"Linsey" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... almost exclusively their own. Wool and flax were raised in abundance in the North and South. "Every farm house," says Coman, the economic historian, "was a workshop where the women spun and wove the serges, kerseys, and linsey-woolseys which served for the common wear." By the close of the seventeenth century, New England manufactured cloth in sufficient quantities to export it to the Southern colonies and to the West Indies. As the industry developed, mills were erected for the more difficult process of dyeing, weaving, ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard
... us, or tell us how the poor feel; but how he should feel in their situation, which we do not want to know. He does not weave the web of their lives of a mingled yarn, good and ill together, but clothes them all in the same dingy linsey-woolsey, or tinges them with a green and yellow melancholy. He blocks out all possibility of good, cancels the hope, or even the wish for it as a weakness; check-mates Tityrus and Virgil at the game of pastoral cross-purposes, disables all his adversary's white pieces, ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Whilst the subject was under discussion betwixt us, she related many anecdotes of the good deeds of the "young gentlemen and ladies" in a certain clergyman's family where she had lived as nursemaid in her younger days; and my imagination was fired by dreams of soup-cans, coal-clubs, linsey petticoats comforting the rheumatic limbs of aged women, opportune blankets in ...
— A Flat Iron for a Farthing - or Some Passages in the Life of an only Son • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... say that his sister's accomplishments were innumerable. After only a few months on the border she could prepare the flax and weave a linsey dresscloth with admirable skill. Sometimes to humor Betty the Colonel's wife would allow her to get the dinner, and she would do it in a manner that pleased her brothers, and called forth golden praises from the cook, old Sam's wife who had been with the family ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... throws open the lid and hurriedly empties it of the few mean articles of clothing it contains. From the bottom of the box she takes out a small gaudily framed picture) Oh, I am so glad! There's my linsey, ...
— The Squire - An Original Comedy in Three Acts • Arthur W. Pinero
... into the waggonette; before long they were at Donohoe's Hotel, and Mary Grant was soon rigged out in an outfit from Mrs. Donohoe's best clothes—a pale-green linsey bodice and purple skirt—everything, including Mrs. Donohoe's boots, being about four sizes too big. But she looked by no means an unattractive little figure, with her brown eyes and healthy colour showing above ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... "Well, I want some linsey for mine. Go you on, and when you've made an end I'll ask good Master Clere to show me some, without Mistress Clere's ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... and similar purposes. It was bought by the pound, East India cotton, in small quantities; the seeds were picked out one by one, by hand; it was carded on wool-cards, and spun into a rather intractable yarn which was used as warp for linsey-woolsey and rag carpets. Even in England no cotton weft, no all-cotton fabrics, were made till after 1760, till Hargreave's time. Sometimes a twisted yarn was made of one thread of cotton and one of wool which was knit into durable stockings. Cotton sewing-thread was unknown ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... Susan wore Linsey-Woolsey from Monday to Saturday. She never had tampered with her Venus de Milo Topography and she did not even ...
— Ade's Fables • George Ade
... ejaculated Jacob, who, one might seriously have inferred, had been raised on a guano bag, and slipped very unexpectedly into a suit of linsey-woolsey grey mixed; 'I see'd the Virtue at anchor right broad off the nets, which the skipper kept a facksinatin eye on, as he paced up and ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... intervale and upland, meadow and pasture which he had cleared. His neighbors said he was getting forehanded. Several times during the year he made a journey to Boston with his cheeses, beef, pigs, turkeys, geese, chickens, a barrel of apple-sauce, bags filled with wool, together with webs of linsey-woolsey spun and woven by his wife and daughter. He never failed to have a talk with Mr. Adams and Doctor Warren, John Hancock, and others foremost in resisting the aggressions of the mother country upon the rights and liberties of the Colonies. ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the wondering Ichabod entered the hall, which formed the centre of the mansion, and the place of usual residence. Here rows of resplendent pewter, ranged on a long dresser, dazzled his eyes. In one corner stood a huge bag of wool, ready to be spun; in another, a quantity of linsey-woolsey just from the loom; ears of Indian corn, and strings of dried apples and peaches, hung in gay festoons along the walls, mingled with the gaud of red peppers; and a door left ajar gave him a peep into the best parlor, where ...
— The Legend of Sleepy Hollow • Washington Irving
... you, Miss Crystal, it is the same tender heart as ever, I see. Yes, you shall hear all I know; and that's little enough, I'll be bound." And so saying, she hustled up her dress over her linsey petticoat, and, taking a tin dipper from the dresser, was presently heard calling cheerfully to her milky favorite in the paddock, on her ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... tell; But when those flowing tears shall cease to flow, Why—then the voice must speak again, you know. Rude and unskilful in the poet's trade, 170 I kept no Naiads by me ready made; Ne'er did I colours high in air advance, Torn from the bleeding fopperies of France;[87] No flimsy linsey-woolsey scenes I wrote, With patches here and there, like Joseph's coat. Me humbler themes befit: secure, for me, Let play-wrights smuggle nonsense duty free; Secure, for me, ye lambs, ye lambkins! bound, And frisk and frolic o'er the fairy ground. Secure, for me, thou pretty little fawn! 180 ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... likewise descended from noble Knights (of Labor) and dames of high degree. He traces his lineage in unbroken line to that haughty Johann Jakob who came to America in the steerage, wearing a Limburger linsey-woolsey and a pair of wooden shoes. Beginning life in the new world as a rat-catcher, he soon acquired a gallon jug of Holland gin, a peck of Brummagem jewelry, and robbed the Aborigines right and left. He wore the same shirt the year 'round, ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... there were shoemakers, tanners, weavers, dyers, etc. All the goods worn by the servants, male and female, were manufactured on the place. The wool was sheared from the sheep, and went through every process needed to produce the linsey-woolsey garments of men and women. The women were allowed to choose the colors of their dresses, and the wool was dyed in accordance with their tastes. Two of these dresses were allowed for a winter's wear, and each woman was furnished with a ...
— A Military Genius - Life of Anna Ella Carroll of Maryland • Sarah Ellen Blackwell
... pair of sheep shears cut out the coat, while Aunt Betsy held the pattern down on the heavy grey cloth. The goods were of the home-made quality, known as "linsey-woolsey," a material worn by farmers almost universally in those days. The household scissors were too dull to cut it, hence the sheep shears were ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... &c. v.; implex[obs3], composite, half-and-half, linsey- woolsey, chowchow, hybrid, mongrel, heterogeneous; motley &c. (variegated) 440; miscellaneous, promiscuous, indiscriminate; miscible. Adv. among, amongst, amid, amidst; with; in the ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... add a word as to its remarkable evenness and lustre, at times when Mrs. Perkins grew too diffuse about Emma Jane's complexion. She threw herself wholeheartedly on her niece's side when it became a question between a crimson or a brown linsey-woolsey dress, and went through a memorable struggle with her sister concerning the purchase of a red bird for Rebecca's black felt hat. No one guessed the quiet pleasure that lay hidden in her heart when she watched the girl's dark head bent over her lessons ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... buildings erected by King Robert and described by Helgaldus. Nearly everything has disappeared. What has become of the chamber of the chancellery, where Saint Louis consummated his marriage? the garden where he administered justice, "clad in a coat of camelot, a surcoat of linsey-woolsey, without sleeves, and a sur-mantle of black sandal, as he lay upon the carpet with Joinville?" Where is the chamber of the Emperor Sigismond? and that of Charles IV.? that of Jean the Landless? Where is the staircase, from which Charles VI. promulgated ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... while written words remain fixed, become idols even to the writer, found wooden dogmatisms, and preserve flies of obvious error in the amber[3] of the truth. Last and chief, while literature, gagged with linsey-woolsey, can only deal with a fraction of the life of man, talk goes fancy free[4] and may call a spade a spade.[5] It cannot, even if it would, become merely aesthetic or merely classical like literature. A jest intervenes, the solemn humbug is dissolved ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... And the worst of the matter was, that the first energetic movement essential to one downright stroke of real labor was sure to put a finish to these poor habiliments. So we gradually flung them all aside, and took to honest homespun and linsey-woolsey, as preferable, on the whole, to the plan recommended, I think, by Virgil,—"Ara nudus; sere nudus, "—which as Silas Foster remarked, when I translated the maxim, would be apt to astonish ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Ellick, the negro foreman; and Ellick was not long in finding Blue Dave a suit of linsey-woolsey clothes, a little warmer and a little drier than those the runaway was in the habit of wearing. Then the big greys were put to the Denham carriage, shawls and blankets were thrown in, ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... of Aragon arrived, with Dona Sol his wife, and they brought with them an hundred armed knights, all having their shields reversed hanging from the saddle bow, and all in grey cloaks, with the hoods rent. And Dona Sol came clad in linsey-woolsey, she and all her women, for they thought that mourning was to be made for the Cid. But when they came within half a league of Osma, they saw the banner of the Cid coming on, and all his company full featly apparelled. And when they drew nigh they ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... his wing as they ast him to sing an' he tried fer t' clear out his throat; He hemmed an' he hawed an' be hawked an' he cawed But he couldn't deliver a note. The swallow was there an' he ushered each pair with his linsey an' ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... of it like you have, Alf, are simply born that way," Cahews smiled. "I never had any turn of that sort. I can talk an old woman into buyin' a dress pattern off of a shelf-worn bolt of linsey, or a pair of shoes too tight for her, but this way you have of buying a feller's wagon that breaks down in the road and having it patched up by a blacksmith that owes you money, and selling the wagon for more than it cost new—well, as I ...
— Dixie Hart • Will N. Harben
... often called her that, in a fond, protecting way; but it sounded most oddly from Jem, he was such a weak, swaggering sparrow of a little chap. He stretched his hands as high as he could reach up to her hips, and smoothed her linsey dress down: if it had been her face, the touch could not have been ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... more than thirty-five, but he had a worn look that made him seem older. He left the stile, entered that part of his house which was the store, traded a quart of thick molasses for a coonskin and a cake of beeswax, to an old dame in linsey-woolsey, put his letter away, an went into the kitchen. His wife was there, constructing some dried apple pies; a slovenly urchin of ten was dreaming over a rude weather-vane of his own contriving; his small sister, close upon four years of age, was sopping corn-bread in ...
— The Gilded Age, Complete • Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner
... blanket." By 1768 he was manufacturing the chief part of his requirements, for in that year his weavers produced eight hundred and fifteen and three-quarter yards of linen, three hundred and sixty-five and one-quarter yards of woollen, one hundred and forty-four yards of linsey, and forty yards of cotton, or a total of thirteen hundred and sixty-five and one-half yards, one man and five negro girls having been employed. When once the looms were well organized an infinite variety ...
— The True George Washington [10th Ed.] • Paul Leicester Ford
... branches of pine and cedar and juniper; it made translucent the leaves of the maples; it shimmered on Fleda's brown hair as she pulled a rose from the bush at the window, and gave it to the forlorn creature in the grey "linsey-woolsey" dress and the loose blue flannel jacket, whose skin was coarsened by outdoor life, but who had something of real beauty in the intense blue of her eyes. She had been a very comely figure in her best days, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the door by an old Indian woman, who seemed to have reached the age of three-score at least. She was clad in the ordinary linsey of the period; and the long hair falling upon her shoulders was scarcely touched with grey. She wore beads and other simple trinkets, and the expression of her countenance ...
— The Last of the Foresters • John Esten Cooke
... (Manchester). You will find, for a screen to use in the open air, that the white cotton you refer to will be far too light. "Linsey woolsey" forms an admirable screen, and by being left loose upon a stretcher it may be looped up so as to form drapery, &c. If you cannot depend upon the collodion you purchase in your city, pray use your ingenuity, and ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 180, April 9, 1853 • Various
... my slippers, and was walking down stairs on tiptoe, holding up my linsey-woolsey frock, when I saw the door of my great-grandfather's room ajar. I pushed it open, went in, and saw a very old man, his head bound with a red-silk handkerchief, bolstered in bed. His wife, grandmother-in-law, sat by the fire reading ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... and one of great importance. The matrons, arrayed in their best petticoats and linsey jackets, home-spun by their own wheels, would proceed on the intended afternoon visit. They wore capacious pockets, with scissors, pin-cushion and keys hanging from their girdle, outside of their dress; and reaching the neighbor's house the visitors ...
— Peter Stuyvesant, the Last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam • John S. C. Abbott
... been possible, as to pledge themselves not to die, until the Stamp Act, compelling them to write their wills on stamp-paper, was also repealed. This agreement was so rigidly observed, that the men took to wearing jeans, and the women linsey-woolseys, which they wove in their own looms; the old ladies drank sassafras-tea, sweetened with maple-sugar; and old gentlemen wrote no wills, but declared them on their death-bed to their weeping families by word of mouth. Whether the people stopped marrying or not, it is not ...
— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady
... idlers, From afar and near flocked hither; And the "continental coppers" Were in speedy circulation. Spinning, weaving, sewing, knitting, Filled the women's dextrous fingers, And the homespun and the linsey Were the choice and boasted fabrics, Furnished strong and useful garments, In the day of early settlers. Social gatherings were frequent, 'Round log fires and tallow candles, And the quaint old invitations To some public house ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... woolen gown, and white linen cap, her gray hair and wrinkled face reflecting the bright firelight, the long stocking growing under her busy needles, while she watched the youngling of the flock in the cradle by her side. The good wife, in linsey-woolsey short-gown and red petticoat steps lightly back and forth in calf pumps beside the great wheel, or poising gracefully on the right foot, the left hand extended with the roll or bat, while with a wheel finger in the other, she gives the wheel a few swift turns for a ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... Dress Flannel, French Flannel, Shaker Flannel, Indigo Blue, Mackinaw, Navy Twilled Flannel, Silk Warp, Baby Flannel. Florentine, Foule, Frieze, Gloria, Granada, Grenadine, Henrietta Cloth, Homespun, Hop Sacking, Jeans, Kersey, Kerseymere, Linsey Woolsey, Melrose, Melton, Meltonette, Merino, Mohair Brilliantine, Montagnac, Orleans, Panama Cloth, Prunella, Sacking, Sanglier, Sebastopol, Serge, Shoddy, Sicilian, Sultane, Tamise, Tartans, Thibet, Tricot, Tweed, Veiling, Venetian, Vigogne (Vicuna), ...
— Textiles • William H. Dooley
... who garrisoned Fort Pitt, were William Childers, John and Samuel Pringle and Joseph Linsey. In 1761, these four men deserted from the fort, and ascended the Monongahela as far as to the mouth of George's creek (the site afterwards selected by Albert Gallatin, for the town of Geneva.) Here they remained awhile; but not liking the [90] situation crossed over to the head of the ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... which the silvery little voice would say "Pooh!" But all the same the slim little figure would shiver in the hot sunshine inside its short blue linsey-woolsey frock, and the dark eyes would grow larger than ever at the prospect, especially at the ripping by the giant pieuvre, in which they both believed devoutly, and eventually she would promise not to throw her ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... this moment a small crowd was visible in one of the further drawing-rooms, moving obsequiously along in reverent attendance upon the great Towle, Mrs. Bridgeman and a thickset, red-faced lady, without a waist and plainly clad in untrimmed linsey-wolsey, who was speaking authoritatively to a hysterical-looking young girl, upon whose narrow shoulder she rested a heavy, fat-fingered hand ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... with a two-weeks' beard, strings over his shoulders holding up to his armpits a pair of copperas-colored linsey-woolsey pants, the legs of which reached a very little below the knee; shoes without stockings; a faded, broad-brimmed hat, which had once been black, and a pipe in his mouth—casting a glance at the empty guards of our boat and uttering a grunt as he rose from fastening ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... critics who regarded care and elaboration in the mounting of plays as destructive of the real spirit of the actor's art. Betterton had to meet this reproach when he introduced scenery in lieu of linsey-woolsey curtains; but he replied, sensibly enough, that his scenery was better than the tapestry with hideous figures worked upon it which had so long distracted the senses of play-goers. He might have asked his critics whether they wished to see Ophelia played by a boy of sixteen, as in the ...
— The Drama • Henry Irving
... entirely too cumbersome for indoor wear, and Rachel put on instead one of Aunt Debby's "linsey" gowns, that hung from a peg, and laughed at the prim, demure mountain girl she saw in the glass. After a good breakfast had still farther raised her spirits she ventured upon a little pleasantry about the dramatic possibilities ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... all this, yet my eyes rested upon something else. A man lay, bent double across an overturned bench, in a posture which hid his face from view. His body was there alone, although a child's shoe lay on the floor, and a woman's linsey dress dangled from a hook against the wall. I crept forward, my heart pounding madly, until I could gain sight of his face. He was a big fellow, not more than thirty, with sandy hair and beard, and a pugnacious jaw, his coarse ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... feet and two inches tall, weighed one hundred and fifty pounds, had long arms and legs, slender body, large and awkward hands and feet, but not a large head. He is pictured as wearing coon-skin cap, linsey-woolsey shirt, and buckskin breeches that were often too short. He said that his father taught him to work but never taught him to love it—but he did work hard and without complaining. He was said to do much more work than any ordinary man at splitting rails, chopping, mowing, ploughing, ...
— Life of Abraham Lincoln - Little Blue Book Ten Cent Pocket Series No. 324 • John Hugh Bowers
... set my ma to cuttin' patterns and sewin' right away. She give all de women a bolt or linsey to make clothes and ma cut de pattern. Us all have de fine drawers down to de ankle, buttoned with pretty white buttons on de bottom. Lawsy, ma sho' cut a mite of drawers, with sewin' for her eleven gals and four boys, too. In de summertime we all git a bolt of blue cloth and white tape for trimmin', ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Texas Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... bloomer; a brown one trimmed with brown ribbon. An old lady sits in front of me who wears a white cap much after the fashion of yours, and on top of that is perked a monstrous bloomer trimmed with black gauze ribbon. Her dress is linsey-woolsey, and for outside garment she wears a black silk half-handkerchief, as do all the rest. No light dress or ribbon is seen. I must tell you now something that amused A. and me very much yesterday at dinner. A French gentleman, who married ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... among the hindmost chairs, and there he had to stay until everybody had passed out. "Yes, I was very anxious to take part in this great day," he said, "and I wanted to bring mother with me, but she thought her clothes weren't respectable enough." Kalle wore a new gray linsey-woolsey suit; he had grown smaller and more bent ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... the last day of the ugly linsey. Simmons got through her task with great quickness. She was a woman of taste, else she had not been Lady Anne's maid. Lady Anne was more particular about her garments than most young women. And, having once made up her ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... who was quite a noted authoress, extremely well read and learned, and two younger daughters. We found several high officers were also callers, rigged out in their best uniforms, with their proper insigma of rank in golden stars and lacing. We were in our new gray jeans jackets and pants and linsey shirts, lately gotton from home at Columbus. But that did not make any difference at all. We were welcomed, introduced all around, entertained on an equality. In fact one of the higher officers we found to be an old college ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... abominations of art, was scrupulously pomatomed back from their foreheads with a candle, and covered with a little cap of quilted calico, which fitted exactly to their heads. Their petticoats of linsey-woolsey were striped with a variety of gorgeous dyes—though I must confess these gallant garments were rather short, scarce reaching below the knee; but then they made up in the number, which generally equalled that of the gentleman's ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... everybody knows there is no surer way of bringing ill luck down than that! I say I won't have it put off! But we can't have any party with no molasses in town! Oh, dear! I might as well be married in the back kitchen with a linsey gown on, as if I were the daughter of old ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Then I had been a gentleman; now I was a shopkeeper, a creature about the level of a redemptioner. The thing was so childish that it made me angry. It was right for one of them to sell his tobacco on his own wharf to a tarry skipper who cheated him grossly, but wrong for me to sell kebbucks and linsey-woolsey at an even bargain. I gave up the puzzle. Some folks' notions of gentility are ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... steps, he saw quantities of blood on them, and on returning, saw them again. She had been thinly clad—barefooted in very cold weather. Sometimes she had shoes—sometimes not. In the beginning of the winter she had linsey dresses, since then, calico ones. During the last four months, had noticed many scars on her person. At one time had one of her eyes tied up for a week. During the last three months seemed declining, and had become stupified. Mr. Winters ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... named stores. The stock carried at the supply store amounted to something like $350,000 to $500,000. This stock consisted of general merchandise. It was to this store one went to buy coffee, sugar, soda, tobacco and bacon, calico, domestic, linsey, jeans, leather and gingham, officers' clothing, tin buckets, wooden tubs, coffee pots, iron "skillets-and leds," iron ovens, crowbars, shovels, plows, and harness. To this store the settlers came to buy molasses, ...
— The Second William Penn - A true account of incidents that happened along the - old Santa Fe Trail • William H. Ryus
... years to come. In height and breadth she most nearly resembled a sugar-hogshead, whose rolling, pitching motion, when trundled along on edge, she emulated in her gait. To the ungainliness of her figure her mode of dressing not a little contributed. She usually wore a thick linsey-wolsey gown, with enormous pockets on either side, and, like Nora Creina's, it certainly inflicted no undue restrictions upon her ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... genius was just out of linsey-woolsey dresses and wore trousers buttoned to a calico waist, she began preparing him for college. The old lady had loved a college man in her youth, and she judged Harvard by the Harvard man she knew best. And the Harvard man she saw in her waking dreams, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... to linsey-woolsey, though the weavers of Germantown make fine goods, and there is silk already made in our own town. Instead of so much gossiping and sitting with idle hands we must make our own laces. It is taught largely, I hear, at Boston, ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... long remained a curious cross between that of the Indians and that of the white people of the older sections. In earlier times the hunting-shirt—made of linsey, coarse nettle-bark linen, buffalo-hair, or even dressed deerskins—was universally worn by the men, together with breeches, leggings, and moccasins. The women and children were dressed in simple garments of linsey. In warm ...
— The Old Northwest - A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond, Volume 19 In - The Chronicles Of America Series • Frederic Austin Ogg
... be cultivated, and as the wolves were killed off the sheep-folds increased, and garments resembling those of civilization were spun and woven, and cut and sewed, by the women of the family. When a man had a suit of jeans colored with butternut-dye, and his wife a dress of linsey, they could appear with the best at a wedding or a quilting frolic. The superfluous could not have been said to exist in a community where men made their own buttons, where women dug roots in the woods to make their tea with, where many children never saw a stick of candy until after they ...
— Abraham Lincoln: A History V1 • John G. Nicolay and John Hay
... the whole of the letter so awkwardly spelt, and so unmercifully blotted and bedawbed, that you would have thought it had been the elegant epistle of Tony Clodhopper to his grandmother Goody Linsey Woolsey. As for his mamma, poor gentlewoman! when she first opened it, she thought it had been sent to her by some impudent shoe black or chimney sweeper; but when she had directed her eyes to the bottom and read (though not, I assure you, without ...
— Vice in its Proper Shape • Anonymous
... in the street drew them to the window. The city crier, in striped linsey-woolsey jacket and breeches, and with a yellow band across his shoulders, stood there, beat upon his drum, and proclaimed aloud from a written paper many wonderful things which were to be ...
— O. T. - A Danish Romance • Hans Christian Andersen
... in linsey woolsey, with a checked apron on, she would still have been lovely. A white rose is lovely even in a cracked tea-cup. But Colonel Augustus Allen was a rich man, and his wife could afford to dress elegantly. Horace followed ...
— Little Folks Astray • Sophia May (Rebecca Sophia Clarke)
... the door step, clasping her left knee with little white hands that had no sign of labour on them but the mark of the needle on the left forefinger. At her side, Christina stood, her tall straight figure fittingly clad in a striped blue and white linsey petticoat, and a little josey of lilac print, cut low enough to show the white, firm throat above it. Her fine face radiated thought and feeling; she was on the verge of that experience which glorifies the simplest life. ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr
... helped up here," said Michael Lambourne, looking at the gateway and gate, "if this fellow's suspicious humour should refuse us admission altogether, as it is like he may, in case this linsey-wolsey fellow of a mercer's visit to his premises has disquieted him. But, no," he added, pushing the huge gate, which gave way, "the door stands invitingly open; and here we are within the forbidden ground, without other impediment ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... She was dressed in a tattered black stuff gown, discoloured by various stains, and intended, it would seem, from the remnants of rusty crape with which it was here and there tricked out, to represent the garb of widowhood, and held in her arms a sleeping infant, swathed in the folds of a linsey-woolsey shawl. ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... of Oloffe the Dreamer, Walter the Doubter, and the other worthies of the golden age; the same broad-brimmed hats and broad-bottomed breeches; the same knee-buckles and shoe-buckles; the same close-quilled caps and linsey-woolsey short-gowns and petticoats; the same implements and utensils and forms and fashions; in a word, Communipaw at the present day is a picture of what New-Amsterdam was before the conquest. The "intelligent traveller" aforesaid, as he treads its streets, is struck ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... sat on the opposite sides of a little square table in the bay-window, were both between ten and eleven years old, but could not have been taken for twins, nor even for sisters, so unlike were their features and complexion; though their dress, very dark grey linsey, and brown holland aprons, was exactly the same, except that Sylvia's was enlivened by scarlet braid, Kate's darkened by black—and moreover, Kate's apron was soiled, and the frock bore traces of a great darn. In fact, new frocks for the pair were generally made necessary by Kate's tattered ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... is the traditionally correct thing, and a German peasant girl would think herself as unfavorably conspicuous in an untraditional costume as an English servant-girl would now think herself in a "linsey-wolsey" apron or a thick muslin cap. In many districts no medical advice would induce the rustic to renounce the tight leather belt with which he injures his digestive functions; you could more easily persuade him to smile on a new communal system than on the unhistorical invention of braces. ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... traveling about the lakes and rivers. At that time the Chippewas were capable of making good living without the Government annuities, which consisted of a cash payment to each man, woman and child of from $5.00 to $10.00 and about an equal amount in value of flour, pork, tobacco, blankets, shawls, linsey-woolsy, flannels, calico, gilling twine for fish ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... forest,—and then, wo is me for poor Marian, shivering in her slight silken kirtle in the midst of a faded bower! So that we were sometimes compelled per-force to change our fancy, metamorphose Marian into a formidable Girzy, and provide her with a suit of linsey-woolsey against the weather, and a pair of pattens big enough to have frightened all the fallow-deer of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... to hear this, and to see her son in a linsey-woolsey coat with large brass buttons, and six pairs of breeches—the gift of the city of Amsterdam—stride up the streets of New Amstel, with copper buckles in his shoes and his hair tied in an eel-skin queue. The schout, ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... gowns of very coarse homespun and home-woven cloth, composed of linen and wool, and called linsey-woolsey, very coarse shoes, and sometimes with buckskin gloves of their own manufacture. If any one chanced to have a ring or pretty buckle, it was ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... disappoint you," Angela answered coldly; "but Papillon and I have agreed that I am always to be her spinster aunt, and am to keep her house when she is married, and wear a linsey gown and a bunch of keys at my girdle, like Mrs. Hubbuck, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... by a tall, spare, respectable-looking old woman in a black linsey dress, white apron and neck shawl, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... pitched in a high key, and was modified by that nasal twang supposed to indicate Yankee origin; but a habit of giving his declarative sentences an interrogative finish, might denote that he came from the mountain regions of Pennsylvania or Virginia. A pair of linsey pantaloons, a blue hunting shirt with a fringe of red and yellow, moccasins of tanned leather and a woollen hat were his ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... transfuse; infiltrate, dash, tinge, tincture, season, sprinkle, besprinkle, attemper^, medicate, blend, cross; alloy, amalgamate, compound, adulterate, sophisticate, infect. Adj. mixed &c v.; implex^, composite, half-and-half, linsey-woolsey, chowchow, hybrid, mongrel, heterogeneous; motley &c (variegated) 440; miscellaneous, promiscuous, indiscriminate; miscible. Adv. among, amongst, amid, amidst; with; in the midst ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... of China is, happily, not all linsey-woolsey. The following sample is of the finest silk, worthy to ...
— Moon Lore • Timothy Harley
... and grades of dress, ranging from the spruce blue and buff of some of the officers, through the gray homespun and linsey-woolsey of the farmer privates, to the buckskin of the trappers and huntsmen, so there were all manner of weapons, all styles of head-gear and equipment, all fashions of faces. There were Germans of half a dozen different types, there ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... leisure moment she was spinning her future sheets. With all this she was also very kind to a married sister, who had a large family; but she wore no flowers, flounces, nor finery; her six gowns were of a stuff the Scotch call linsey-woolsey; and so in sixteen years' services she had amassed what I have just described. Why can't our girls do as much where wages are higher ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 437 - Volume 17, New Series, May 15, 1852 • Various
... fashionable prairie dress is the fustian frock of the city-bred merchant, furnished with a multitude of pockets capable of accommodating a variety of extra tackling. Then there is the backwoodsman with his linsey or leather hunting-shirt—the farmer with his blue jean coat—the wagoner with his flannel sleeve vest—besides an assortment of other costumes which go to fill ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... remember, they were all made by a little hump- back cobbler who lived at New Wimpole, and used to come by the avenue to the 'Big House,' as it was always called, to measure us. These substantial thick boots and leather gaiters from the village shop, with short linsey skirts, formed our walking attire. And in the Christmas holiday we all tore about the muddy fields ...
— Charles Philip Yorke, Fourth Earl of Hardwicke, Vice-Admiral R.N. - A Memoir • Lady Biddulph of Ledbury
... march again, Dan walking slowly, with his musket striking the ground and his arm on Big Abel's shoulder. Where the lane curved in the hollow, they came upon a white cottage, with a woman milking a spotted cow in the barnyard. As she caught sight of them, she waved wildly with her linsey apron, holding the milk pail carefully between her feet as the spotted cow ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... Erse to one another, and laughing all the time. It was long before they could decide which of the gowns I was to have; they chose at last, no doubt thinking that it was the best, a light-coloured sprigged cotton, with long sleeves, and they both laughed while I was putting it on, with the blue linsey petticoat, and one or the other, or both together, helped me to dress, repeating at least half a dozen times, 'You never had on the like of that before.' They held a consultation of several minutes over a pair of coarse woollen stockings, gabbling ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... wore a cotton slip and for winter my mother knitted at nights after her days work was done so I wore red flannels for underwear and thick linsey for an over-dress, and had knitted stockings and bought shoes. As my Master was a doctor he made his slaves wear suitable clothes in accordance to the weather. We also wore gloves my mother knitted ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... individual was tall, raw-boned, and squarely built, with broad, heavy features, and dull, cold, snake-like eyes. His black, unkempt hair, and long, wiry beard, fell round his face like tow round a mop handle, and his coarse linsey clothes, patched in many places, and smeared with tar and tobacco juice, fitted him as a shirt might fit a bean pole. The legs of his pantaloons were thrust inside of his boots, and he wore a fuzzy woollen hat with battered crown and a broad flapping ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... watched Aunt Janet's arrival with much interest. She was a tall, thin woman, dressed in homespun linsey, with a ruffled linen cap upon her head, and a faded tartan plaid about her shoulders. David's offer had been a great piece of good fortune to her, but she had no intention of letting the obligation rest on her side. Her first words on landing ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... not long ere a pert waiting-maid approached. She drew up her short linsey-woolsey garments from the contaminations beneath her feet. Raising her chin, she ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... at once by a multitude, eager for news of the outside world, from which they had been shut off so long. Torches, held aloft, cast a flickering light over young soldiers in faded uniforms, men in deerskin, and women in home-made linsey. Colden, and his two lieutenants, Wilton and Carson, stood together. They were thin, and their faces brown, but they looked wiry and rugged. Colden shook Robert's ...
— The Rulers of the Lakes - A Story of George and Champlain • Joseph A. Altsheler
... ready for unraveling. 'We know you do not care to be idle' they would say, 'here are some stockings which you would oblige us by unraveling.' If you asked what use they made of the spools of woollen thread obtained by this process, they would answer: 'We use it as the weft of the linsey-woolsey with which we clothe our negroes.' They had negro slaves in those times, and old Tone, a faithful black servant of theirs, who has seen more than a hundred ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... quarter of the ground, and were chained together by the wrists, in gangs of four or five, the outside one having one hand secured by a cord bound about the waist. The men wore woollen hats, and the women neat Madras turbans, and both had thick linsey clothing, warm enough for any weather. Their dusky faces were sleek and oily, and their kinky locks combed as straight as nature would permit. The trader had 'rigged them up,' as a jockey 'rigs up' his horses ...
— The Continental Monthly , Vol. 2 No. 5, November 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... very pretty new felt bonnet of the fashionable shape, trimmed with velvet; it cost only $7, which, of course, was pitifully cheap for Broadway. If thou thinks after $100 it wouldn't be extravagant for me to have a waterproof cloak and a linsey-woolsey morning dress, please to send me patterns of the latter material and a description of waterproofs of various prices. They are so ugly, and I am so ditto, that I feel if a few dollars, more or less, would make me look better, even in a storm, ...
— Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals • Maria Mitchell
... overcome with shame and woe, she burst into fresh tears, and buried her face in the unresponsive folds of a linsey-woolsey petticoat which dangled from ...
— North, South and Over the Sea • M.E. Francis (Mrs. Francis Blundell)
... man, most self-respecting men had suits of jeans. The ugly butcher's knife and tomahawk, which had been essential as was the rapier to the costume of gentlemen two centuries earlier, began now to be more rarely seen at the belt about the waist. The women wore linsey-woolsey gowns, of home manufacture, and dyed according to the taste or skill of the wearer in stripes and bars with the brown juice of the butternut. In the towns it was not long before calico was seen, and ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. I. • John T. Morse
... that creep, going upon all four," whatever they may be, are also considered an abomination; but locusts, bald locusts, and grasshoppers are recommended by name. Even in clothing we are carefully forbidden to use a garment of linen and woolen, yet among our pious Puritan ancestors "linsey-woolsey" was a very common and ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... dismal failure Mary could not feel herself ill-used in having to wear tailor gowns all the year round. She was allowed cotton frocks for very warm weather, and she had pretty gowns for evening wear; but her usual attire was cloth or linsey woolsey, made by the local tailor. Sometimes Maulevrier ordered her a gown or a coat from his own man in Conduit Street, and then she felt herself smart and fashionable. And even the local tailor contrived ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... at the end of fifteen days the Infante of Aragon arrived, with Doa Sol his wife, and they brought with them an hundred armed knights, all having their shields reversed hanging from the saddle bow, and all in grey cloaks, with the hoods rent. And Doa Sol came clad in linsey-woolsey, she and all her women, for they thought that mourning was to be made for the Cid. But when they came within half a league of Osma, they saw the banner of the Cid coming on, and all his company full featly apparelled. And when they drew nigh they perceived that they were weeping, ...
— Chronicle Of The Cid • Various
... others how. Raymond Bonheur put his four children out among kinsmen in four different places, and became drawing-master in a private school. Rosa Bonheur was ten years old: a pug-nosed, square-faced little girl in a linsey-woolsey dress, wooden shoon, with a yellow braid hanging down her back tied with a shoestring. She could draw—all children can draw—and the first things children ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard
... Mr. Mitchell was one leg, Mrs. Mitchell the other, two others were their great friends and their little nephew was the trunk. Frightfully uncomfortable, but they did attract a great deal of attention. They nearly died of the stuffiness, but they took a prize. My friend Linsey usually takes a prize, though he always contrives some agonising torture for himself. The last time he was a letter-box, and he was simply dying of thirst and unable to move. I saved his life by pouring some champagne down the slit for the letters, on the chance. Another friend of mine ...
— Bird of Paradise • Ada Leverson
... devoted similar energies, on Iago's hint, "to suckle fools, and chronicle small beer," they might have tripled the population, or anticipated the colossal vats of Messrs Truman & Co. What myriads of young faces have grown old over worsted parrots and linsey-wolsey maps of the terrestrial globe! What exquisite fingers have been thinned to the bone, in creating carnations to be sat upon, and cowslip beds for the repose of favourite poodles! What bright eyes have been reduced to spectacles, in the remorseless fabrication of patchwork, quilts and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various |
