"Chambermaid" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for her, nor could she undertake it. This put my sister beyond all patience, and me into the greatest admiration. "Young woman," she said, "you have made a mistake; I want a housemaid, and you are a chambermaid." "No, madam," replied she, "I am not needlewoman enough for that." "And yet you ask eight pounds a year," replied my sister. "Yes, madam," said she, "nor shall I bate a farthing." "Then get you gone for a lazy impudent baggage," said I; "you want to be a ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... down in her terror. The porter and chambermaid came running. "Telegraph 'Come' to my husband—to my ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... The chambermaid of the steamboat displayed the greatest sympathy in my behalf. She declined to receive payment of a washing-bill, and burst into tears when I assured her the money was ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... jangling; a family, mayhap, is going to Paris, en poste, and wondrous is the jabber of the courier, the postilion, the inn-waiters, and the lookers-on. The landlord calls out for "Quatre biftecks aux pommes pour le trente-trois,"—(O my countrymen, I love your tastes and your ways!)—the chambermaid is laughing and says, "Finissez donc, Monsieur Pierre!" (what can they be about?)—a fat Englishman has opened his window violently, and says, "Dee dong, garsong, vooly voo me donny lo sho, ou vooly voo ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... must," I said, "at any rate if he does not I will. I have three weeks and in that three weeks I am going to find the chambermaid. I am going to get a plan of your room and your friend's room, and I'm going to make her understand that she was mistaken. She probably remembered you because of your size: she mistook you for the guilty ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 1 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... paragraphs, may be, that would be very fine in a poem; but in an every-day novel they are strikingly out of place. Your jewels, (heart-jewels I suppose you call 'em,) seem to me like diamonds on the bosom of a calicoed and untidy chambermaid. That sentimental chapter with 'The Dead Hope' caption, is quite as good as your blank verse, and I would wager a copy of Griswold's 'Poets of America,' against a doubtful three-cent piece, that you wrote it in rhyme—it's not very difficult, ...
— Daisy's Necklace - And What Came of It • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... were windows to wash, silver to polish and steps to stone on certain days in the week. I was called to do any errand necessary, and sometimes to assist in the garden. A new staff of house servants was installed, as follows: Aunt Delia, cook; Louisa, chambermaid; Puss, lady's maid to wait on the madam; Celia, nurse; Lethia, wet nurse; Sarah, dairymaid; Julia, laundress; Uncle Gooden, gardener; ...
— Thirty Years a Slave • Louis Hughes
... bread and cheese, and then not even to have the pleasant prospect of a hotel a la villa de Londres or de Paris. Alas, my wishes were far more modest. I expected no porter at the gate to give the signal of my arrival, no waiter, and no chambermaid; I only desired a little spot in the neighbourhood of the dear departed Icelanders. I was suddenly recalled from these happy delusions by the voice of the guide, who cried out: "Here we are at our destination for to-night." I looked joyfully round; alas! I could only see a few of those cottages ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer
... shouted, stamping her foot. "Shoo!" A young chambermaid passed through the room, and Shiphrah stopped her long enough to introduce me and to command her to look after me as if I were ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... farthest from the hotel, and the smallest and quietest. In fact there was yet no one in it but themselves, and they dwelt there in an image of home, with the sole use of the veranda and the parlor, where Maxwell had his manuscripts spread about on the table as if he owned the place. A chambermaid came over from the hotel in the morning to put the cottage in order, and then they could be quite alone there for the ...
— The Story of a Play - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... possession of Hugh Mainwaring was the general air of exclusion pervading the entire place. The servants, with the exception of "Uncle Mose," the colored man having charge of the grounds, were imported,—the head cook being a Frenchman, the others either English or Irish, and, from butler to chambermaid, one and all seemed to have acquired the reserve which characterized ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour
... only by the curious, and would not be read even by the curious, but for the fame which he acquired in the latter part of his life by works of a very different kind. What is the value of the Temple Beau, of the Intriguing Chambermaid, of half a dozen other plays of which few gentlemen have even heard the names? Yet to these worthless pieces my noble friend would give a term of copyright longer by more than twenty years than that which he would give to Tom Jones ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 4 (of 4) - Lord Macaulay's Speeches • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... palace, and while the horns and violins were sounding in the ballroom Princess A. lay on her knees in the throes of dreadful despair, tearing her hair in furious longing for that lost paradise. She at last succeeded in bribing a chambermaid to secretly procure her a fancy dress. If it was to cost her immortal soul, once she would dance and be young and happy! The plot was betrayed, and the angriest reproaches were poured out by her parents upon the perjured, rebellious ...
— The Gray Nun • Nataly Von Eschstruth
... into some of those wonderful adventures with you! Professor Hodgson, the Chinese language professor, is an expert shot with a revolver, and I've wheedled him into giving me lessons. That's for self-protection. Then the Japanese woman who is general chambermaid in my rooming-house is teaching ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... a silent ride through the late moonlight. The men spoke only when it was necessary to keep the right road. Gila, huddled sullenly in the back seat beside a dozing, gray-haired chambermaid, spoke not at all. And who shall say what were her thoughts as hour after hour she sat in her humiliation and watched the two men whom she had wronged so deeply? Perhaps her spirit seethed the more violently within her silent, angry body because she was not yet sure of Tennelly. Her tears and explanations, ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... once stole a quantity of rather moist brown sugar, and hid it, a clumsy, sticky, brown-paper parcel, between my bed and the sacking. A chambermaid discovered the corpus delicti, and something was done,—I forget what. But I wish I ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 108, October, 1866 • Various
... cannot account for our being alive. Five hundred bodies, in a state of coacervation, without even a preference for cleanliness, "think of that Master Brook." All the forenoon the court is a receptacle for cabbage leaves, fish scales, leeks, &c. &c.—and as a French chambermaid usually prefers the direct road to circumambulation, the refuse of the kitchen is then washed away by plentiful inundations from the dressing-room—the passages are blockaded by foul plates, fragments, ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... an ingenious damsel who had no sled conceived the idea of substituting a dust-pan. So she borrowed one of an obliging chambermaid and went out to the little slope which divides the front from the back campus to try her experiment. In twenty minutes the hill was alive with girls, all the available dust-pans had been pressed into service, and large tin pans were found to do nearly as well. ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... chambermaid came. Lady Helena kissed the girl's pale cheek affectionately, and Edith was led away to the room she was ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... it, he boxed her ears. This caused a breach between the pair which was never healed. Dudevant drank more and more heavily, and jeered at his wife because she was "always looking for noon at fourteen o'clock." He had always flirted with the country girls; but now he openly consorted with his wife's chambermaid. ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... though he had jim-jams. "I have got a tarantula and a diamond-back rattlesnake that will pizen you, though. I'll tell you about our getting fired out of Texas, if you will stand still a minute. You see, I had my collection of pets in my room at the hotel, and I had the bell boys bribed, and the chambermaid would only come in our room while I was there to watch the pets. The night dad got back from the hospital, where he went to grow some new bones and things on his insides, after he rode the bucking broncho, a man got me the prettiest little animal ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... these women had come a long way. A little dressmaker had left her workshop to bring her daughter. A big chambermaid had obtained the morning's leave from the bourgeois house where she worked. Her daughter stood beside her, a beautiful child of sixteen with colourless hair, impudent as a magpie. A music teacher with well-worn boots had excused ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt
... to look at the little girl. Nobody knew her; nobody could make out her name, as she set it forth—except one chambermaid, who said it was Constantinople—which ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... little room, and is easily run; but, considering the prodigious price of a woman's head-dress, at ten, twelve, twenty pounds a yard, must be very great. The tea, rated at seven shillings per pound, comes to near twelve thousand pounds; but, considering it as the common luxury of every chambermaid, sempstress, and tradesman's wife, both in town and country, however they come by it, must needs cost the kingdom double that sum. Coffee is somewhere above seven thousand pounds. I have seen no account of the chocolate, and some other ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Vol. VII - Historical and Political Tracts—Irish • Jonathan Swift
... come to light in connection with the direct inoculability of tubercular consumption, both in the later works on phthisis and in the medical press, are not without interest or without a lesson. The case recorded within the past year of a healthy chambermaid, who was immediately inoculated with tubercular matter with rapidly-following constitutional effects through a scratch on the hand, received from the sharp edge of a broken china cuspidor that a consumptive was using, is one of these cases that are to the ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... Susan, the chambermaid, was about, though Conrad did not see her, when he carried out his purpose, and, instigated by curiosity, she peeped through the half-open door, and saw him place ...
— The Store Boy • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... stairs again, and all over the rooms in the top of the house, opened all the cook's bundles, the waiter's boxes, the chambermaid's trunk, and the laundress's umbrella; but not a single steamboat ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... pounds with a daughter was, in the latter period, deemed a larger portion than two thousand in the former; that gentlewomen, in those earlier times, thought themselves well clothed in a serge gown, which a chambermaid would, in 1688, be ashamed to be seen in; and that, besides the great increase of rich clothes, plate, jewels, and household furniture, coaches were in that ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part F. - From Charles II. to James II. • David Hume
... callous civility which they mete out impartially to all (but those few) who come before them. To them you will be a number, and to yourself you will have suddenly become a number—the number graven on the huge brass label that depends clanking from the key put into the hand of the summoned chambermaid. You are ...
— Yet Again • Max Beerbohm
... red-and-black-striped sleeved waistcoat and a white apron, was in the corridor. At the Turk's Head such a person would have been the boots. But Edward Henry remembered a notice under the bell, advising visitors to ring once for the waiter, twice for the chambermaid, and three times for the valet. This, then, was the valet. In certain picturesque details of costume Wilkins's ...
— The Regent • E. Arnold Bennett
... letters, because aunt Celia has the guide-books, so I sit by the window in indolent content, watching the dear little school laddies, with their short jackets and wide white collars; they all look so jolly, and rosy, and clean, and kissable! I should like to kiss the chambermaid, too! She has a pink print dress; no bangs, thank goodness (it's curious our servants can't leave that deformity to the upper classes), but shining brown hair, plump figure, soft voice, and a most engaging ...
— A Cathedral Courtship • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a chambermaid in the Sea Spider House went up to the room which had been occupied by the James Boys and discovered Sheriff Timberlake bound ...
— Jack Wright and His Electric Stage; - or, Leagued Against the James Boys • "Noname"
... he wanted it to get into the moving picture place just down the street," the chambermaid said. "I thought you had let him go, and that he had forgotten the money. It's ten cents for children to get in afternoons, you know, and a penny for war tax. I ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... my kerchief, if I dropped it; I had to call Willet, her woman, to give it to me. And here, my Aunt Kezia looks as if she thought I ought to want no telling how to dust a table or make an apple pie. She has only cook-maid and chambermaid,—Maria and Bessy, their names are,—and Sam the serving-man. There is the old shepherd, Will, but he only comes into the house by nows and thens. Grandmamma had a black man who waited on us. She said it gave the place ...
— Out in the Forty-Five - Duncan Keith's Vow • Emily Sarah Holt
... room and swept it as with fire and sword. Her change of mind, from the passive to the active state, relieved and stimulated her, and she hurried from one needed reform to another. She drew others into the vortex. She inspired the chambermaid to unwilling yet amazing effort, and the lodging-house endured such a blast from the besom that it stood in open-windowed astonishment uttering dust like the breath of a dragon. Having swept and garnished the bed-chambers, ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... admired by Dahlia and Zephine. She had had an establishment of her own very early in life. Her father was an old unmarried professor of mathematics, a brutal man and a braggart, who went out to give lessons in spite of his age. This professor, when he was a young man, had one day seen a chambermaid's gown catch on a fender; he had fallen in love in consequence of this accident. The result had been Favourite. She met her father from time to time, and he bowed to her. One morning an old woman with the air of a devotee, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... and he sings like a child; he writes intolerable verses in more than doubtful French; he acts like the common amateur; and in short there is no end to the number of the things that he does, and does badly. His one manly taste is for the chase. In sum, he is but a plexus of weaknesses; the singing chambermaid of the stage, tricked out in man's apparel, and mounted on a circus horse. I have seen this poor phantom of a prince riding out alone or with a few huntsmen, disregarded by all, and I have been even grieved for the bearer of so futile and melancholy an existence. The ...
— Prince Otto • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Ponton, Grantham, till Newark opens her hospitable gates; and finally, as "the shades of eve begin to fall," we descend from our proud eminence and commit ourselves to the tender attentions of a civil landlord, two waiters, and a stout chambermaid, in the chief inn of the good ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... wishing to dispose of Biddy—but on that point, though quiet, I was resolute in opposition. Poor warm-hearted Biddy, with all her stupid thriftless ways, I could not find in my heart to turn away, and as my chambermaid wanted to go to her relations in the "back states," as she called the great West, I proposed to Biddy to take her place, so soon as the new woman should ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... your wife to have a dressing-room, a bath-room, and a room for her chambermaid. Think then on Susanne, and never commit the fault of arranging this little room below that of madame's, but place it always above, and do not shrink from disfiguring your mansion by hideous divisions in ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... she has a habit of hiding my shirts so that I am unable to find them when we go away, and the chambermaid comes rushing after us ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... no means of the first quality, but her conceit and love of admiration far outstripped them. The little jeweller had seen this, and had guessed that she would best answer his purpose of the younger members of the household. Quiet, sensible Joan, the upper chambermaid, would not have suited him at all; neither would sturdy, straightforward Meg, the cook-maid; but Kate's vanity and indiscretion were both so patent that he fixed on her at once as his chosen accomplice. His only doubt was whether she had sense enough to understand his hint ...
— The White Lady of Hazelwood - A Tale of the Fourteenth Century • Emily Sarah Holt
... I shall see more of in my visits to other churches, but now we were all glad to make our stay as brief as possible, the atmosphere of the cathedral being so bleak, and its stone pavement so icy cold beneath our feet. We returned to the hotel, and the chambermaid brought me a book, in which she asked me to inscribe my name, age, profession, country, destination, and the authorization under which I travelled. After the freedom of an English hotel, so much greater than even that of an American one, where they make you disclose ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... blowing a French-horn, and the other endeavouring, but without effect, to smoke away a little sickness, which he feels from the fumes of his last night's punch. Beneath them is a traveller taking a tender farewell of the chambermaid, who is not to be moved by the clangour of the great bar bell, or the more thundering sound of her ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler
... shows you a straw hat, which I know to be made by Madge Peskad, within three miles of Bedford; and tells you "It is Pontius Pilate's wife's chambermaid's sister's hat." To my knowledge of this very hat, it may be added that the covering of straw was never used among the Jews, since it was demanded of them to make bricks without it. Therefore, this is ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the shock the beauty had given them acted, incongruously, as a positive spur to their preparations for rejoining her. She had none the less, when they returned to the sitting-room, already descended; the open door of her room showed it empty and the chambermaid explained. Here again they were delayed by another sharp thought of Mrs. Wix's. "But what will she ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... she retired at night, she asked the chambermaid whether Pemberley were not a very fine place? what was the name of its proprietor? and, with no little alarm, whether the family were down for the summer? A most welcome negative followed the last question—and her alarms now being removed, she was ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... all were still sleeping. He dressed himself and jumped out quickly with the expectation of miracles. But he was unpleasantly surprised—the rooms were in the same disorder as usual in the morning; the cook and the chambermaid were still sleeping and the door was closed with a hook—it was hard to believe that the people would stir and commence to run about, and that the rooms would assume a holiday appearance, and he ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... ask for what you want you won't get it. You said tea, and you've got tea, you never mentioned sugar and milk." Then he bounced off, and when the lift boy whistled as he brought me up, and the Irish chambermaid began to chat to Octavia, she said she could not bear it any longer, and Tom must go out and find another hotel. So late last night we got here, which is charming; perhaps the attendants are paid extra for manners. But even here they call Octavia "Lady Chevenix" and me "Lady Valmond" ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... his genius to other pursuits, and which filled the public ear with such enormities of octo-syllabic ennui, that it hates poetry ever since. The Helicon of which he drank the gushing and pure stream, was stirred into mire by the slippers of school-girls, city-apprentices, and chambermaid-poetesses ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... home; but on looking at them more closely, it could easily be seen that they were no common servants. Their shapes were too graceful, their complexions too delicate, and the cut of their dresses much too elegant. They were two fairies. The younger was not Fortune herself, but the chambermaid of one of Fortune's attendants, who carries about her more trifling gifts. The elder one, who was named Care, looked rather gloomy; she always goes about to perform her own business in person; for then she knows it is properly done. They were telling each other where they had ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... a trencher chaplain in a gentleman's house (as it befel Euphormio), after some seven years' service he may perchance have a living to {27} the halves, or some small rectory, with the mother of the maids at length, a poor kinswoman, or a crackt chambermaid, to have and to hold during the time of his life."—Burton, Anat. of Mel. part i. sect. 2. mem. ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 2, November 10 1849 • Various
... you to wear a long cashmere in hot weather; and then you could not refuse a third to go to the bath or to mass in—well, that makes three, don't you see? I would not be married with fewer. No, thank you, I wouldn't go about looking like a chambermaid. No, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various
... walking gentleman, A leading juvenile, First lady in book-muslin dressed, With a galvanic smile; Thereto a singing chambermaid, Benignant heavy pa, And oh, heavier still was the heavy vill- Ain, with ...
— Humour of the North • Lawrence J. Burpee
... the band struck up some dance music and the audience were treated to 'something light,' and roared with laughter at a pretty chambermaid at an inn who captivated and bamboozled a young booby who was staying there, pitched him overboard; 'wondered what he meant;' sang an audacious song recounting her many exploits, and finished ...
— Clara Hopgood • Mark Rutherford
... could carry off her shabbiness before masculine eyes, she had neither the desire nor the fortitude to brave the keener, more critical gaze of her own sex. It was always for the women that Patsy dressed, and above all else did she stand in awe of the opinion of the hotel chambermaid, going down in tottering submission before it. Unlocking her door, she rang the bell; then crept in between the covers of her bed, drawing them ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... we went. And we met Mr. Moriway there. She'd telephoned him. The chambermaid was called, the housekeeper, the electrical engineer who'd been fixing bells that morning, and, as I said, a bell-boy named Nat, who told how he'd just come on duty when Mrs. Kingdon's bell rang, found her key and returned it to her, and ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... what could be coming over our father. In a half-amused way, we enumerated the various items of imaginary reform, beginning at the annual summer recreations, and ending with our milliner's bills. In mock seriousness, we proposed to take the places of cook, chambermaid, and waiter, and thus save these items of expense in the family. We had quite a merry time ...
— All's for the Best • T. S. Arthur
... than methodistical meekness. On Zora declaring that he looked awful (he was indeed inconceivably hideous), and that she preferred Struwel Peter after all, he dutifully washed his head with soda (after grave consultation with the chambermaid), and sunned himself once more in ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... veal cutlets of our old friend Mrs. Hall, at Ferrybridge. Meg's table-linen, bed-linen, and so forth, were always home-made, of the best quality, and in the best order; and a weary day was that to the chambermaid in which her lynx eye discovered any neglect of the strict cleanliness which she constantly enforced. Indeed, considering Meg's country and calling, we were never able to account for her extreme and scrupulous nicety, unless by supposing that it afforded her the most apt and frequent pretext ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott
... the voice of the chambermaid upstairs, at a distance at first, and coming nearer and nearer. "Breakfast ready, ladies! Ladies, breakfast ready!" and then came all the people in a rush pouring down the stairs over Ellen's head. She kept quite still and close, for she did not want to see anybody, and could ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Elizabeth Wetherell
... to meddle would be indiscreet, Replied the king, more charms we often meet, Beneath a chambermaid or laundress' dress, Than any rich coquette can well possess. Besides, with those, less form is oft requir'd, While dames of quality must be admir'd; Their whims complied with, though suspicions rise; And ev'ry hour produces fresh surprise, But ...
— The Tales and Novels, Complete • Jean de La Fontaine
... and I have a very good precedent for attributing some of the glory to myself - I have by me a love-letter, written during my father's administration, by a journeyman tailor to my brother's second chambermaid; his offers Honourable; he proposed matrimony, and to better his terms, informed her of his pretensions to a place; they were founded on what he called, "some services to the government." As the nymph could not read, she carried the epistle to the housekeeper to be deciphered, by which ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... And Morgana gave a little yawn. "Is that breakfast? Yes? Stay with me while I have it! Are you the head chambermaid at ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... he would have avoided a broken head. Miss Crow, the daughter of a farmer; John Giddish, himself a farmer; Nan Slouch, Esther Codling, Will Spray, Tom Bennet; the three Misses Potter, whose father keeps the sign of the Red Lion; Betty Chambermaid, Jack Ostler, and many others of inferior note, lay rolling ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... ring on my finger caught in her frizzes and I'll be cussed if the whole top of her head didn't come off. I was a little flurried and went to the door, and a chambermaid was there with an armful of towels and she handed me a couple and went off. My wife came into camp again, and began to cry and accuse me of pulling her hair, when I went up to her and put my arm around her waist, and was just going to kiss her, just as any man would be ...
— Peck's Sunshine - Being a Collection of Articles Written for Peck's Sun, - Milwaukee, Wis. - 1882 • George W. Peck
... street door, of course, always stood open, and the donkey that lived in the entrance-hall was astir. Lory dismissed his guide, and after ringing a bell which tinkled rather disappointingly just within the door, sat down patiently on the stairs to wait. At length the ancient chambermaid (who is no servant, but just a woman, in the strictly domestic sense of that fashionable word) reluctantly opened the door. French and Italian were alike incomprehensible to this lady, and de Vasselot was still explaining with much volubility, and a wealth of gesture, ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... and then went into his room and stretched out. Anyone who has stopped at the Hotel Four Seasons will have no difficulty in recalling the electric hall-bells which serve to attract the chambermaids to given spots. If one needs the chambermaid, he presses the button in his room and a little bell in the hall tinkles furiously until she responds and shuts it off. In that way one is sure that she has heard and is coming, a most admirable bit of German ingenuity. If she happens to be taking her lunch at the ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... remember having had the usual diseases of childhood; had a severe attack of typhoid fever when quite young. Attended school until fourteen years of age, having reached the third grade. Upon leaving school she went to work as chambermaid and soon became addicted to the excessive use of alcohol, as a result of which she got into numerous fights and quarrels. In 1895, while intoxicated, she stabbed a man in the back and was sent to Albany Penitentiary for ...
— Studies in Forensic Psychiatry • Bernard Glueck
... peace, Monsieur," answered the busy chambermaid, in a scolding tone, while she cleaned the runnels of a chair, upon which the feet of the young man had left a good portion of the soil of the garden; "I should like to see the day when you are as ...
— Piccolissima • Eliza Lee Follen
... it in the Five Towns) is the imposing garage and agency where Stephen had hired the Napier car. Felix said he would lunch hurriedly in order to transact certain business at the garage before taking them on to Bursley. After lunch, however, Vera caught him transacting business with a chambermaid in a corridor. Shocking though the revelation is, it needs to be said that Felix was kissing the chambermaid. The blow to Mrs Cheswardine was severe. She had imagined that Felix spent all his time in gazing up to her as an ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... Sierras. They were tied together by a narrow blue ribbon, and had evidently been intended to attract his attention. As he took them in his hand, the distinguishing subtle aroma of the little sylvan hollow in the hills came to him like a memory and a revelation! He summoned the chambermaid; she knew nothing of them, or indeed of any one who had entered his room. He walked cautiously into the hall; the lady's sitting-room door was open, the room was empty. "The occupant," said the chambermaid, "had left that afternoon." He held the proof of her ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... unfortunately are married already. I think it but fair to mention this for the benefit of any of my fair young friends who might otherwise think of visiting the East. The absence of young ladies renders the taking of female parts by the opposite sex a necessity. A splendid "singing chambermaid" of this kind, dressed and looking the part to perfection, but with a deep bass voice, caused peals of laughter every time he spoke. During the evening there was a song cleverly introduced and sung by a brawny Scot—a parody upon "May I like a ...
— Round the World • Andrew Carnegie
... least to blame for omitting to do what she had never been told was her duty to do. A few words from Richard, however, and the promise of an extra quarter per week made that matter all right, and neither Betty nor Mrs. Dr. Van Buren's trained chambermaid, Mag, had ever entered into the clearing-up process with greater zeal than did Eunice when once she knew that Richard expected it of her. She was naturally kind-hearted, and though Ethelyn's lofty ways annoyed her somewhat, ...
— Ethelyn's Mistake • Mary Jane Holmes
... ring a bell and get a chambermaid to take care of him, but the bell was broken. Then I began to sing all the songs I knew and kept it up until I nearly wore out my throat. It seemed as if the baby's mother never would come back, but I had the happy satisfaction of knowing, though, that the baby's ...
— Tales of the Road • Charles N. Crewdson
... which is built a primitive casino, and below the terrace are the bathing-cabins. We are staying at the most spotlessly clean of all clean French hotels. There are no carpets on the stairs; but if one mounts them in muddy boots, an untiring chambermaid emerges from a lair below, with hot water and scrubbing-brush and smilingly removes the traces of one's passage. Carlotta and Antoinette have adjoining rooms in the main building. I inhabit the annexe, sleeping in a quaint, clean, bare little chamber with a balconied window ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... relates the following anecdote of the Czar Peter, on the authority of Miss Anne Cramer, the chambermaid to the empress. In the cabinet of natural history of the academy at St Petersburg, is preserved, among a number of uncommon animals, Lisette, the favourite dog of the Russian monarch. She was a small, dun-coloured Italian greyhound, ...
— Heads and Tales • Various
... Mary, the Hungarian chambermaid, came to the door, stood between the plush portieres, beckoned to Thea, and made an inarticulate sound in her throat. Thea jumped up and ran into the hall, where Ottenburg stood smiling, his caped cloak open, his silk hat in his white-kid hand. The Hungarian girl stood like a monument ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... landing, real water, real smoke coming out of a real chimney on the steamboat. Real captain and real passengers. (It is understood that there is to be no make-believe about the fares.) A real chambermaid in the back cabin would add to the effectiveness of the scene, but is not an ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 17, July 23, 1870 • Various
... stumbled, along between his guides like a man in a dream. Colwyn noticed that his eyes were half-closed, and that his head sagged slightly from side to side as he was led along. A waiter held open the glass doors which led into the lounge, and a palpitating chambermaid, hastily summoned from the upper regions, tripped ahead up the broad carpeted stairs and along the passage to show the way to ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... hand, Corinna, who is the mistress of Limberham,[469] lives in constant torment: her equipage is, an old woman, who was what Corinna is now; an antiquated footman, who was pimp to Limberham's father; and a chambermaid, who is Limberham's wench by fits, out of a principle of politics to make her jealous and watchful of Corinna. Under this guard, and in this conversation, Corinna lives in state: the furniture of her ...
— The Tatler, Volume 1, 1899 • George A. Aitken
... Secretary were exchanging clothes they heard the Mayor in the hallway arguing with a large German chambermaid in an earnest and fatherly manner, punctuated by coy screams ...
— The Gay Rebellion • Robert W. Chambers
... founded the botanic garden at Chelsea. His servant, James Salter, set up the famous Don Saltero's museum in the same place, containing, as Steele tell us, '10,000 gimcracks, including a "petrified crab" from China and Pontius Pilate's wife's chambermaid's sister's hat.' Don Saltero and his master seemed equally ridiculous; and Young in his satires calls Sloane 'the foremost toyman of his time,' and describes him as adoring a pin of Queen Elizabeth's. Sloane's collections were bought for the nation and became the foundation of the British ...
— English Literature and Society in the Eighteenth Century • Leslie Stephen
... him, lying miserably on the sofa, shrouded in a filthy duvet, having been flung there at some two in the morning on his arrival, wet through, from heaven knows what tremendous walk. Subsequently we hear him being haled from his lair by the chambermaid, who treats him as the dirt under her feet (or, indeed, if we may judge by our bedroom ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... toilette. It was generally three before Miss Burney was at liberty. Then she had two hours at her own disposal. To these hours we owe great part of her Diary. At five she had to attend her colleague, Madame Schwellenberg, a hateful old toadeater, as illiterate as a chambermaid, as proud as a whole German Chapter, rude, peevish, unable to bear solitude, unable to conduct herself with common decency in society. With this delightful associate, Frances Burney had to dine, and pass the ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... therefore towards their beauty; and that is, the quietude and perpetuity of their domestic institutions. They do not, like us, fade their cheeks lying awake nights ruminating the awful question who shall do the washing next week, or who shall take the chambermaid's place, who is going to be married, or that of the cook, who has signified her intention of parting with the mistress. Their hospitality is never embarrassed by the consideration that their whole kitchen cabinet may desert at the moment that their guests arrive. They are not ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... tea and toast you yearned, What joy to find upon it The chambermaid had coyly laid A ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... the evening Lucille knocked at the door of Lady Carey's suite of rooms at the hotel. There was no answer. A chambermaid who was near ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... hands as often as possible clasped in each other's. All the people in the hotel noticed it, and were pleased about it, so natural did it seem that this handsome couple should be united by love. The chambermaid, rosy Bertha, saw what was going on with her sly peasant's eye, and by way of making herself agreeable used to whisper to him where he could find the young lady when she happened to meet him on the staircase. ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... dream'd, that a friend of hers deceased, told her mother, that if she gave her daughter a drink of yew pounded, she should recover: She accordingly gave it her, and she presently died: The mother being almost distracted for the loss of her daughter, her chambermaid, to comfort her, said, surely what she gave her was not the occasion of her death, and that she would adventure on it her self; she did so, and died also: Whether all this be but a dream, I cannot tell, but it was haply from these lugubrous effects, ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... ADELE, chambermaid of Madame du Val-Noble at the time when the latter was maintained so magnificently by the stockbroker, Jacques Falleix, who failed in 1929. ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... anger surged within her. She, Laura, Miss Dearborn, who loved no man, who never conceded, never capitulated, whose "grand manner" was a thing proverbial, in all her pitch of pride, in her own home, her own fortress, had been kissed, like a school-girl, like a chambermaid, in the ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... clothes had been washed away, and that the mermaid was in the same plight. I gave him implicit instructions and, with her assistance, the numbers of our respective rooms. He wrote it all down. He was to get some clothes for me himself, and enlist the services of a chambermaid ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... folio volume bound in black leather, with massive silver clasps. There were no letters on the back, and nobody could tell the title of the book. But it was well known to be a book of magic, and once, when a chambermaid had lifted it merely to brush away the dust, the skeleton had rattled in its closet, the picture of the young lady had stepped one foot upon the floor and several ghastly faces had peeped forth from the mirror, while ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... were opened, spent a scant twenty minutes there and then went directly back to his room to browse over his recitations for the day. Once Tom found him there hunched up in a corner of the window-seat while the chambermaid, viewing his presence distastefully, draped the furniture with bedding and did her best with broom and duster to discourage him from a repetition of the outrage. Between ten and eleven on three days a week Steve put in an hour of study in the room. On other days ...
— Left End Edwards • Ralph Henry Barbour
... chance of it to-night, sir," said the waiter. "The southerly breeze has been bringing up a fog these two hours past, and the inside of the harbour is thick as soup. More by token, I've already sent word to the chambermaid to fill a couple of warming-pans. You're booked with ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the carver at work upon a stall; the mason chiselling a Gothic arch or modelling a statue; the blacksmith, the carpenter, the shepherd, the fisherman, the gardener in his vineyard, the midwife, the chemist at work among his test-tubes and alembics, the chambermaid cleaning ...
— The Story of Rouen • Sir Theodore Andrea Cook
... of my chambermaid has been missing for a month and the poor girl is terribly afraid he has been killed. He was at Arras, and the ...
— 'My Beloved Poilus' • Anonymous
... by a second door on the inferior staircase of the hotel, commonly used by the servants. Noticing these aspects of the room at a glance, Agnes made the necessary change in her dress, as quickly as possible. On her way back to the drawing-room she was addressed by a chambermaid in the corridor who asked for her key. 'I will put your room tidy for the night, Miss,' the woman said, 'and I will then bring the key back ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... measure their respective worth, and not the strength of his affection for them, even if the individuals concerned be his near relations. Supposing, for example, he had to choose between saving the life of a Fenelon and that of a chambermaid, he must select the former because of his superior talents, even though the latter should be his mother or his wife. Affections are to be forgotten in the calculations of reason. Godwin's faith in the supremacy of the ...
— Mary Wollstonecraft • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... frightened, hare-like eyes, who spoke French and German indifferently, played the piano after a fashion, and, in addition, knew how to salt cucumbers in first-class style. In the society of this instructress, of his aunt, and of an old chambermaid, Vasilievna, Fedya passed four whole years. He used to sit in the corner with his "Emblems"—and sit ... and sit ... while the low-ceiled room smelled of geraniums, a solitary tallow candle burned dimly, a cricket chirped monotonously, as ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... the good lady, in surprise, 'I will comply with the wishes of the little princesses, and eat if they insist on it. I am only ashamed of my dinner to-day, for I have permitted the cook to go to the coronation, and she has not yet returned. The chambermaid, therefore, prepared some food for me; it is so plain, however, that I cannot invite you to partake of it.'—'Oh, we do not want to eat, but only to sit with you,' exclaimed Frederica and I; we then took the arms of the old lady and conducted ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach |
