgium—the remnants of Napoleon's Grand Army—ex-prisoners of war, or scattered units who had found their weary way home at last, shoeless, coatless, half starved and perished from cold and privations, unfit for housework, for agriculture, or for industry, fit only to follow their fallen hero, as they had done through a quarter of a century, ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... specimens that go in for general housework in this burg are a sad lot. I ain't goin' all through the list. I'll just touch lightly ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... something dull and tedious? No! If a meeting evokes only dullness in its members it is a dead meeting and ought to be laid down. A live meeting evokes life. Just the prospect of attending such a meeting should quicken us. It were better to come alive doing housework than to become deadened in a ...
— An Interpretation of Friends Worship • N. Jean Toomer
... chief delinquencies at present, however, spring from a rooted aversion to her share in the family housework (ten minutes' rubbing up of brass water-vessels); an appetite for slate pencils—she would nibble them by the inch if we would let her—"they are so nice to eat," she says; and, most fruitful of all in sad consequences, ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... sent her daughter to be a typist in a corn-factor's office but, as a disreputable sheriff's man used to come every other day to the office, asking to be allowed to say a word to his daughter, she had taken her daughter home again and set her to do housework. As Polly was very lively the intention was to give her the run of the young men. Besides young men like to feel that there is a young woman not very far away. Polly, of course, flirted with the young men but Mrs. Mooney, who was a shrewd judge, knew that ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... the housework was finished, the girls dressed the happy, wriggling baby in his blue highwayman coat and three-cornered hat, and kept him amused while mother changed her dress and got ready to take him over to granny's. Mother always went to granny's every Saturday, and ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... home with her parents or not, every normal woman longs for a home of her own, and a girl who resents even arranging the flowers on her mother's dinner-table will after marriage cheerfully do quite distasteful housework in the place she calls ...
— Modern marriage and how to bear it • Maud Churton Braby
... the cottage a mile outside the sleepy little town. He had gone there in the first place because it was far removed from everyone and everything he knew, and in some ways the experiment had proved a success. The deaf old woman who came in to do his cooking and housework worried him little, and apparently did not gossip about his actions or his habits; whilst the three rooms he had furnished were more than sufficient ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... apartment-houses, were the drab windows of a group of run-down tenements, which broke the sleek respectability of the well-to-do quarter. In those windows Ruth observed foreign-looking, idle women, not very clean, who had nothing to do after they had completed half an hour of slovenly housework in the morning. They watched their neighbors breathlessly. They peered out with the petty virulent curiosity of the workless at whatever passed in the streets below them. Fifty times a day they could be seen to lean far out on their fire-escapes and follow with slowly craning ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... fear getting up and making my own bed and washing my own handkerchiefs and blouses, and renovating last year's hats to make them look like this year's. I fear a poor husband and a procession of children, and doing the housework with an incompetent maid, or maybe without any at all. Those are the ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... must be brought up in ignorance and kept to housework only? Is she to be man's handmaid or his help-meet? Will he dispense with her greatest charm, her companionship? To keep her a slave will he prevent her knowing and feeling? Will he make an automaton of her? No, indeed, that is not ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... Sale—She is a good cook, and ready at all kinds of housework. None can exceed her if she is kept from liquor. She is 24 years of age—no husband nor children. Price $200; ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... or writing Louisa loved her mother, and by and by, as the little girl began to grow into a big girl, she felt very sad to see her dear mother work so hard. She helped all she could with the housework, but nothing could really help the tired mother except money; she needed money for food and clothes, and some one grown up, to help in the house. But there never was enough money for these things, and Louisa's mother grew more and more weary, and sometimes ill. ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... mornings, while Mrs. Osbourne was doing her housework in the little cabin on the hillside, Indians would gather outside and press their faces against the window-panes, their eyes following her about the room. There were blinds, but she was afraid to give offense ...
— The Life of Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson • Nellie Van de Grift Sanchez
... her sister, and the farmer lived too far away to know as much as other people knew about the advent of the Mr. Foxleys. Had there been a sister or a daughter, or a wife or a mother, or an aunt or a cousin about the farm, he would have known very quickly. As it was, the girl who did the housework on the farm was as ignorant of gossip, its existence and the laws which govern its nature, as any male farm hand could be. When Farmer Wise put up his horses at the Inn three or four times a year, and sat down in the cheerful bar-room ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... doing three women's work,—attending to my own and my son's housework, and caring for his wife and new-born babe; but I am equal to it, when I think of all the Lord has done for me! Why, Mrs. S., I was cured with that first treatment you gave me, I know; because I went out to gather ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... that I give up my work, and against all my convictions I have yielded to his wishes. But on my part I have stipulated that I must be permitted to do the housework of our nest, with the occasional help of a laundress. I will be no parasite wife who neither helps her husband in or out of the home. But the little devils must be busy laughing just now. I, who have hardly hung up my own nightgown ...
— Revelations of a Wife - The Story of a Honeymoon • Adele Garrison
... its severity; and this spirit seemed to her a veritable cult, a sort of religion, wherein the Old Maid was the priestess, the Spinster the officiating devotee, the thing worshipped the Great Unbeautiful, and the ritual unremitting, unrelenting Housework. She ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... idea of teaching. Sewing she resolved not to try till every thing else failed; and, after a few more attempts to get writing to do, she said to herself, in a fit of humility and good sense: "I'll begin at the beginning, and work my way up. I'll put my pride in my pocket, and go out to service. Housework I like, and can do well, thanks to Aunt Betsey. I never thought it degradation to do it for her, so why should I mind doing it for others if they pay for it? It isn't what I want, but it's better than ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... five sons and two daughters, a fine wholesome brood, who were all quite young, the eldest being about fifteen. The children were reared and trained with great care, and without distinction of sexes: they were all taught to do housework. Family worship was held morning and night. If the father was unavoidably absent, the mother took the service, and if both were absent, the eldest of the family, either son or daughter, took it. The house was a hive of industry and religious fervour; everything about it was neat and spotlessly clean. ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... joy had been assuming peculiar expression. Sitting down for more than a few minutes at a time became a strain. He insisted on helping Tressa with the housework, and his interest in the books they were reading was so perfunctory that Conrad and Tressa went on to the end without bothering about his attention. Not infrequently he strolled down to the river bottom and paced up and down beneath the trestle. Again he would walk out ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... hands could make it. The carpet was as crumbless and lintless as if meals were never taken there, nor work seen; and yet a little table ready set for dinner forbade the one conclusion, and a huge basket of naperies in one corner showed that Miss Janet's industry did not spend itself in housework alone. Before the fire stood a pretty good-sized kettle, and a very appetizing smell came from it to Ellen's nose. In spite of sorrow and anxiety, her ride had made her hungry. It was not without pleasure that she saw her kind hostess arm herself with a deep plate and a tin dipper, and carefully ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... in and waited; though Mrs. McPhee had told me time and again that she would thank no one to do her housework while she had her health. But this was a servant with a cap, and I saw Mrs. McPhee swell and swell under her garance-coloured gown. There is no small free-board to Janet McPhee, nor is garance any subdued ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... the present state of things it is impossible for woman—that is, the family woman, the house-mother—to enjoy the delights of culture. External activities, especially the two insatiable, all-devouring ones which know neither end nor beginning,—housework and sewing-work,—these demand her time, her energies, in short, demand herself,—the whole of her. Yes, the whole, and more too; there is not enough of her to go round. There might possibly be enough, ...
— A Domestic Problem • Abby Morton Diaz
... Louise, "Sarah Judd will be useful to us. This is Aunt Hannah's vacation, as well as a vacation for the rest of us, and a rest from cooking and housework would do her ...
— Mary Louise • Edith van Dyne (one of L. Frank Baum's pen names)
... and Tasso, I am ashamed to tell you how slow I have been. Between company and housework and sewing I have my hands about full, and precious little time for reading and study. Still, I feel that I live a life of too much ease. I should love to spend the rest of my existence in the actual service of the Lord, without a question as to its ease ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... should never be allowed to do that; I must go to school every day, and then I have my exercises to do, and to help mother with the housework; the baby to mind; and—O I am ...
— Fairy Tales from the German Forests • Margaret Arndt
... the men being out of the house except at meal time, there was to a certain degree, a cessation of hostilities. Nora gradually acquired some knowledge of housework. She learned to cook fairly well and always helped with the washing, rarely complaining of her aching arms and back. The only indication she had that she was making progress was that Gertie complained less. Praise, of course, was ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... days the devoted husband did the housework and waited on the invalid. Then he wearied, and, at his wife's suggestion, a small girl was engaged as servant. She did most of the nursing as well, and, having a great love for the sensational, took a grave view of her ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... stirring around to pick up a few extra dollars here and there to make both ends meet; once we knew for the first time the satisfaction and added joy that come from some responsible person to help with the housework—we felt that we were soaring through life with our feet hardly ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... of high rank, conversed in pure Latin, and could even read and write. Aemilia, too, had become a great favourite in the house. The farmer's wife wondered at seeing one, with two slaves to wait upon her, active and busy, interested in all that went on, and eager to learn every detail of the housework. ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... ago I was so run down that I could not spank the baby. After taking three bottles of your Elegant Elixir I am now able to thrash my husband in addition to my other housework. God ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... women who do the paying and oversee things generally. They are engaged in all kinds of business for themselves and are employed by scores of thousands. Many thousands carry work home where they can take care of their children, do the housework and ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume VI • Various
... relative to serve as a menial until the debt should be paid. The pawned persons "were treated as members of the creditor's family and never exposed to harsh usage." The effect of interference by the English was that the wives and daughters of the great men suddenly had to do all the housework. "Debtor and creditor lost confidence in each other."[701] "There is a detestable and actual slavery in these hills, which is now only carried on by independent tribes, beyond English jurisdiction. This is the captivity to the bow and spear,—men and women taken prisoners by force in war, and ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... Johnnie and Grizzle with her, making Grizzle do all the housework, and every morning she went to the cubby-hole in which she kept Johnnie and gave him a good breakfast, and later in the day a good dinner, and at night a good supper; but after she gave him his supper she would say ...
— Europa's Fairy Book • Joseph Jacobs
... sighed Aunt Pettitoes. "And they drink bucketfuls of milk; I shall have to get another cow! Good little Spot shall stay at home to do the housework; but the others must go. Four little boy pigs and four little girl pigs are too many altogether." "Yus, yus, yus," said Aunt Pettitoes, "there will be more ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... parrot said, "I think we all ought to do the housework ourselves. At least we can do that much. After all, it is for our sakes that the old man finds himself so lonely and ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... Polly left Jim to watch her—he was as faithful as a dog, poor fellow!—and went in to Preston to try and get somebody to stay with her through the day. Polly Jane went first to 'Squire Stevens's, thinking that Abby Matilda had less housework to do than most of the girls; her mother kept a hired woman, and perhaps she'd be willing to go for one day; but Abby was afraid of catching the fever, and said 'they'd better have Widow Burt taken ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... decided that he simply must have more help in the cooking and housework. He had instructed Mrs. Spaniel to send the washing to the steam-laundry, and spend her three days in the kitchen instead. A huge bundle had come back from the laundry, and he had paid the driver $15.98. With ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... from the rocky farm that the father and mother looked about them to see how they could add to it. Miranda Conwell turned to her needle and often sewed far into the night, making coats, neckties, any work she could obtain that would bring in a few dollars. She was never idle. The moment her housework was done, her needle was flying, and Russell had ever before him the picture of his patient mother, working, ever working, for the family good. The only time her hands rested was when she read her children ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... of six or seven assistants and teachers. Over three thousand Refugees were received and aided here in the six months from February to July, 1865, and both children and adults were taught not only elementary studies but housework, cooking and laundry work; the women were paid moderate wages with which to clothe themselves and their children, and were taught some of the first lessons of a better civilization. In the superintendence of this good work, Mrs. Alfred Clapp, ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... wishes to remain free takes a mistress, whom he also makes mistress of his house, and who thus becomes an illegitimate wife who may separate from him when it pleases her. Some women contract this kind of union without being actually paid, simply for their maintenance, in return for which they do the housework. Here there is no actual sale of the body. The contract may be indefinite or limited. In such cases the effect of money on the attitude of the man toward his mistress is evident; his tone is generally less respectful toward paid mistresses ...
— The Sexual Question - A Scientific, psychological, hygienic and sociological study • August Forel
... Saturday, and there was no school. Bert had gone off coasting on his new bob, but Nan did not want to go, her mother having asked her to stay and help with the dusting. But now the little bit of housework was over, ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at School • Laura Lee Hope
... said, "you must have been. Just playing at cooking and housework, reading aloud to her while she drew—yes, she told me that. And the flowers and all her little trumpery odds and ends about. Awfully amusing ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... the Kindergarten. There are still thousands of persons who suppose it is only a superior sort of day-nursery where children may be safely kept and innocently employed while the mother gets the housework done. ...
— Study of Child Life • Marion Foster Washburne
... do all the housework, but she managed to do her duty and found spare time for reading. He gave her the works of Dostoievsky and Tourgenieff to read. Those descriptive of the beauties of nature she liked best. Their conversations ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... know what freak of fortune caused the royal exile to turn up at Rivermouth; but turn up she did, a few months after arriving in this country, and was hired by my grandmother to do "general housework" for the sum of four shillings ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... her housework, my mother would hum some of the songs of the famous wedding bard, Eliakim Zunzer, who later ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan |
