"Laundress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the infant among the most handsome women of the people. After inspecting many women of equal merit as regards beauty, youth and health, the princess's choice lighted on Philippa, a young Catanese woman, the wife of a fisherman of Trapani, and by condition a laundress. This young woman, as she washed her linen on the bank of a stream, had dreamed strange dreams: she had fancied herself summoned to court, wedded to a great personage, and receiving the honours of a great lady. Thus when ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - JOAN OF NAPLES—1343-1382 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... missing noun, When sheets as soft and white as down, Return in colour yellowy-brown? My Laundress! ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, December 31, 1892 • Various
... go. Another artist in the next block expects me to pose for him, and his laundress comes at 3. He is ...
— The Devil - A Tragedy of the Heart and Conscience • Joseph O'Brien
... to allow of their hospitalities. This made it impossible for them to keep any servant save a little girl who washed the dishes, and consequently Grisell acted as cook, housekeeper, housemaid, washerwoman, laundress, dressmaker, and tailoress. Twice a week she sat up at night to do the family accounts. Daily she rose before six, went to the market and to the mill to see their own corn ground, and—in the words of her daughter, who proudly tells ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... weeping whiskers of 1853, with the corresponding inability to pronounce the "r" otherwise than as a "w," or to converse but with a languid, used-up drawl; the smaller ties and growing collars, when a wasting youth complains that "She is lost to him for ever" (she, the laundress!); the schoolboy's Spanish hat of 1860, that was soon developed into the "pork-pie," and was to be adopted generally for country wear with baggy knickerbockers; the full-blown Dundreary of 1861, with long weeping whiskers, long coat, long drawl, and short wits; with the sudden change ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... passionate "Conversations with a laundress" about articles that I blush to remember. Some twenty pages of the volume were devoted to silly dialogues between an extraordinarily patient shoemaker and one of the most irritating and constitutionally dissatisfied customers that an unfortunate shop-keeper could possibly be cursed with; a customer ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... again I go to bed; and so each day I can do nothing else, and I understand how to do nothing else. And in order that I may be able to do this, it is necessary that the porter, the peasant, the cook, male or female, the footman, the coachman, and the laundress, should toil from morning till night; I will not refer to the labors of the people which are necessary in order that coachman, cooks, male and female, footman, and the rest should have those implements and articles with which, and over which, they toil for my sake; axes, tubs, brushes, ...
— What To Do? - thoughts evoked by the census of Moscow • Count Lyof N. Tolstoi
... that broadest of broad, but morally inoffensive stories, in which the laundress, in trying to cure a smoking chimney, blows herself to death, having merely power to speak a few words to Betty,—who gaspingly explains to her ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... constantly before my window, hoping baiocchi. Within, the three pet dogs of my landlady, bereft of their walk, unable to employ their miserable legs and eyes, exercise themselves by a continual barking, which is answered by all the dogs in the neighborhood. An urchin returning from the laundress, delighted with the symphony, lays down his white bundle in the gutter, seats himself on the curb-stone, and attempts an imitation of the music of cats as a tribute to the concert. The door-bell rings. Chi e? "Who is it?" cries ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... cried, indignantly. "When there's such a good, good woman, Jane's sister Meg-Laundress, what washes for us just 'cause I mend her things. An' tailor-Jake who showed me to do a buttonhole an' him all doubled up with coughin'; an' Billy Buttons who gives us a paper sometimes, only neither of us can read it; an' Nick, the parson, ...
— A Sunny Little Lass • Evelyn Raymond
... titivilitium! There's no such thing in nature. I confess, gentlemen, I have a cook, a laundress, a house-drudge, that serves my necessary turns, and goes under that title: but he's an ass that will be so uxorious to tie his affections to one circle. Come, the name dulls appetite. Here, replenish again: another bout. [FILLS ...
— Epicoene - Or, The Silent Woman • Ben Jonson
... Deerham could not conceive: it was next to impossible to fancy one of those ladies scrubbing a floor or making a bed. The butcher called for orders, and took in the meat, which was nearly always mutton-chops; the baker left his bread at the door, and the laundress was admitted inside the ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... laundress, you know,—has overworked lately, and to keep up her strength, I'm sorry to say, has indulged in her habit of toning up for her day's work with more of the 'crathur' than is good for—, By the way, when are ...
— A Woman for Mayor - A Novel of To-day • Helen M. Winslow
... told her lessee about her laundress and her cleaning woman and how to handle the balky faucet that controlled the shower. She had said good-bye to Ken entirely surrounded by his books, magazines, fruit, and flowers. She was occupying a Pullman drawing ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... without dreams, but waked early, at seven o'clock, when it was broad daylight. Opening his eyes, he was surprised to feel himself extraordinarily vigorous. He jumped up at once and dressed quickly; then dragged out his trunk and began packing immediately. His linen had come back from the laundress the previous morning. Ivan positively smiled at the thought that everything was helping his sudden departure. And his departure certainly was sudden. Though Ivan had said the day before (to Katerina Ivanovna, Alyosha, and Smerdyakov) that he was leaving next day, yet he remembered ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... thee! I tell thee, shameless girl, Thou shalt be laundress to my waiting-maid.— How lik'st thou her, Ebea? ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part I. • Christopher Marlowe
... my landlady and my laundress, two poor widows who never willingly distressed me, but who occasionally asked for 'that little amount' so piteously that my heart bled to lack it to give them. And as victuals and clean shirts were absolute necessaries of life, every week my debts increased. I could have ...
— Capitola's Peril - A Sequel to 'The Hidden Hand' • Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth
... Oxford, took chambers in Lincoln's Inn. His father on his second marriage had settled some property upon him, which brought in some L90 a year. He had to live like a gentleman upon this, and to give four guineas a year to the laundress, four to his barber, and two to his shoeblack. In spite of Jeremy's deviation from the path of preferment, the two were on friendly terms, and when the hopes of the son's professional success grew faint, the ...
— The English Utilitarians, Volume I. • Leslie Stephen
... needed in Miss Martell's room, went down to the kitchen, where she found the half-frozen oarsman-now rigged out in the dress-coat and white vest of the colored waiter—and the brave coachman who had put his old sea-craft to such good use. They were being royally cared for by the cook and laundress. The poor fellow who out in the boat had thought that the hearts of even his neighbors were as cold and hard as the ice that was destroying them had now forgotten his misanthropy, and was making a supper that, considering the hour, would ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... society which intended to accept Mis' Sykes's invitation hastened with relieved eagerness to follow with flowers its regrets to the "comen out recep." For every one was genuinely attached to the little laundress and interested in her welfare—up to the point of sacrificing social interests in the eyes of the Sykeses. Friendship gardens were rich with Autumn, cosmos and salvia and opulent asters, and on the morning of the two parties this store of sweetness was rifled for the debutante. ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... the other," answered Sister Anne. "Poor, poor Mr. Sly! He made a will leaving you all, except five pounds a year to his laundress: he made his will, locked his door, took heart-rending leave of his uncle at night, and this morning was found hanging at his bedpost when Sambo, the black servant, took him up his water to shave. 'Let me be buried,' he said, 'with the pincushion ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... that he is not merely a musical illiterate, who cannot yet read a note of music, but that he has received no education of any kind! Born at Tipperusalem, Oklahoma, on the 15th of March, 1912, he has for parents a clerk in the Eagle Bakery and a Lithuanian laundress. He never touches meat, not even baked eagles, but subsists entirely on peaches and popcorn. He has been compared to MOZART, but the comparison is ridiculous, for MOZART was carefully trained by his father, and at the age of four was a finished ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... it all herself; she would trust no one, least of all the laundress. She had only faint old visions of John Hurst's collars to guide her; but she was upheld by an immense relief, born of her will to please, and Arthur, by a blind reliance, born of his utter weariness. At times these preparations well-nigh exasperated him. "If going meant all that fuss," he ...
— The Judgment of Eve • May Sinclair
... the unrivaled mental suppleness was illustrated early in the war by the highly typical case of a laundress whose business was in one of ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... drunken spouse, reproaches on her frightened child, and invocations to all the blessed saints in heaven to reward the gintleman who had saved her hoarded money,—a smoking packet that she hugged to her breast,—Mrs. Clancy, "the saynior laundress of Company B," as she had long styled herself, was prancing up and down through the gathering crowd, her shrill voice overmastering all other clamor. The vigorous efforts of the men, directed by cool-headed officers, soon beat back the flames ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... that my laundress," he shouted back, "can't bring in breakfast things for more than one on that particular tray. She's always complaining it's too small, and says I ought ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... certain instinct—he knew not why, or less still that it might be one of delicacy—made him alight before they reached the first house. Bidding the carriage wait, Uncle Billy entered, and was informed by a blowzy Irish laundress at a tub that Jim Foster, or "Arkansaw Jim," lived at the fourth shanty "beyant." He was at home, for "he'd shprained his fut." Uncle Billy hurried on, stopped before the door of a shanty scarcely less rude than their old cabin, and half timidly pushed ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... wished to adopt Dennis, under this new name, into his family. It never occurred to him that Dennis might be more than fourteen years old. And thus, to shorten this preface, when we returned at night to my parsonage at Naguadavick, there entered Mrs. Ingham, her new dumb laundress, myself, who am Mr. Frederic Ingham, and my double, who was Mr. Frederic Ingham by ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... A great deal of steam! The pudding was out 5 of the copper. A smell like a washing day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating house and a pastry cook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs. Cratchit entered—flushed, but smiling proudly—with 10 the pudding, like a speckled cannon ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half a quartern of ignited brandy and bedight with Christmas holly stuck ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... day last year our laundress sent her oldest boy, a lad fourteen years of age, on an errand. He was gone an hour or more longer than she expected him to be. Upon his return she asked him what he had been doing all that time. He told her that an expressman ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 50, No. 6, June 1896 • Various
... bed I was surprised to hear a voice in the dining-room, where the laundress was lighting a fire. She had found the door unbolted, notwithstanding my design to fasten it, and must have passed the bed-chamber door while I was hanging on it, and yet never perceived me. She heard me fall, and presently came to ask me if I ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... samplers?" "Dear aunt," said Isabel, "I am a brown bird of the mountains, as my mother called me. She taught me to sing, because she said it made work go on more merrily, but the longest day was short enough for what I had to do; I was laundress, and sempstress, and cook, and gardener; and if Cicely went to look for the sheep, I had to milk and bake, and at night I mended my father's fishing-nets, while I was learning Latin with Eustace. ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... didn't interdict your daughters' marrying them. The Mastertons ate no meat, and didn't believe in banks. They kept their money in queer corners, and there was so much of it that they couldn't always remember where, and the laundress had orders to turn all stockings before wetting, and did indeed often find bills in the toe. But the laundress, being also of Addington, though of another stratum, recognised this as a Masterton habit, and faithfully sought ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... jilting baggage, but why should Mr. D. belie her? Virgil talks nothing of her going to sea, and perhaps she had a mind to be only a camp laundress, which office she might be advanced to without going to sea: 'the forms of horrid war,' for horrida ...
— The Dramatic Works of John Dryden Vol. I. - With a Life of the Author • Sir Walter Scott
... or thimble berry, that is found along almost every roadside and fence in the land. There are few little people who have not stained their lips and fingers, not to mention their clothes, with this homely favorite. I can recall the days when, to the horror of the laundress, I filled my pockets with the juicy caps. It is scarcely necessary to recall its long, rambling, purple shoots, its light-green foliage, silvery on the under side, its sharp and abundant spines, ...
— Success With Small Fruits • E. P. Roe
... Eveley, I am so nervous anyhow I hardly know what I am saying. You remember my laundress, don't you? She is so nice and motherly and a Methodist and respectable and all that,—only old and hard up. She is coming to live with us,—she will have the den for her room, and is closing her cottage. She is to keep house and look after the babies while I am at work. She only charges ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... concluded my professions, how shall I express my obligations to the discriminating press of this country for the unanimous applause which hailed my first appearance? It is the more wonderful, as I pledge my sacred word, I never wrote a document before much longer than a laundress's bill, or the acceptance of an invitation to dinner. But enough of this egotism: thanks for praise conferred sound like vanity; gratitude is hard to speak of, and at present it swells ...
— The Fitz-Boodle Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... compurgation—that is, by the sworn testimony of reputable friends. If, unhappily, he was guilty, he might rehabilitate himself by formally abjuring his indiscretions. Both scholars and others of the Privilege frequently appeared before the Chancellor in the character of penitents. In 1443 a certain Christina, laundress of St. Martin's parish, swore that she would no longer exercise her trade for any scholar or scholars of the University, because under colour of it many evils had been perpetrated, wherefore she was imprisoned and freely abjured the aforesaid evils in the presence of Master ...
— The Customs of Old England • F. J. Snell
... goes on Peters. "It—it's about the laundress, sir. She's sitting on a man in the ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... Trigger," lived at Upperton, a suburb of Eastbourne, and had accommodation for seventy boys, but during the whole time I remained there we never had more than fifty. His advertisements in local and London papers offering "Commercial training for thirty guineas including laundress and books. Bracing air, gravel soil, diet best and unlimited. Reduction for brothers," were glowing enough, but they never whipped up business sufficiently to attract the required number of boarders. Nevertheless, I must admit that ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... ladies of Ariosto and Spenser think of them? What would they say, these romantic, dainty creatures, were they to meet Nausicaa with the washed linen piled on her waggon? Alas! they would take her for a laundress. For it is the terrible aristocratic idleness of the Middle Ages, their dreary delicacy, which hampers Boiardo, Ariosto, Tasso, Spenser, even in the midst of their most unblushing plagiarisms from Antiquity: their heroes and heroines have been brought up, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... Dressmaker Drummer Economist Electrician Farmer First Aide*** Flower Finder Gardener Handy Woman Health Guardian*** Health Winner Home Maker Home Nurse*** Horsewoman Hostess Interpreter Journalist**** Laundress Milliner Motorist**** Musician Needlewoman Pathfinder Photographer Pioneer*** Rock Tapper Sailor*** Scribe Signaller ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... future. Restaurateurs, laundresses, confectioners—all trusted him. An instance of the regard people were beginning to have for him is shown in the pathetic interview between Napoleon and Madame Sans Gene, his laundress. ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... lady, my dear," said the woman, smiling,—"only a laundress as does for some of the gentlemen in the Temple. There now, you both go home; for I can see that you don't belong to this part of the town. I dare say, if the truth was known, ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... practical fact remains; he it is that is anglicising Europe. For him the Swiss peasant tramps through the snow on winter evenings to attend the English class open in every village. For him the coachman and the guard, the chambermaid and the laundress, pore over their English grammars and colloquial phrase books. For him the foreign shopkeeper and merchant send their sons and daughters in their thousands to study in every English town. For him it is that every foreign ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... pleased to meet Miss Killigrew," which was a white one. Hillard would have paid court to a laundress ...
— The Lure of the Mask • Harold MacGrath
... Baron. I think we should suit one another mainly. He Jives on the ground floor, for convenience of the gout; I prefer the attic story, for the air. He keeps three footmen and two maids; I have neither maid nor laundress, not caring to be troubled with them! His forte, I understand, is the higher mathematics; my turn, I confess, is more to poetry and the belles lettres. The very antithesis of our characters would make up a harmony. You must bring the Baron and ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Volume 2 • Charles Lamb
... which are certificates of the genuineness of what one does on them, for those unique days are consumed by being used, they do not return, one cannot live them again here when one has lived them elsewhere; I felt that it was towards the week that would begin with the Monday on which the laundress was to bring back the white waistcoat that I had stained with ink, that they were hastening to busy themselves with the duty of emerging from that ideal Time in which they did not, as yet, exist, those two ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... grave and troubled, and at the same time annoyed. However, there was nothing for Audrey to do but to go on with her breakfast, for she knew that her grandmother did not like to be questioned, and, after all, it might only be that the laundress had torn a sheet, or that the boot-boy had been rude to the cook. Granny was always greatly upset if people did not do ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... it; but madame must remember that I have been very much hurried this last month, having to do all the washing and ironing since the laundress——" ...
— Baron Trigault's Vengeance - Volume 2 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau
... her buy a yard or two of silk and pin it to her dress when she goes out to walk, but let her unpin it before she goes into the house;—there may be poor women that will think it worth disinfecting. It is an insult to a respectable laundress to carry such things into a house for her to deal with. I don't like the Bloomers any too well,—in fact, I never saw but one, and she—or he, or it—had a mob of boys after her, or whatever you call the creature, as if ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... something ahead and I fall short; why is it? I know all about economy." He thinks he does, but he does not. There are men who think that economy consists in saving cheese-parings and candle-ends, in cutting off two pence from the laundress' bill and doing all sorts of little, mean, dirty things. Economy is not meanness. The misfortune is, also, that this class of persons let their economy apply in only one direction. They fancy they ...
— The Art of Money Getting - or, Golden Rules for Making Money • P. T. Barnum
... enough to behold, lame of one leg, and with a large false curl hanging down over one of her eyes, which was a blind one. The curl was intended to cover the eye, but it only made the defect more striking. This was a friend of the laundress. She was called among the neighbours, "Lame Martha with ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... you set out on a search expedition," continued my informant, after a cup of tea and a cigarette to subdue his emotions, "you insist on having the number of the house. Do you get it? Oh yes! and with a safeguard added, 'Inquire of the laundress.' [This was a parody on, "Inquire of the Swiss," or "of the yard-porter."] You start off in high feather; number and guide are provided, only a fool could fail to find it, and you know that you are a person who is considered rather above the average in cleverness. But that is in Petersburg, ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... accommodation-ladder below; and in glorious spirits, we sat down to dinner. In the ward-room, the lieutenants were passing round their oldest port, and pledging their friends; in the steerage, the middies were busy raising loans to liquidate the demands of their laundress, or else—in the navy phrase—preparing to pay their creditors with a flying fore-topsail. On the poop, the captain was looking to windward; and in his grand, inaccessible cabin, the high and mighty commodore sat silent and ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... fetched the kettle of hot water, emptied it into the cold water that was already in his bath, refilled the kettle and put it back on the fire. After dressing, he came into his sitting-room, made tea and cooked, in his Dutch oven, something he had bought the day before. His laundress was an elderly woman, and he could not trouble her to come to his rooms so early in the morning; on the other hand, he could not stay in bed until he thought it right for her to go out; so it ended in his doing a great deal ...
— Samuel Butler: A Sketch • Henry Festing Jones
... boats and free passers-by glimpses came to us through the wicket when Mr. George, the porter (we always addressed him as "Mr." and supposed him to resemble the King in features), admitted a visitor, or the laundress, or the butcher's boy. And sometimes we broke off a game to watch the topmasts of a vessel gliding by silently, above the wall's coping. But if at any time the world called to us, we took second thoughts, remembering ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... establishment was now reduced to so small a number of servants that he was compelled to be his own postman. To be plain with you, there were but two servants—old Jovial, who was gardener, coachman, and waiter; and old Dinah, his wife, who was cook, laundress, ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... know," answered Rorie quickly, for he knew that when the floodgates of Miss McCroke's eloquence were once loosened the tide ran strong, "when house and lands are gone and spent a man may turn usher in an academy, and earn fifty pounds a year and his laundress's bill by grinding Caesar's Commentaries into small boys. But I shouldn't lay in a stock of learning with that view. When my house and lands are gone I'll go after them—emigrate, and go into the ...
— Vixen, Volume I. • M. E. Braddon
... helplessly at his silk pajamas, and wondering where he could get them washed, when there entered the tent a handsome and stalwart regular. "Washing?" he inquired respectfully. "Oh," asked Lucy hopefully, "are you an agent for some laundress?" "No," said the man, "I wash them myself. I guarantee to return everything tomorrow, properly done." The boy was not merely surprised, but almost shocked. "You do the work?" he asked. Then his native kindness came to his aid, and he was about to bundle all his clothes into ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... who was a laundress, entered, in a short blue cotton wrapper, wiping the suds from her shrunken but sinewy arms with her apron, and on seeing the captain, her countenance, which was threatening, became ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... one hundred dollars Mario Carlo would receive all three of us as passengers, that he would furnish a room simply but comfortably, that papa would share this room with us, that Mario would supply our table, and that his wife would serve as maid and laundress. It remained to be seen now whether our other fellow-travelers were married, and, if so, what sort of creatures their ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... John! the entire print of the iron upon the bosom of one, to say nothing of the piles of starch upon another, and more than all, the tremendous scolding which he received from the owner of said shirt, warned him never to turn laundress again, and in disgust he gave up his new vocation, devoting his leisure moments to the cultivation of flowers, which he carried to his mistress, who smiled gratefully upon him, saying they were the sweetest ...
— Cousin Maude • Mary J. Holmes
... a watchful attendant came gliding in at the sound. Lord Hartledon left the room and went straight down to the Temple to Mr. Carr's chambers. He found him in all the bustle of departure from town. A cab stood at the foot of the stairs, and Mr. Carr's laundress, a queer old body with an inverted black bonnet, was handing the cabman a ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... by. When the rustle of the Countess' approach was audible, a boatman suddenly stood up, helped the fair laundress to take her seat in it, and rowed with such strength as to make the boat fly like a ...
— The Exiles • Honore de Balzac
... her without much interest, supposing that she might be a seamstress, or laundress, or some applicant for charity. So many years had passed since he had met with this woman, that she had passed ...
— Timothy Crump's Ward - A Story of American Life • Horatio Alger
... this she approached the laundress and said to her: "Let me try, I pray you. I think I can ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... occasionally to the kitchen of Dr. W.'s house a foul-mouthed Irish laundress who used coarse language to me concerning urination. I loathed the woman, and yet one night I dreamed that I was embracing her naked form and rolling over and over with her on the bed; and in spite of my sight ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... the beginning of his new career in his shapeless prison shoddy; so the next day Larry pottered about the studio, acting as maid-of-all-work, while the clothes in his trunk which had been stored with the Duchess were being sponged and pressed by the little tailor down the street, and while a laundress, driven by the Duchess, was preparing the rest of his outfit for his debut. In his capacity of maid, with a basket on his arm, he went out into the little street, where in his shabby clothes he was recognized by none and leaned for a time against the mongrel, underfed tree that was ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... loved them, particularly "Mammy," who had nursed their mother, and now had entire charge of the children; and Aunt Milly, a lame yellow woman, who helped Mammy in the nursery; and Aunt Edy, the head laundress, who was never too busy to amuse them. Then there was Aunt Nancy, the "tender," who attended to the children for the field-hands, and old Uncle Snake-bit Bob, who could scarcely walk at all, because ...
— Diddie, Dumps & Tot - or, Plantation child-life • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... for an employer to manage her household industry with a cook, a laundress, a waitress. The difficulties really begin when the family income is so small that but one person can be employed in the household for all these varied functions, and the difficulties increase and grow almost insurmountable as they fall altogether upon the mother of the family, who is ...
— Democracy and Social Ethics • Jane Addams
... well-to-do man, for few of the Englebourn labourers rose above smock-frocks and fustian trousers. He wore a blue bird's-eye handkerchief round his neck, and his shirt, though coarse in texture, was as white as the sun and the best laundress in Englebourn could manage to bleach it. There was nothing to find fault with in his dress, therefore, but still his mother did not feel quite comfortable as she took stealthy glances at him. Harry was naturally a reserved fellow, ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... their newness as the fashion. His other talk is ladies and such pretty things, or some jest at a play. His pick-tooth bears a great part in his discourse, so does his body, the upper parts whereof are as starched as his linnen, and perchance use the same laundress. He has learned to ruffle his face from his boot, and takes great delight in his walk to hear his spurs gingle. Though his life pass somewhat slidingly, yet he seems very careful of the time, for he is still drawing his watch out of his pocket, and spends part of ...
— Microcosmography - or, a Piece of the World Discovered; in Essays and Characters • John Earle
... in providing for the wants of the family, in food as well as clothing. Besides the father's small earnings as a tailor of the lowest standing, the mother occasionally earned a little money as a laundress. A grandfather, Boe, formed one of the family group. He had been a soldier, but was now too old to serve in the ranks, though France was waging war in Italy and Austria under her new Emperor. Boe, however, helped to earn the family living, ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... girl, she must bear them in the meekest silence. Even the most friendly advice, conveyed in the blandest possible tone, is often declined with freezing dignity or repelled with tart resentment. The cook who makes a cinder of your joint, or sends you up disgusting slops for coffee, or the laundress between whose clean and soiled linen you are puzzled to choose, has almost invariably the reply, uttered with a majestic sternness that never fails to crush any but a veteran and plucky housekeeper: 'This is the first time any mistress ever found fault with my cooking (or washing), and I have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... late Duchess of York having desired her housekeeper to seek out for a new laundress, a decent-looking woman was recommended to the situation. "But, (said the housekeeper) I am afraid that she will not suit your royal highness, as she is a soldier's wife, and these people are generally loose characters." "What is that you say, said the duke, who had just entered ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... seated on the quay. Again in the coach, and afterwards in his chambers, he tried to swallow the laudanum; but his hand was paralysed by "the convincing Spirit," aided by seasonable interruptions from the presence of his laundress and her husband, and at length he threw the laudanum away. On the night before the day appointed for the examination before the Lords, he lay some time with the point of his penknife pressed against his heart, but without courage to drive it home. ...
— Cowper • Goldwin Smith
... you talking about, Mrs. Griffen?" demanded Mrs. Alexander, turning in vexed bewilderment to her laundress, "what ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... ankles, the turn of a plump calf, such as Ben Cohen had never even thought of before, the realisation of which was like wine: freshly tasted, red, fruity, running through his veins, mounting to his head. He had known that women had legs; his mother, the laundress, suffered from hers—complainingly, devoted woman as she was—swollen with much standing, and "them there dratted veins": stocky legs, with loose folds ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... strong as a Judith or a Delilah. They arrived at the appointed spot. Eugenie ordered the porter to put down the portmanteau, gave him some pieces of money, and having rapped at the shutter sent him away. The shutter where Eugenie had rapped was that of a little laundress, who had been previously warned, and was not yet gone to bed. She ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the block. The watchman remembered. He knows everything that goes on in the Bowery. Maggie was the wayward daughter of a decent laundress, and killed herself by drinking carbolic acid less than a month before. She had wearied of the Bowery. Nigger Martha was her one friend. And now she had followed ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... of his pleasures! He shall gain fifteen cents on the leather in his boots, and, to take his family into the country four times a year, he shall pay one dollar and twenty cents more for carriage-hire! A small bourgeois spends one hundred and twenty dollars for a housekeeper, laundress, linen-tender, and errand-boys; but if, by a wiser economy which works for the interest of all, he takes a domestic, the exchequer, in the interest of articles of subsistence, will punish this plan of economy! What an absurd ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... and my mind in a state of peculiar lucidity. I have observed, as you know, the wonderful effects produced by diet upon the imagination. My lodgings cost me three sous daily; I burnt three sous more in oil at night; I did my own housework, and wore flannel shirts so as to reduce the laundress' bill to two sous per day. The money I spent yearly in coal, if divided up, never cost more than two sous for each day. I had three years' supply of clothing, and I only dressed when going out to some library or ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... is quite content to have any amount of trite philosophy passed off upon it as new goods by the author who has a gift for dialect and uses an American negro as mouthpiece. Miss DOROTHY DIX employs a black laundress of the name of Mirandy (SAMPSON LOW) for philosopher; and cheerfully persisting with the "yessum's," the "wid's," the "dat's" and the "becaze's," tells us with incessant humour many things we all knew before about husbands, their little idiosyncracies and weaknesses and the methods ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... drawing-room." I confess to little acquaintance with modern ethical novels; but real mediaeval knights, and still more the knights of mediaeval romance, were capable of very ethical actions. To halt an army for the protection and comfort of a laundress was a highly ethical action. Perhaps Sir Redvers Buller would do it: Bruce did. Mr Harrison accuses the ladies of the Idylls of soul-bewildering casuistry, like that of women in Middlemarch or Helbeck of Bannisdale. Now I am not reminded by Guinevere, and Elaine, and Enid, ...
— Alfred Tennyson • Andrew Lang
... seem at all fly to it; and even slang Grose has no touch of its extensive signification. The squeamish Fair One who takes it on the sly, merely to cure the vapours, politely names it to her friends as White Wine. The Swell chaffs it as Blue Ruin, to elevate his notions. The Laundress loves dearly a drain of Ould Tom, from its strength to comfort her inside. The drag Fiddler can toss off a quartern of Max without making a wry mug. The Costermonger illumines his ideas with a flash of lightning.' The hoarse Cyprian owes her ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... command outside, made his way through the sentries to the house indicated. He saw the lady, and, on delivering the ring, received from her a sealed cabinet. It was a box of diamonds and other jewels, chiefly broken Georges and Garters, which had been deposited with the lady, who was the King's laundress and wife of Sir William Wheeler. Returning with it to St. James's, Herbert found Juxon just gone to his lodging near, and the King alone. Herbert slept that night in the King's chamber, as he had done since the beginning of the trial, a pallet-bed having been brought in for the purpose ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... the house, for the mortgage was paid off, though the government and not poor Solomon Isaacs had the mortgage-money in its grip for the present. Old Ursula, who was cook, chambermaid, housekeeper, laundress, and everything else for Father Peter, and had been Marget's nurse in earlier years, said God would provide. But she said that from habit, for she was a good Christian. She meant to help in the providing, to make sure, if she could ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... monkey, Chee-Chee, was to do the cooking and mending; the dog was to sweep the floors; the duck was to dust and make the beds; the owl, Too-Too, was to keep the accounts, and the pig was to do the gardening. They made Polynesia, the parrot, housekeeper and laundress, because she ...
— The Story of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... Captain Bayard, the surgeon's memoranda enclosed, and a quarter of an hour afterwards fleet-footed Sancho was flying over the sixty miles to Fort Whipple as fast as Private Tom Clary could ride him. Three days later a pack-train arrived, with a laundress from the infantry company, Frank Burton, and Mary Arnold, and with stores and supplies necessary for setting up a sick-camp. The wounded girl mended rapidly ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... Jeanette supported this child by her own industry. She was an exquisite laundress, and she throve where the Duke and Duchess would have starved. As the boy grew up she kept him as far as possible from common companions, treated him with as much deference as if he had succeeded to the family honours, and filled ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... pack and equipment, to Larry O'Toole, the son of my mother's laundress, to be preserved for him until he is old enough ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... laziness, shiftlessness, slovenliness, dirt, and active assertion of Ohio vim. Sick of vermin and slime, I would take pail, scrubbing brush and lye, and fall to; sick of it all, I would get a Summit county breakfast, old fashioned pan cakes for old times' sake; sick of the native laundress who cleansed nothing, I would give an Akron rub myself to my own clothes and have something fit to wear. These attacks of energy depended somewhat on the temperature, somewhat on exhausted patience, somewhat on ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... flat grinding stone is firmly set, inclining at an angle of forty-five degrees. These slabs are of different degrees of smoothness, graduated successively from coarse to fine. The squaws, who alone work at the mills, kneel before them and bend over them as a laundress does over the wash-tub, holding in their hands long stones of volcanic lava, which they rub up and down the slanting slabs, stopping at intervals to place the grain between the stones. As the grinding ...
— Houses and House-Life of the American Aborigines • Lewis H. Morgan
... to my laundress to tell her I shall be there to-morrow, and one to Mary Snow to say that I'll see ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... v.; purgation, lustration[obs3]; detersion[obs3], abstersion[obs3]; epuration[obs3], mundation|; ablution, lavation[obs3], colature|; disinfection &c. v.; drainage, sewerage. lavatory, laundry, washhouse[obs3]; washerwoman, laundress, dhobi[obs3], laundryman, washerman[obs3]; scavenger, dustman[obs3], sweep; white wings brush[Local U. S.]; broom, besom[obs3], mop, rake, shovel, sieve, riddle, screen, filter; blotter. napkin, cloth, maukin|, malkin|, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... will not be a success as a child's nurse. And I can get her a first-class place as a parlor maid where she can have eighteen dollars a month, which I couldn't afford to pay. There is a cook and a laundress kept, so she won't lose by coming down. She is very nice, pleasant and tidy, and we had to have some one in the emergency. And poor little Marilla must have gone to a hospital but for your kindness. We are all so obliged and if Mr. Borden can be of service to you, sometime, he will be very glad. ...
— A Modern Cinderella • Amanda M. Douglas
... laundry is part of the service wing depends, of course, on how much of that type of work is to be done at home. There are two points of view here. Some households prefer to scoop the family linen into a bag, make a list, and hand it over to a commercial laundry. Others find a dependable laundress nearby or provide facilities for doing the work at home. The clear air of the country and easy drying conditions influence many towards the ...
— If You're Going to Live in the Country • Thomas H. Ormsbee and Richmond Huntley
... a sprig of wet heliotrope in his button-hole, plucked from one of Marguerite's plants. The paraffin starch on his shirt front and collar and cuffs gave to them the appearance and consistency of celluloid—it being the intention of his old laundress to make him indeed the stiffest and most highly polished gentleman of his high world. His noble face as always a sermon on kindness, sincerity, and peace; yet having this contradiction, that the happier ...
— The Mettle of the Pasture • James Lane Allen
... morning of Monday we found in our area a person who had evidently passed the night there in a condition of helpless intoxication. As she could offer no satisfactory explanation of her presence, I handed her over to the police, and entered her on the Census Paper as, "a supposed retired laundress, seemingly living on her own means, and apparently blind from the date of her last drinking-bout." I rejected advisedly her own indistinctly but frequently reiterated assertion that "she was a lady," because I had been warned by "the general instructions" to avoid such "indefinite ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various
... seen even in the appearance of their toilette. The one is careless, he is unshaved, and the other never appears excepting in full dress. Sterne has pleasantly remarked that the account book of the laundress was the most authentic record he knew, as to the life of Tristram Shandy; and that it was easy to guess from the number of shirts he wore what passages of his book had cost him most. Well, with regard to lovers the account book of their laundresses ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... keep them at ease, Not with bread in the funds—or investments of cheese,— But to droop like sad willows that liv'd by a stream, Which the sun has suck'd up into vapor and steam. Ah, look at the laundress, before you begrudge— Her hard daily bread to that laudable drudge— When chanticleer singeth his earliest matins, She slips her amphibious feet in her pattens, And beginneth her toil while the morn is still gray, As if she was ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... is that your chambermaid, bellboy, hotel clerk, taxi driver, dressmaker, saleslady, cook and laundress, hairdresser, waiter and bootblack may all and each be a so-called divorcee. (For convenience sake, I speak of them all as "divorcees," although Webster defines a "divorcee" as a man or woman who ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... be sure, in these respects; for every gentleman on board appeared to have had a difference with his laundress and to have left off washing himself in early youth. Every gentleman, too, was perfectly stopped up with tight plugging, and was dislocated in the greater part of his joints. But about this gentleman there was a ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... is seen and felt, producing a sense of physical exhilaration, fine spirits, and a good appetite. It would be impossible to live in a dwelling-house built in our close, secure style, if it were placed in the city of Havana. The laundress takes possession of the roof of the house during the day, but it is the place of social gathering at night, when the family and their guests enjoy the sea-breeze which sweeps in from the Gulf of Mexico. On a clear, bright moonlight night ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... country, choose wool fabrics that will not crease easily, or show dust, and for summer, cotton materials that will come bright and fresh from the hands of the laundress. ...
— Social Life - or, The Manners and Customs of Polite Society • Maud C. Cooke
... Your advertisement appearing in the Chicago Defender have influenced me to write to you with no delay. For seven previous years I bore the reputation of a first class laundress in Selma. I have much experience with all of the machines in this laundry. This laundry is noted for its skillful work of neatness and ect. We do sample work for different laundries of neighboring cities, viz. Montgomery, ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 4, 1919 • Various
... of the laundresses referred to above (as a trained and skilful laundress she was in charge of the fine linen only), was a woman of twenty-eight, thin, fair-haired, with moles on her left cheek. Moles on the left cheek are regarded as of evil omen in Russia—a token of unhappy life.... Tatiana could not boast of her good luck. From her earliest ...
— The Torrents of Spring • Ivan Turgenev
... little clerks who were lounging in the arch-way that leads thence into Flag-court which leads into Upper Temple-lane, Warrington was in the chambers, but Pen was absent. Pen was gone to the printing-office to see his proofs. "Would Foker have a pipe, and should the laundress go to the Cock and get him some beer?" —Warrington asked, remarking with a pleased surprise the splendid toilet of this scented and shiny-booted young aristocrat; but Foker had not the slightest wish for beer or tobacco: he had very important business: he rushed away to the ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... her mistress; she told her that her outraged lord knew nothing, and that before giving up the ghost she would comfort her dear mistress by assuring her that she could have perfect confidence in her sister, who was laundress in the hotel, and was willing to let herself be chopped up as small as sausage-meat to please Madame. That she was the most adroit and roguish woman in the neighbourhood, and renowned from the council chamber to the Trahoir cross among the common ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... CLERGET (Basine), laundress at Angouleme during the Restoration, who succeeded Mme. Prieur with whom Eve Chardon had worked. Basine Clerget concealed David Sechard and Kolb when Sechard was pursued by ...
— Repertory Of The Comedie Humaine, Complete, A — Z • Anatole Cerfberr and Jules Franois Christophe
... honour was dearly purchased at the expense of "dreadful palpitations in the heart, nights of sleeplessness and horrors, and spirits depressed to the very depths of wretchedness." In July, 1806, his laundress on coming into his room at College, saw him fallen down in a convulsive fit, bleeding and insensible. His great anxiety was to conceal from his mother the state to which he was reduced. At the end of September, he went to London in search of relaxation and amusement; and in the next month, ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... likewise bore a grudge, because it was in the river that a brown woman washed his clothes on the stones, returning them with the buttons pounded off; but for every missing button there was sure to be a bright yellow, semi-indelible stain, where the laundress had spread the garments to dry ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... feeling as if something was wrong, and began to watch. The feeling grew, but I discovered nothing till to-day. It will make you laugh, it was so unromantic. As I looked over uncle's things when the laundress brought them this afternoon, I found a collar that was not his. It was marked 'S.P.,' and I at once felt a great desire to know who owned it. The woman was waiting for her money, and I asked her. 'Monsieur Pologne,' she said, for his name is too much for her. She took it into his room, and that was ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... personal ones. They are not content with handsome houses: they want handsome cities. They are not content with bediamonded wives and blooming daughters: they complain because the charwoman is badly dressed, because the laundress smells of gin, because the sempstress is anemic, because every man they meet is not a friend and every woman not a romance. They turn up their noses at their neighbors' drains, and are made ill by ...
— Bernard Shaw's Preface to Major Barbara • George Bernard Shaw
... Buck, you're—you're—well, you're a man, that's what you are! That blue thing was worn threadbare in the office, and I gave it to the laundress's niece weeks ago." Small wonder her cheeks took on ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... still hold the ace of trumps: it is your title." [Laughing] He said I might get a rich girl to marry me for it! [ANNA opens the window and looks down] "Let me make a match between you and Martha," says he. Who is this Martha? It must be that Balabalkina—Babakalkina woman, the one that looks like a laundress. ...
— Ivanoff - A Play • Anton Checkov
... which left him totally blind. As soon as he was old enough to sit up alone and toddle about, another affliction, the nervous motion of his body, became apparent. His mother, a buxom young Negro wench who was laundress for the d'Arnaults, concluded that her blind baby was 'not right' in his head, and she was ashamed of him. She loved him devotedly, but he was so ugly, with his sunken eyes and his 'fidgets,' that she hid him away from people. All the dainties she brought ...
— My Antonia • Willa Cather
... coachman, Nancy the laundress, of a gentleman residing at the capital. Their master had the happy eccentricity of getting more amiable with every rum-toddy; and as he never for any length of time discontinued rum-toddies, the days of Sol and Nancy at ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 90, April, 1865 • Various
... sufficient for us all, thus saving us the trouble of assuming any. Lastly, there was Samayana, which was not his name either, from Bombay,—a real, live East-Indian nabob. In his own country he travelled with three tents, a dozen servants, as many horses, and always carried his laundress with him. Yet he never seemed lonely with us,—which we thought very agreeable in him. Crawford had just created Mr. Isaacs, and we fancied there was a resemblance,—barring the wives,—and he told us such graphic stories of life in India that we were not always sure in just ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... Bachelor, in a nasty temper, after a struggle with an ultra-stiffened clean shirt, "I should like to indict my laundress at the Old Bailey, charge her with murdering my linen, and, as evidence, I'd produce the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 104, March 18, 1893 • Various |
