"Housework" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a sorry home-coming for the new-made bride, daughter of the great Capello! There was not even a drudge to do the housework, which Bianca was compelled to share with her bucolic mother-in-law. It is even said that she was compelled to do laundry-work in order to keep the domestic purse supplied. Her husband had forfeited his meagre salary; she had equally sacrificed ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall
... spared to the actress, since her directions are more often received from the stage manager or manager than from a woman star. True, her life is hard, she has no home comforts; but, then, she has no heavy duties to perform, no housework, bed-making, sweeping, dish-washing, or clothes-washing, and when her work is done, she is her own mistress. She goes and comes at her own will; she has time for self-improvement, but best of all she has something to look forward ...
— Stage Confidences • Clara Morris
... Ruth saw 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
... cabbage soup, roast beef or fowl, and cutlets. The cook succeeded very well, and as our appetites were pretty sharp we voted the dinners a success. We used our own bread, tea, pickles, and preserves, employing the latter as a concluding dish. Our Cossack was not very skillful at housework, and made many blunders in serving. Frequently he brought the soup tureen before arranging the table, and it took him some time to learn the disadvantage ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... another, for I am getting too old to milk, and there never seemed 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, and much to be thankful for, ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... one 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 ...
— Mary Jane: Her Book • Clara Ingram Judson
... eatin' of her up. An' she behaved consid'able well for a few months, as long 's the novelty lasted an' the silk dresses was new. Before Christmas, though, she began to peter out 'n' git slack-twisted. She allers hated housework as bad as a pig would a penwiper, an' Dixie hed to git his own breakfast afore he went to work, or go off on an empty stomach. Many 's the time he 's got her meals for her 'n' took 'em to her on a waiter. ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... with her breath till the turves 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 are milker's hands ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... beside the three big chocolate pots. "The wandering harp players are a little too poetical for me, but I like the idea of a school, Agnes. As I, too, wish to profit from it, I want it to be built on my estate. Lots of our workmen in the foundry have small children, whose mothers are busy with the housework and their small babies. So Agnes and Cornelli are going to found a singing school in Iller-Stream, where all the children will go, whose mothers have no time for singing. Upon their arrival the children shall all be given a bowl ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri
... such a woman as Mrs. Winslow. With Rachel, Felicia found a perfect fellowship. She at once found a part to take in the new work at the Rectangle. In the spirit of her new life she insisted upon helping in the housework at her aunt's, and in a short time demonstrated her ability as a cook so clearly that Virginia suggested that she take charge of the cooking ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... spotted as a desirable and unprotected victim is properly approached by a man who speaks her language and is immediately offered employment at good wages, with all expenses to the destination to be paid by the man. Most frequently laundry work is the bait held out, sometimes housework or employment in a candy ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... Say occasionally, but only between the periods of the attacks of fever. On such visits she would assist the patient, do the housework, and arrange the hides or covers for her. Say harboured a wish to consult her about her disease; but Shotaye studiously avoided any opportunity for confidential talk. One day, however, when the two were alone in the kitchen, and the invalid felt somewhat relieved, ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... woman had said who came to help her with the last offices,—the miller discouraged "neighbors," but this was a matter of decency,—that it was as foolish for a man to have the say over babies and housework as it would be for his wife to want her word in ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... him a last farewell as he disappeared into the woods, then, to occupy herself, she helped Evangelina with what little housework there was to do, later going with her to the garden patch where ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... things was different then. What with the babies and the housework, Betty couldn't get out much, and we didn't see much of her. When we did see her, though, she'd smile and toss her head in the old way and say how happy she was and didn't we think her babies was the prettiest things ever, and all ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... 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
... 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
... said Katie with a cold and insular emphasis, "lives here." And "You," she tried to convey with her eyes, "you, for all your smart black silk, are a hireling. I am Miss Batch. I happen to have a hobby for housework. I have ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm
... the whiskers, or salve for the corns, or something that quickens egg-laying in chickens, or knobs for the cattle to wear on their horns. It's no use your talking, you'd better be walking, and let me go on with my housework, I think; you look dissipated, if truth must be stated, and if you had money you'd spend it ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... hence, misdirected. We have the most indifferent domestic service in the world, but we employ, as a rule, too few servants, such as they are. It is considered altogether sensible and becoming for the mechanic's wife to do her own housework as a bride and as a matron of years. Unless her husband prospers rapidly she is accounted "shiftless" should she hire a washerwoman, while to "keep a girl" is extravagance, or a significant stride toward gentility. The wife of the English joiner or mason or small farmer, ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... waked them to another day of toil. Thursday evening was set for the event. On Wednesday the Lusk girls coming in to discuss, found Judith with shining eyes and crimson cheeks, attacking the simple housework of the cabin. ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... 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 knew ...
— Ruth Fielding of the Red Mill • Alice B. Emerson
... to feel thus, but I did my housework with a light heart that morning, without waking him up, and, as soon as he opened his eyes of his own accord, I said to him: 'Do you know what I discovered ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... inkstand, 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 ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... bodies throughout the night, that breakfast is eaten. The father goes to work, the elder children go to school or into the street, and the mother remains with her crawling, toddling youngsters to do her housework—still in the same room. Here she washes the clothes, filling the pent space with soapsuds and the smell of dirty clothes, and overhead she hangs the wet linen ...
— The People of the Abyss • Jack London
... Farm—alone. Before her marriage she had looked forward to the long evenings with her sewing and reading. She knew that she would be busy enough in the day, for the farmhouse was old and rambling, and she was to have no help in the housework. But she looked forward to quiet, peaceful, lamplit evenings; and only lately, after ten years of married life, had she reluctantly given up the hope of them. For peace was far enough from the old farm kitchen in the evening. It was driven away by John Clay's loud voice, ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... from looking at the sky? have you pleasure from poems? Do you enjoy yourself in the city? or engaged in business? or planning a nomination and election? or with your wife and family? Or with your mother and sisters? or in womanly housework? or the beautiful maternal cares? These also flow onward to others—you and I fly onward, But in due time you and I shall take less interest ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... a Belgian family who had left their own house for the thicker ceilings of the hospital, and the nuns back in the wards with their nervous men. Their servants had left that morning, the three or four sisters in charge had had to do all the cooking and housework as well as look after their patients, and now they were keeping calm and smiling, to subdue as best they could the fears of the Belgian wounded, who were ready to jump out of bed, whatever their condition, rather than fall into ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... she 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 the teaching ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... incline our hearts to keep this law." The music ceased. He heard the organist speaking, up in the loft; criticising, no doubt: and it reminded him somehow of the small sounds of home and his mother moving about her housework in the hush between ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... say that in that case you'll go, which you do, having previously dismissed Dot and Dash. In consequence, everybody in this neighborhood cuts me, I am turned out of my business, and as the dates agree, I am believed to be the father of the child. Effie has the housework to do as well as the baby to look after, and in consequence, I am horribly neglected. The handle of the front door is not polished, and when an old friend comes down from London to see me, I have nothing to give him for lunch except cold meat and a fruit tart that ...
— If Winter Don't - A B C D E F Notsomuchinson • Barry Pain
... daughter of a forger who died in prison. Her mother, I believe, died of a broken heart. Sad experience for so young a girl. She seems to be a good little thing. She is working at housework in town, I believe. I understand she has an idea of entering college in the fall. You are entering college here? That will be delightful. My wife and I will take pleasure in calling on you as soon as you are ready ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... began to quiver in that manner, Baron always insisted that they all rest. During such recesses they ate, played cards and helped June with the housework. The younger man was continually amazed by the calmness with which the girl faced their desperate situation. Clad in a blue smock which brought out the color of her eyes, she flitted about the apartment, manufacturing delicious meals out of canned goods and always having a cheery word when ...
— The End of Time • Wallace West
... remnant of coquetry, she made up outrageously. Her hands and feet were enormous, disproportionate to her figure, although she was well above middle height. She invariably wore mittens while doing the housework. ...
— A Royal Prisoner • Pierre Souvestre
... want to coax you,' said the girl proudly withdrawing her hand. 'It's a very simple thing. Will you let me go and do day work at the new Hospital, just across the park? They want some help in the housework. There are fifty ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... you my Patchwork Girl," said Margolotte, laughing at the boy's astonishment, "for she is rather difficult to explain. But first I will tell you that for many years I have longed for a servant to help me with the housework and to cook the meals and wash the dishes. No servant will come here because the place is so lonely and out-of-the-way, so my clever husband, the Crooked Magician, proposed that I make a girl out of some sort of ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... in Polk Street and set up and surrounded on three sides by 'inside blinds.' She happened to have a talent for cooking, and without her the family would have starved. Polly tied a towel round her head and did the housework, or stood in a line and got the daily rations from the Government. She never thought ...
— The Avalanche • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... go in for general housework in this burg are a sad lot. I ain't goin' all through the list. I'll just touch ...
— The House of Torchy • Sewell Ford
... last stopped her boat in its course she was at the Sasso Scritto: a favourite resting-place with her, where, on feast-days, when Joconda let her have liberty from housework and rush-plaiting and spinning of flax, she ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... for the doctor's opinion as to the prevalence of tumours, displacements and cancer among women who labour in the fields and have to bring up children and do all the housework of a peasant's dwelling. The doctor replied that he was disposed to think that cases of the ailments I spoke of were not numerous. Cancer was certainly rare. He knew that in Japan rickets, goitre and gout ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... the house agin. She is out in a minute with a clipping from a 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
... At first the two went frequently to the ranch house, as Dick, sweating in his barren alfalfa fields, insisted that the house be called. But everybody was too tired for social effort. Dick was grading and plowing all day long and Charley, after her housework was finished, often drove for him in the field. The mid-day heat and the unwonted labor made Ernest and Roger glad to go to bed early. After they had eaten supper and cleared up the dishes, they would build a ...
— The Forbidden Trail • Honore Willsie
... I suppose, and you see people, and get plenty of time for reading, and the pay is better than I could get at anything else. The fact is," she began to gain confidence as she talked, "I don't want to go on in the old humdrum way forever, doing housework and sewing, and never getting a chance at anything better. I have enough to eat and to wear at home, but the soul has some claims too, and I long for the contact of higher natures than those by whom I am ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... intimacy in their annual festivals, and the good women doubtless thought no more of it than a woman of to-day thinks of waltzing with a presentable stranger. They went home to their husbands and their housework as if they had been to church. Certain Bolsheviki, even in the year 1918, put up placards renewing the ancient Mesopotamian custom, under the guise of a community privilege and a ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... did. "I'll tell you why I'm not mending' stockings, and why Susan has had to 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
... 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 and molasses and milk. Now it is all ready to put ...
— Dramatic Reader for Lower Grades • Florence Holbrook
... house is, I presume, who's going to wash them?" Rupert grinned. "This seems to be as good a time as any to put some sort of a working plan in force. There is a certain amount of so-called housework which has to be done. And there are three of us to do it. It's up to us to apportion it fairly. Shall we say, let everyone care for his or ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... to fail. The housework of the large family became too much for her, and the brave maid-of-all-work, accompanied by Emma Jane, was obliged to return to London. They sought the advice of that dissenting minister whose shirt-fronts, if ever they showed a blister, had been so frightful a ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... fatality, whenever Mac took a day off for high art, on that day did I invariably feel sordidly industrious. I might idle for a week, smoking too much and getting in Bill's way as she busied herself with housework, but as soon as the etching-press scraped across the studio-floor, or Mac came down with camera and satchel and dressed for a tramp, I became the victim of a mania for work, and stuck childishly to my desk. Personally I did not believe in Hooker's story at all. Hooker's mythical ...
— Aliens • William McFee
... used to wonder sometimes at her boundless energy. She would whirl through the housework, help prepare the meals, do a morning's ironing, run the sewing machine all afternoon, and then often, after supper, challenge Norman to some such thing as a bonfire race, to see which could rake up the greatest pile of autumn leaves in the yard, ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... contentedly to her new neighbours, and she knew enough to come home, when she was hungry. Best let her go her ways, then. She would learn to be a little woman, all the sooner; and, in the meantime, it was a great deal easier to do the housework without having a child ...
— The Brentons • Anna Chapin Ray
... London had not perceptibly modified, to come across the square each morning to prepare his breakfast, and also to "turn the place out" on Saturday mornings; and for the rest, he even welcomed a little housework as a relaxation from ...
— Widdershins • Oliver Onions
... housework, talking to herself without intermission as she worked. And David spent long hours in his study, poring over enormous books that Carol insisted made her head ache from the outside and would probably give her infantile paralysis if she dared to peep between the covers. ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... encountered the cook, who had to "do" that part of the housework, and she rose from her knees to wish him so hearty a good-morning, that a lump rose in Tom's throat, there was a dimness in his eyes, and his hand went out involuntarily ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... sailors. Colonel Mason, when he was military governor of California, found himself obliged to cook his own meals; and General Persifor Smith, the present commander of the division, has been abandoned by every servant. We officers all are doing our own housework. As it is, ordinary laborers are getting ten and twenty dollars a day, and house servants ask and are getting $200 a month! Everybody figures on making twenty dollars a day at the mines, with chance of making much more; so ordinary wages don't tempt. ...
— Gold Seekers of '49 • Edwin L. Sabin
... veterinary 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 slept like ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... your Majesty as you ought to know very well," replied the man; "and since you went away the women have been running things to suit themselves. I'm glad you have decided to come back and restore order, for doing housework and minding the children is wearing out the strength of every ...
— The Marvelous Land of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... there being 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 ...
— A Woman who went to Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... 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 ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... her house was lonesome, she thought it might add to her own consequence and to the cheerfulness of her house to have a handsome cousin under her care. Henrietta's father was rather unwilling to let her go; he didn't see how she could be spared from the housework; but the mother was resolved that she should go, and go ...
— Duffels • Edward Eggleston
... his father or mother, lending a hand at housework when needed, nourishing himself on the simple oatmeal and milk which throughout life remained his favourite food, submitting himself instinctively to the stern discipline of the home, he passed, happily on the whole, through his childhood and ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... Dorn and Henry Fenn rioted in their twenties. John Hollander saved a bleeding country, pervaded the courthouse and did the housework at home while Rhoda, his wife, who couldn't cook hard boiled eggs, organized the French Cooking Club. Captain Ezra Morton spent his mental energy upon the invention of a self-heating molasses spigot, which he hoped ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... the distraction of work is not so complete, for housework can be neglected, there are always neighbours and friends to listen to tales of woe and thus generate a very harmful self-pity, and women are not content to enumerate their woes, but demand the attention and sympathy of ...
— Epilepsy, Hysteria, and Neurasthenia • Isaac G. Briggs
... Esther slept with the baby, a little boy of five; the two big boys slept at the other end of the room by the front door. The eldest was about fifteen, but he was only half-witted; and he helped in the housework, and could turn down the beds and see quicker than any one if the occupant had stolen sheet or blanket. Esther always remembered how he would raise himself up in bed in the early morning, rub the glass, and light a candle so that he could be seen from below. He ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... Harmony Vickers—was doing her part in that little brick house which the Colonel had taken Lane to see. There she worked and saved, treating her husband's money like a sacred fund to be treasured. When the colonel came home from his weekly trips, he helped in the housework, and nursed the boy through the croup at night, saving his wife where he could. It was long after success had begun to look their way before Mrs. Price would consent to move into the wooden cottage on a quiet cross street that the Colonel wanted to buy, or employ more than one servant. But the ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... helped her mother with the housework. In the afternoons, after the midday dinner was cleared away, Mary Alice had a good deal of time on her hands. Sometimes she sewed—made new clothes or remade old ones; sometimes she read. Once in a while she took some fancy work and went to see a girl friend, ...
— Everybody's Lonesome - A True Fairy Story • Clara E. Laughlin
... anybody was makin' me? I'm paid to do the cookin' and housework in this house, and if I see fit to light in and boss things 'round a bit, it's my own business. Thank the Lord, I got manners enough to attend to it! How much coffee did you come over ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... suit Been granted—so he said—the war were done And Troy a name ere full three years had gone: For as for Helen and her daintiness, Troy held a mort of women who no less Than she could pleasure night when work was over And men came home ready to play the lover; And in housework would better her. Let Helen Be laid by Paris, villain, and dead villain— Dead long ago if he had taken the field Instead of Menelaus. Then no shield Had Kypris' golden body been, acquist With his sword-arm already, near the wrist! So Diomedes. Next him ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... 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 ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... 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 to drink a glass of ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... adopted stable-boy was thus happily effected, and the wheels of life continued to run smoothly in the Doctor's house. Jean-Marie did his horse and carriage duty in the morning; sometimes helped in the housework; sometimes walked abroad with the Doctor, to drink wisdom from the fountainhead; and was introduced at night to the sciences and the dead tongues. He retained his singular placidity of mind and manner; he was rarely in fault; ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dialogues, and lofty sentiments. She had 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
... and all the neighbors, called her Sweetie, she was so good and so thoughtful for others, so sweet-tempered and kind. She did everything so gently that none of them could ever love her half as much as she deserved. Though only ten years old, and very small and pale, she did every bit of the housework, and kept the ugly old room and its faded furniture so neat, that it seemed almost home-like and pretty to them all. It was happiness enough for the little ones to get her first kiss when she came back ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... alone at the house except for Mary, a half-caste girl we had, who used to help me with the housework and the children. Andy was out on the run with the men, mustering sheep; weren't ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... at the table, counting the keeper and his wife and two children, noisy little persons who 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 ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... 'ithin 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 Blackmwore ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... time of Cherry's life here was when her housework was done, and her master called to her to come and help him in the garden; for he was always kind and gentle to her, and always rewarded her with ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... gold, walking and sporting among them, or reposing on the turf and telling stories to the most ravishing soft music. This was as much as she would relate; but it is certain that the piskies were friends of hers. For, in spite of her nightly wanderings, her housework was always well and cleanly done before other girls were dressed—the morning milk fresh in the dairy, the step sanded, the fire lit and the scalding-pans warming over it. And as for her needlework, it was ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... where everything was done for her, and the housework went on with the regularity of machinery, and without any share in it, or interest in it, on Audrey's part, she had grown up with a knowledge only of how things should look when done, but without the faintest idea of how to do them, or of the trouble it cost to make things nice, ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... toil had taken the elasticity out of step and voice. She looked for nothing better than everlasting work—the chafing detail of housework—and then a grave somewhere up the hill among the blackberries ...
— American Notes • Rudyard Kipling
... equally successful. It has now nearly 200 pupils of both sexes, representing a great variety of the tribes east of the Rocky Mountains. The pupils in both these institutions receive not only an elementary English education, but are also instructed in housework, agriculture, and useful mechanical pursuits. A similar school was established this year at Forest Grove, Oreg., for the education of Indian youth on the Pacific Coast. In addition to this, thirty-six ...
— Messages and Papers of Rutherford B. Hayes - A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents • James D. Richardson
... man, who had been upstairs, attending to some of the housework (for he was the only servant the professor kept), ...
— Through Space to Mars • Roy Rockwood
... than a week Old Tarwater was up and limping about the housework of the cabin, cooking and dish-washing for the five men of the creek. Genuine sourdoughs (pioneers) they were, tough and hard-bitten, who had been buried so deeply inside the Circle that they did not know there was a Klondike Strike. The news he brought ...
— The Red One • Jack London
... shore, he will be waited on by women-servants alone. The one man in the house is an old sailor, who has been all his life with his master—he is a kind of pensioner at St. Crux, and has little or nothing to do with the housework. The other servants, indoors, are all women; and instead of a footman to wait on him at dinner, the admiral has a parlor-maid. The parlor-maid now at St. Crux is engaged to be married, and as soon as her master can suit ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... I hoped she was. Aunt Maggie don't have nothin' much, yer know, except her father an' housework—housework either for him or some of us. An' I guess she's had quite a lot of things ter bother her, an' make her feel bad, so I hoped she'd be in the book. Though if she wasn't, she'd just laugh an' say it doesn't matter, of course. ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... extending my knowledge and gaining my bread; how I was ready to turn my hand to any useful thing, provided it was not wrong or degrading: how I would be a child's nurse or a lady's-maid, and would not refuse even housework adapted to my strength. Madame heard this; and questioning her countenance, I almost thought the tale won ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... Josiah, I can't go into that with all the rest I have to do, and it seems onreasonable in that minister to want wimmen to climb up onto pedestals when they have to do their own housework." ...
— Samantha at the St. Louis Exposition • Marietta Holley
... visiting. The two little girls were playing "Holly Gull, Passed how many," with beans in the kitchen, when the door opened, and in walked Susan Elder. She was a woman who lived at Squire Bean's and helped his wife with the housework. ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... to more than eight thousand little girls, who are "little mothers, in the sense of having the care of younger children while the parents are at work." In thrifty New England, children perform not a little of the housework, even the cooking; and "little mothers" and "little housekeepers" were sometimes left to themselves for days, while their elders in days gone by visited or went to the nearest town or village ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... 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 game of her behind her back, and robbed her right and left. What did that matter? ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... 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. ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... took in the surroundings. Everything was plain, but spotlessly clean, and he learned that Larue made his living by doing odd jobs in an electric firm. He was just home from his work. Luzanne was employed every afternoon in a milliner's shop, but her evenings were free after the housework was done at nine o'clock. Carnac in a burst of enthusiasm asked if she would sit to him as a model in the mornings. Her father instantly said, of course ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... was called a devotee. She left upon ordinary people the impression—the somewhat irritating impression—produced by such a person; it can only be described as the sense of strong water being perpetually poured into some abyss. She did her housework easily; she achieved her social relations sweetly; she was never neglectful and never unkind. This accounted for all that was soft in her, but not for all that was hard. She trod firmly as if going somewhere; she flung her ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... pleasant and busy ones for Peggy and Sally. True to their resolve to accept with cheerfulness whatever befell, their gay spirits softened and enlivened the gloom which might otherwise have settled upon the family. The mornings were devoted to housework and cookery; the afternoons to quilting the homespun bed-quilt which Sally had noticed in the frames on the night of their arrival. In the evenings all gathered about the great fireplace and indulged in such recreations as the farmhouse afforded. ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... 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 ...
— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton
... crown, which she had brought upstairs, lying on the heap, the leaves already fading, she felt depressed and miserable. The breakfast was dull, and for the most part all three were silent. Mrs Hopgood and Clara went away to begin their housework, ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... you to get relief from everything that tries you, as far as you can. Treat yourself like an invalid, as you are. Then change your way of life entirely: go out a good deal in the air, read, and talk, and sing, and play on the piano—you used to be a good player, I remember. Let the housework and the sewing be done by somebody else, except what you can do without a strain upon yourself. Then I should be a little careful about my dress, to have it becoming and all that, and I would invite in a little company once in a while, and go out in ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... blank. "I hate housework," she added, and her mouth drew down at the corners in a ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... dumbfounded. "Tell me all about this affair," he demanded of "Dodd," as he led the way to another room, leaving Mrs. Weaver to go on with her housework. ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith
... abroad, and if the mistress of the house does her own work she can make the modern appliances her handmaids at no cost whatever. It is ridiculous, in fact, leaving all those beautiful and ingenious helps in housework to the hirelings who work only twice as hard with them for more wages than the hirelings of countries where they ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... some holy Sunday, when solemn feelings almost irresistibly make their way into the heart, almost as on the eve of her confirmation, so Freneli felt on the eve of her wedding. Thoughtfully and seriously she did her housework; perhaps she had never spoken so little as on that day. At times she felt like weeping, and still she had a friendly smile for all she met. Then again she would sink into deep reflection, in which she forgot place and time and everything; ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... 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 ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... 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 tint; and with ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... slowly, "Mr. John, she born mistress and I born slave; she can't help it—and they was good people too—all the people that owned me. They liked me too. I didn't have to work except holdin' horses and trainin' colts—and housework. They was always kind ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... the following days; her talks, her manners, everything changed. She took interest in the housework, went to church regularly, and looked after her servant with ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... Rymer was in the way of recovery, and her husband went to the City as usual. A servant had been engaged—a girl of sixteen, who knew as much of housework as London girls of sixteen generally do; at all events, she could carry coals and wash steps. But the mistress of the house, it was evident, would for a long time be unable to do anything whatever; the real maid-of-all-work was Miss Shepperson, ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... 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 ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... eight years old, his father moved to Indiana, and there the first great sorrow of his life befell the little boy. His mother died of a fever that appeared among the settlers, leaving Abraham and his sister Sarah, a little girl of eleven, to do the housework and the heavy chores of a backwoods farm. The following year Thomas Lincoln went away to Kentucky to marry again, and he brought back with him a big hearted woman named Sally Johnson, who had three children by ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... 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 not to ...
— The Land of Promise • D. Torbett
... to the Toba, Hollister brought in a woman to relieve Doris of housework and help her take care of the baby, although Doris was jealous of that privilege. She was a typical mother in so far as she held the conviction that no one could attend so well as herself the needs of that small, ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... my dear Grandmamma, you don't know how happy I am—not being away from those I love, but things are so different. I get up early and after breakfast I help Aunt Susan with the housework, for her maid is too old to go up and down stairs. I have learned to churn—to make butter and pot cheese as well. I dust, make my bed, and sweep my room. (Don't let mother see this. She may consider that I am doing ...
— How Ethel Hollister Became a Campfire Girl • Irene Elliott Benson
... successful 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 girl received ...
— Best Short Stories • Various
... many things during those seven years. Agnella had taught her how to do housework. In other things, Ourson had been her teacher. He had taught her to read, write and keep accounts and he often read aloud to her while she was sewing. Instructive and amusing books were found in her room without any one knowing where they came ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... ranch, in a secluded valley amongst the foot-hills of the Sierras, was a 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
... knew I was working. I argued that if I kept my family so comfortable that they missed nothing from their usual routine, it was my right to do what I could toward furthering my personal ambitions in what time I could save from my housework. And until I could earn enough to hire capable people to take my place, I held rigidly to that rule. I who waded morass, fought quicksands, crept, worked from ladders high in air, and crossed water on improvised rafts without a tremor, slipped with many misgivings into ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... pupils of various shades and sizes. Some of them seemed very bright and intelligent, and were quick and handy about their work. Beside their studies, they are beginning to learn to make their own clothes and to do housework. ...
— Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California • Mary Evarts Anderson
... what the Cook Book is doing. Where they teach by hand and mouth the Cook Book has taught through its exchange of ideas, contest stories, and recipe contests, the object being the same in both cases that of instruction, education and economy in the kitchen and saving of steps in the housework. ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... first floor tenants, that he and Ethel could occupy, and in this an old toilet 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 save their feelings ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... is this half a herring and boiled bird-seed arrangement. George Harrison has a sister of eighteen who kindly comes in to do cooking and housework for us every day. She thinks us frightfully queer, and if we bought some herrings and bird-seed and asked her to cook them for us I have no doubt she would oblige, but, though she doesn't much care what we eat, there are a lot of things she doesn't eat herself, and fish is ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... introspection during the last five days, for Struthers has been in bed with lumbago, and the weight of the housework reverted to me. But Whinstane Sandy brought his precious bottle of Universal Ointment in from the bunk-house, and while that fiery mixture warmed her lame back, the thought of its origin probably warmed her lonely heart. ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... how her mother treats Vetsburg, her oldest boarder, and for what he pays for that second floor front and no lunches she can afford to cater a little; but that such a girl shouldn't be made to take up a little stenography or help with the housework!" ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... the Shaws had none. The mother was not strong, yet she did an immense amount of work. As she had been highly trained in sewing, she made the clothing for the entire family. The two older girls, Eleanor and Mary, did the housework and this left Anna and her brother to do the rough outdoor work. Together they accomplished this and many other tasks. They even made a set of furniture for their ...
— Modern Americans - A Biographical School Reader for the Upper Grades • Chester Sanford
... I was married to you. I wouldn't care if only I had you. I wouldn't mind babies or anything. I'd be glad. I want our house, with a dining-room set, and a brass bed, and a mahogany table in the parlour, and all the housework to do. I'm scared. I'm scared I won't get it. What'll I ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... little before the sun the next morning, for she was downstairs about five o'clock. So was Seth, for, through Lisbeth's obstinate refusal to have any woman-helper in the house, he had learned to make himself, as Adam said, "very handy in the housework," that he might save his mother from too great weariness; on which ground I hope you will not think him unmanly, any more than you can have thought the gallant Colonel Bath unmanly when he made the gruel for ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... they had fairly moved away, she turned and ran in, in a hurry to look after the salt-cellars, and to see that Katty hadn't got the table-cloth diagonal to the square of the room instead of parallel, or committed any of the other general-housework horrors which she detailed herself ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... the ultimate solution of the "servant problem" will not be that every woman will do all her own housework, but that domestic work will become, on the one hand, very much simplified and, on the other, will be put on the same footing as teaching, nursing or secretarial work. That we are beginning to move in this direction is evidenced by the coming into existence ...
— The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 - The Independent Health Magazine • Various |
