"Seamstress" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... party of pleasure-seekers, went about this time on a tour to Quebec and the Falls of Montmorency. They decided to shut their house in Boston, and Lulu asked me if I would employ and look after a protegee of hers, in whom she took some interest. The woman was a tolerable seamstress, she said, and would come to me the next day. She knew nothing about her except that she was poor ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various
... crime might lurk or poverty hide itself, as a whole there is hardly a spot where sunshine cannot come, and the hideous squalor of London is absolutely unknown. One quarter alone is to be excepted in this statement, and with that we are to deal farther on. The seamstress in a London garret or the shop-worker in the narrow rooms of the East End lives in a gloom for which there is neither outward nor inward alleviation. Soot is king of the great city, and his prime ministers, Smoke and Fog, ...
— Prisoners of Poverty Abroad • Helen Campbell
... of setting up a petty shop is almost the only resource of women, in circumstances at all similar to those of our unfortunate recluse. With her near-sightedness, and those tremulous fingers of hers, at once inflexible and delicate, she could not be a seamstress; although her sampler, of fifty years gone by, exhibited some of the most recondite specimens of ornamental needlework. A school for little children had been often in her thoughts; and, at one time, she had begun ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... we find, first, the industrial revolution. A large number of the activities once carried on in the home have removed to other quarters. In earlier times the mother of a family served as cook, housemaid, laundress, spinner, weaver, seamstress, dairymaid, nurse, and general caretaker. The father was about the house, at work in the field, or in his workshop close at hand. The children grew up naturally in the midst of the industries which provided for the maintenance of the home, and for which, in part, the home ...
— Vocational Guidance for Girls • Marguerite Stockman Dickson
... made in Europe for this special purpose, very thin, smooth, and compact,) and floats it evenly on the surface of the albumen. Presently she lifts it very carefully by the turned-up corners and hangs it bias, as a seamstress might say, that is, cornerwise, on a string, to dry. This "albumenized" paper is sold most extensively to photographers, who find it cheaper to buy than to prepare it. It keeps for a long time uninjured, and is "sensitized" when wanted, as we ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... steadily all day. Her painting materials had been put meekly aside, and, as a further precaution at old Mata's hands, hidden under the kitchen flooring. Toward the last it was found necessary to employ an assistant, a seamstress, known of old to Mata. Her companionship, as well as her sewing, proved a boon. Seated upon the springy matting, with waves of shimmering silk tumultuous about them, the old dames chatted incessantly of ...
— The Dragon Painter • Mary McNeil Fenollosa
... sympathy for the printer of Christmas story books and reveals Gibson as the twentieth-century Thomas Hood of The Song of the Shirt. One of the most richly human of his poems is The Crane, the story of the seamstress mother and her lame boy. His realistic volume of verse bearing the significant title, Daily Bread (1910), contains a number of narrative poems, which endeavor to set to music the "one measure" to which all life moves,—the earning ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... ones in the market. Embroidery needles had "gone out." Then came the relief of the sewing machine, born in America, where it was scarcely needed, but speedily flying across the ocean to its life-saving work in England, where the tragedy of the poor seamstress was on the stage of life. Like many another form of relief, it was not entirely adequate to the situation. Its first effect was to create a need of remunerative work. The sewing machine took upon itself ...
— The Development of Embroidery in America • Candace Wheeler
... ear-rings and necklace. If their husbands do not dress them well enough, they will soon receive presents from others. They used to spend whole days on board our vessel, examining the fine clothes and ornaments, and frequently making purchases at a rate which would have made a seamstress or waiting-maid in ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... things than this flat life: "instincts of chivalry and kindred souls,"—quoting Estelle's last letter. Poor Ann! he wondered if they had toffy-pullings at Mipps's now. He hadn't been there since April. Such a dog-trot sort of love-making that used to be! And Andy stopped to give a quart of milk to a seamstress who came out of Poole's cheap boarding-house, and who, by the bye, had just been imbibing the fashion-book literature on which he had been living lately. A sort of weak wine-whey, that gives to the brains of that class ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... were told off. From the farmer-general of seventy, whose riches could not buy his life, to the seamstress of twenty, whose poverty and obscurity could not save her. Physical diseases, engendered in the vices and neglects of men, will seize on victims of all degrees; and the frightful moral disorder, born of unspeakable suffering, intolerable oppression, and heartless indifference, ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... time to utter a word. "Well, I have found you at last," she exclaimed, panting and out of breath. "I declare, young woman, if I'd have known what a search I should have, I would not have ventured into this out of the way place. Your's a seamstress, ...
— Clemence - The Schoolmistress of Waveland • Retta Babcock
... edition of old Bablington: delightfully bound—so light." And it was in July that Holm Oaks, as a gathering-place of the elect, was at its best. For in July it had become customary to welcome there many of those poor souls from London who arrived exhausted by the season, and than whom no seamstress in a two-pair back could better have earned a holiday. The Dennants themselves never went to London for the season. It was their good pleasure not to. A week or fortnight of it satisfied them. They had a ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... the moment,—electric sparks which the mind's own rapid motion generated,—thought as little of the patient industry with which all had been elaborated as they who admire an exquisite ball-dress, that seems a part of the lovely form which it adorns, think of the pale weaver's loom and the poor seamstress's needle. We have known brilliant men; we have known laborious men; but we have never known any man in whom the two elements were met in such ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... was not a bad seamstress, and the two friends began to make Lottie little frocks; and, as Hopewell only had to supply the material out of the store, Lottie was more prettily dressed—and ...
— Janice Day at Poketown • Helen Beecher Long
... her, however. He was confident she shared his feelings; he was sorry for her; he trusted her judgment; he considered it a merciful dispensation that he could help her once more,—but in his aristocratic heart of hearts he would have found it more easy to reconcile himself to the idea of her turning seamstress. Vaguely he remembered reading years ago a touching piece called the "Song of the Shirt." It was all very well making songs about poor women. The granddaughter of Colonel Whalley, the landlady of a boarding-house! Pooh! He replaced his hat, dived into two pockets, ...
— End of the Tether • Joseph Conrad
... of dressmaking to which no reference has yet been made in this chapter is the work of the seamstress who sews by the day in the homes of her employers. If she is really a competent dressmaker, her employment is assured. But it is a mistake for a girl or young woman without training or experience, or without a dressmaker's gifts, to undertake dressmaking by the day. A dressmaker—to define the ...
— The Canadian Girl at Work - A Book of Vocational Guidance • Marjory MacMurchy
... were sick and dying, and the world looked very dark to some of them. Mrs. Holmes lived high up in the topmost rooms of a tall block of buildings. Her rooms were small and hot, for the sun shone into her windows and upon the roof all the long day. She was a seamstress and a widow ...
— Sunshine Factory • Pansy
... high in the palace a young girl was trying on a frock. Before a tall pier glass she stood indifferently, one hip sagging to the despair of the kneeling seamstress, her face turned listlessly from the image in ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... together every working day since the siege began, heedless of shells. There are tailors, too, who have done their best to keep officers and civilians clothed, not even quitting their benches when shrapnels burst near them, and I know of at least one poor seamstress who, by working night and day, has earned enough to buy something more than bare rations even at famine prices. Cynics do not look for heroes or heroines among such as these. They toil for gain, that is all. But they have stuck to their notion of duty in the midst of danger, and no soldier ...
— Four Months Besieged - The Story of Ladysmith • H. H. S. Pearse
... get together quite a number of things for the child," Tom went on to explain. "A pair of fairly decent shoes and some material that one of the nurses will make into a dress, for she used to be a seamstress over in the good old U. S. A. before the call came. Best of all, Nellie has found just the family ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... his feet over the manger, several were perched on a ladder, and one was sitting cross-legged on a huge pumpkin. Johnny was going around as Grand Inquisitor from one to another. If a seam was puckered, he gave the unlucky seamstress what they called a "hickey,"—a tremendous thump on the head with his thumb and middle finger. If the stitches were big and uneven, he gave two hickeys and a pinch, and one boy got half a dozen, because Johnny said his dirty hands made the thread gray. ...
— The Quilt that Jack Built; How He Won the Bicycle • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Improved machinery lightens the toil of the sailor. Machines in a great variety facilitate agricultural labor. They open the furrow, sow the seed, reap and winnow the harvest. In-doors, the sewing-machine performs a great part of the labor formerly done by the fingers of the seamstress. The art of printing has attained to a marvelous degree of progress. Hoe's printing-press, moved by steam, seizes on the blank paper, severs it from the roll in sheets of the right size, prints it on both sides, and folds it ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... candles were supplanted, By the lamp and spermaceti, Linsey woolsey, jeans and cotton, Long suspended from the weaving, Changed to silk and print and muslin, Changed to cassimere and broadcloth. Now the seamstress plied her sewing, With machine and modern patterns; Now the drudge of toil domestic, Sought out many new inventions, Soon rejoiced in work made easy, By the labor saving structures. And the turnpikes of the county, Echoed loud ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... with a sort of fright. "He does not wish it—and he is right. You see, Monsieur, when he married me, five years ago, he was not what he is now; he was a railway clerk. I was a working-girl; yes, I was a seamstress. Then it was all right; we used to walk together, and we went to the theatre; he did not know any one. It is different now. You see, if the Baroness Dinati should see me on his arm, she would not bow ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... did not take much advantage of his educational opportunities. His Latinity laid him open to derision in the House of Commons, and there were times when his spelling would have reflected little credit upon a seamstress. But he was quite capable of learning abroad all the evil that the great school of evil was able to teach a willing student. He returned to England, and began his life there with three pronounced tastes: for gambling, for wine, and for the baser uses of politics. His ambitions ...
— A History of the Four Georges and of William IV, Volume III (of 4) • Justin McCarthy and Justin Huntly McCarthy
... them; her clothes were not made by a seamstress, but came from city shops, and had shorter skirts, and stuck out in different places. She could not do what they did; Mollie called for her at nine at evening parties, and she usually had to go to bed half an hour ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... died more than a year before. She was obliged to take in plain sewing, and when she could do so, she gave occasional lessons in French to eke out a livelihood for herself and child. A very short interview resulted in Mrs. Arnold persuading the widow to take a permanent situation with her, as her seamstress. And from that date until her death, which took place five years later, the fortunate widow and her child lived with the Arnolds as full ...
— Angel Agnes - The Heroine of the Yellow Fever Plague in Shreveport • Wesley Bradshaw
... following misprints have been corrected: "a" added (page 10; orignial text reads: "...thread ready alike for the sewing machine or the needle of seamstress." "aecording" corrected to "according" (page 36) "produed" corrected to "produced" (page 52) "qnantities" corrected to "quantities" (page 63) "reamains" corrected to "remains" (page 121) "rapily" corrected to "rapidly" (page 125) "to to" corrected to "to" (page 133) "correet" corrected ...
— The Story of the Cotton Plant • Frederick Wilkinson
... Harold's first theft, and he trembled with agitation as he thrust the pocketbook into his pocket. He would have trembled still more if he had known that his mother's confidential maid and seamstress, Felicie Lacouvreur, had seen everything through the crevice formed by ...
— Luke Walton • Horatio Alger
... hook-and-eyed at her glass in her new dress, and went down to his own den beyond the parlour. Before he shut his door ho caught a glimpse of Irene trailing up and down before the long mirror in HER new dress, followed by the seamstress on her knees; the woman had her mouth full of pins, and from time to time she made Irene stop till she could put one of the pins into her train; Penelope sat in a corner criticising and counselling. It made Lapham sick, and he despised ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... been looking in vain for a seamstress for the last three or four weeks. And I thought I really should have to go to the trouble and expense of sending to Baltimore or Washington for one; for all our spring and summer sewing is yet to do. I am sure ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Where Mother Eve enjoyed as many different costumes as there were trees in the country without cost, all of them becoming, and wholly adequate, your Aunt Jerusha has to be satisfied with three or four gowns of indifferent fit, made by the village seamstress at an average cost of thirty or forty dollars apiece. A sheath-gown, costing Jerusha seventy-five dollars, in the distance, gives no more of an impression in the matter of figure to an admiring world than your original grandmother used ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... one of the factory towns of Massachusetts recently agreed to take charge of a little girl while her mother, a seamstress, went to another ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... hats and feathers; the delicacy of the colour being rather injured by the red damask background. These pictures do not possess any particular merit beyond that of being extremely good likenesses, especially the one of the Marchioness of Ormonde. Over them is hung a picture of a seamstress, pale and vacant-looking, with eyes red from tears and long watchings in the night, hemming a shirt. It is meant to illustrate Hood's familiar poem. As we look on it, a terrible contrast strikes us between this miserable pauper-seamstress and the three beautiful ...
— Miscellanies • Oscar Wilde
... in this house, and why? Carol would hear it, and it would distress her, she is so full of love and goodness. The boys study with all their might and main. Why? Partly, at least, because they like to teach Carol, and amuse her by telling her what they read. When the seamstress comes, she likes to sew in Miss Carol's room, because there she forgets her own troubles, which, Heaven knows, are sore enough! And as for me, Donald, I am a better woman every day for Carol's sake; I have to be her eyes, ears, feet, ...
— The Bird's Christmas Carol • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... taken occasion to verify these observations by personal inquiry in Boston markets. One intelligent meat man gave his experience with a poor seamstress, who insisted on buying tenderloin steak at 60 cents per pound. He tried to persuade her that other parts of the meat were just as nutritive, as they really are, but she would not believe him; and when he ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1082, September 26, 1896 • Various
... settled. My establishment consists of a housekeeper, cook, and chambermaid, seamstress, and two footmen. There are, besides, two fishermen and four bargemen always at command. The department of laundress is done abroad. The plantation affords plenty of milk, cream, and butter; turkeys, fowls, kids, pigs, geese, and ...
— Memoirs of Aaron Burr, Complete • Matthew L. Davis
... of working hours. By 1840 the pay of unskilled labor had dropped to about seventy-five cents a day in the overcrowded cities, and in the winter, in either city or country, many unskilled workers were glad to work for merely their board. The lot of women workers was especially pitiful. A seamstress by hard toil, working fifteen hours a day might stitch enough shirts to earn from seventy-two cents to a dollar and twelve cents a week. Skilled labor, while faring better in wages, shared with the unskilled in the universal working day which lasted from ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... virgins and martyrs, and Christendom fared very well. But now it amounts to nothing more than praying and singing. Ought not, indeed, every Christian at the age of nine or ten years know the entire holy Gospel, in which his name and life is written? Does not the spinner and the seamstress teach the same handicraft to her daughter when she is still young? But now even the great men, the learned prelates and bishops, do not know the Gospel. How unjustly do we deal with the poor youth ...
— Historical Introductions to the Symbolical Books of the Evangelical Lutheran Church • Friedrich Bente
... to which his detractors would seem to have attached more importance than it was worth, but which must have been sufficiently disturbing to Schopenhauer—we refer to the Marquet affair. It appears on his returning home one day he found three women gossiping outside his door, one of whom was a seamstress who occupied another room in the house. Their presence irritated Schopenhauer (whose sensitiveness in such matters may be estimated from his essay "On Noise"), who, finding them occupying the same position on another occasion, ...
— Essays of Schopenhauer • Arthur Schopenhauer
... with the Morgans! Who was I to be bandied about in such fashion? Couldn't have me! I wasn't a seamstress who went out by the day. House packed with company! Well—what of that? Hadn't I more right there? Wasn't I Alec's own sister? Wasn't I born under the very roof to which I was now asked not to come? Weren't all my things there—my bed, my bureau, my little old white enameled desk ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... artistic actress now walks the stage than Madame Odille Orme. She is no mere amateur or novice, but told me she had laboriously and studiously struggled up from the comparatively menial position of seamstress. Even in Paris I have never heard a purer, finer rendition of a passage in Phedre than one day burst from her lips in a moment of deep feeling, yet I cannot tell you how or where she learned French. She made her debut in tragedy, ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... begin by making love to a seamstress when I'm over the Potomac," remarked Welch, getting upon his feet. "I'm decidedly in need ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... takes me into her own hands, and I breathe freely as the first man. It is curious, pathetic almost, I sometimes think, how deeply seated in the human heart is the liking for gardens and gardening. The sickly seamstress in the narrow city lane tends her box of sicklier mignonette. The retired merchant is as fond of tulips as ever was Dutchman during the famous mania. The author finds a garden the best place to think out his thought. In the disabled statesman every restless throb of regret or ambition is stilled ...
— Dreamthorp - A Book of Essays Written in the Country • Alexander Smith
... over some of the sewing that Mrs. Clare had done and soon learned that the woman was a clever seamstress. Then she ...
— Randy of the River - The Adventures of a Young Deckhand • Horatio Alger Jr.
... same floor. However, without having exchanged a word, they were already acquainted with one another. Francine knew that her neighbor was a poor devil of an artist, and Jacques had learned that his was a little seamstress who had quitted her family to escape the ill-usage of a stepmother. She accomplished miracles of economy to make both ends meet, and, as she had never known pleasure, had no longing for it. This ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... occupation. A native of Savoy, he possessed the mountaineer's taciturnity and love of home. War carried him to Paris. The rigors of conscription threw him into the ranks of the army; and when the first Empire fell, the child of Savoy made Paris his home, married a young seamstress, and obtained the lodge of house No. 5 Rue des Trois Freres. This marriage gave to French letters Henry Murger. It had ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 74, December, 1863 • Various
... Gray's dressing-room. She'd gone home deathly ill, of course. They gave me the best seamstress in the place. She let out the waist a bit and pulled over the lace to cover it. I got into that mass of silk and lace—oh, silk on silk, and Nance Olden inside! Beryl Blackburn did my hair, and Grace ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... them a home of their own is constantly in mind. Families look forward to the buying of landed homesteads, and the scattered brothers and sisters work awhile in domestic service to gain, the common fund for the purpose; your seamstress intends to become a dressmaker, and take in work at her own house; your cook is pondering a marriage with the baker, which shall transfer her toils from your ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... for M'ri's wedding. Rhody Crabbe's needle and fingers flew in rapturous speed, and there was likewise engaged a seamstress from Lafferton. Rhody had begged for the making of the wedding gown, and when it was finished David went to fetch ...
— David Dunne - A Romance of the Middle West • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... officials were filled with curiosity; they besought an explanation. It appeared that when a party of slaters were engaged upon a roof, they would now and then be taken with a fancy for the public-house. Now a seamstress, for example, might slip away from her work and no one be the wiser; but if these fellows adjourned, the tapping of the mallets would cease, and thus the neighbourhood be advertised of their defection. Hence the career of the tapper. He has to do the tapping and keep ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... little maid of mine to wear the regular maid's dress of black, with muslin cap and apron, and she was certainly a joy to the eye; but one day I sent her out on an errand, and she came back almost hysterical under the torrent of ribald admiration which my thoughtlessness had brought upon her. A seamstress will not remain alone in your house while you run into a neighbor's on an errand without bolting herself in the room; and, if you are to be gone any length of time, she will not stay there at all, simply because she is afraid of ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... Targatts, who lived a mile up the road, nor with poor old Mrs. Hawes, who, since her eldest daughter had deserted her, barely had the strength to cook her own meals while Ally picked up her living as a seamstress. Mr. Royall's was the only house where the young man could have been offered a decent hospitality. There had been nothing, therefore, in the outward course of events to raise in Charity's breast the ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... emotion was seething in her mind, and she never took her eyes off the engaged couple. She interested herself in Jeanne's trousseau with a singular eagerness, a feverish activity, working like a simple seamstress in her room, where no one came to ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... next companion was a popular orator who had lost his voice, and—as it was pretty much all that he had to lose— had fallen into a state of hopeless melancholy. The table was likewise graced by two of the gentler sex,—one, a half-starved, consumptive seamstress, the representative of thousands just as wretched; the other, a woman of unemployed energy, who found herself in the world with nothing to achieve, nothing to enjoy, and nothing even to suffer. She had, therefore, driven herself to the verge of madness by dark breedings over ...
— The Christmas Banquet (From "Mosses From An Old Manse") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... strange plebeian notions. I never saw him so angry as he was when I told him that we—I mean ladies of a certain rank—had been the means of sending a merchant's daughter from school, by styling her 'Miss Thimbleton,' and 'the little seamstress.' Her mamma had the meanness, I may say the impertinence, to send vulgar check muslin to be made into a frock, at Madame La Blond's! We took care, however, to break the ...
— The Boarding School • Unknown
... Araminta made a new patchwork quilt. Seven were neatly folded and put away in an old trunk in the attic. The eighth was progressing well, but the young seamstress was becoming sated with quilts. She had never been to school, but Miss Mehitable had taught her all she knew. Unkind critics might have intimated that Araminta had not been taught much, but she could ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... while, there are visitors," she cried to the seamstress who had followed her, and she put her ear to the door to listen. At first she could not make out anything that was going on, but the end of the strange conversation that was being carried on within was so hideously intelligible that she could never ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... leading to his studio.) And Mis' Photographer Sturgis, who was an invalid and "very, very seldom got out." (Not, I was to learn, an invalid because of ill health, but by nature. She was an invalid as other people are blond or brunette, and no more to be said about it.) Miss Liddy Ember, the village seamstress, and her beautiful sister Ellen, who was "not quite right," and whom Miss Liddy took about and treated like a child until the times when Ellen "come herself again," and then she quite overshadowed in personality little busy Miss Liddy. Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, and Eppleby ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... from hiding and scampered merrily about the kitchen floor. The chorus of clock-ticks sounded drowsily through the silent house, Madam was taking her daily rest on her lounge in the sitting-room, and after a time the seamstress's good intentions passed into a maze of dreams. In them she seemed to be eternally climbing steep stairs into a chamber of horrors tenanted by one starving boy; or she was watching Madam choke to death over a lump of hot scorched porridge; or she was being tossed ...
— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond
... in Mad River Village, so he was contented with a trunk which he selected himself, while his mother and Beth bought a little hat and cloak, shoes, stockings, and a pretty sunshade—the dresses and underclothing Beth thought she could make with the aid of her mother's seamstress, and she was ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... 9.—Still dismal weather. Our household, being composed in great measure of children and young people, is generally a cheerful one enough, even in gloomy weather. For a week past we have been especially gladdened with a little seamstress from Boston, about seventeen years old; but of such a petite figure, that, at first view, one would take her to be hardly in her teens. She is very vivacious and smart, laughing and singing and talking all the time,—talking sensibly; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various
... patriotic sentiments of the parents, Madame Lanoy left with the children the viscount's house, where they had hitherto resided, and occupied with both of them a small shabby house, where she established herself as seamstress. The little eleven-year-old Hortense, the daughter of the Citizeness Beauharnais, was now the assistant of the Citizeness Lanoy, at the trade of seamstress. Eugene was apprenticed to a cabinet-maker; a leather ...
— The Empress Josephine • Louise Muhlbach
... "Yes; the poor seamstress, Anna May. Her days in this world are nearly numbered. I was to see her yesterday, and found her very low. She cannot long remain on this side the river of death. I am now on my way to her mother's house. Will you not ...
— Finger Posts on the Way of Life • T. S. Arthur
... shieling for the village dwellings and gregarious habits of the females who ply their rural labors in bands among the rich fields of the Lowlands, or for the unwholesome backroom and weary task-work of the city seamstress. The sunlight was fading from the higher hill-tops of Skye and Glenelg as we bade farewell to the lonely shieling and the hospitable ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... born in Georgia. She had two sons what run the factory between Watkinsville and Athens. My aunt, Mila Jackson, made all the thread what they done the weavin' with. Gran'pa worked for a widow lady what was a simster (seamstress) and she just had a little plantation. She was Mist'ess Doolittle. All Gran'pa done was cut wood, 'tend the yard and gyarden. He had rheumatism and couldn't ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... the community. To mention one interesting case, Sweden sent in 2296 subscriptions "from all sorts of people," as the distinguished man of science who transmitted them wrote, "from the bishop to the seamstress, and in sums from five pounds ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley
... understand a word of English. As we see her there, looking up from her sewing, from time to time, neat and dainty, her black hair dressed to perfection, a pathetic expression in the dark eyes with which she regards us from time to time, we think of Marie Claire, and wonder if this little seamstress has not a story of her own to tell, and one which like the story of that other sewing girl, would touch the heart because of its ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... what you say about the American Monthly, my answer is, I would gladly sell some part of my mind for lucre, to get the command of time; but I will not sell my soul: that is, I am perfectly willing to take the trouble of writing for money to pay the seamstress; but I am not willing to have what I write mutilated, or what I ought to say dictated to suit the public taste. You speak of my writing about Tieck. It is my earnest wish to interpret the German authors of whom I am most fond to such Americans as are ready to receive. ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. I • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... not do themselves, their families, not their homes the true spiritual service that it is their part to do. Plan for a few minutes rest with the daily routine of care. But how is one to do this with so many demands made upon her? For she is expected to be seamstress, laundress, maid, cook, hostess, a companion to her husband, a trainer of her children, a social being, and a helper in the Church. If it is impossible or impracticable for one to have a servant, she will ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy
... Diet, nor will keep out Cold. You cannot satisfy your Dunning Taylor, To cry—I am in Love! Though possible you may your Seamstress. ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... for the mutual sustenance of all. The husbandman tills the ground and provides food; the manufacturer weaves tissues, which the tailor and seamstress make into clothes; the mason and the bricklayer build the houses in which we enjoy household life. Numbers of workmen thus contribute and help to create ...
— Thrift • Samuel Smiles
... junkers and the priests had driven him to this Protestant city of the South, where from the beginning he had acquired the respect of people through his ready wit and speech. Theresa Hoellriegel had lodged in the house in which he opened his shop, and gained her living as a seamstress. He had thought that she had some money, but it had proved to be too little for his ambitious notions. When he discovered that, he treated Theresa as ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... 6. THE SALESWOMAN, the seamstress, the factory girl or any other virtuous girl had better, far better, die than take the first step in the path of impropriety and danger. Better, a thousand times better, better for this life, better for the life to come, an existence of humble, virtuous industry than a single ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... trick of the fancy—the more so as my dream-vision displayed to me the dress and movements of the actors, the appearance of the room, the furniture, and other accidents of the scene; till on one occasion, in a gamesome mood, I narrated to my family the secret history of a seamstress who had just quitted the room. I had never seen the person before. Nevertheless, the hearers were astonished, and laughed and would not be persuaded but that I had a previous acquaintance with the former life of the person, inasmuch as what I had ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... dressing-rooms at balls until four and five and even six in the morning, is then allowed to go to bed and to sleep until luncheon is merely humane. And it can easily be seen that it is more likely that she will need the help of a seamstress to refurbish dance-frocks, than that she will have any time to devote to her young lady's mother—who in "mid-season," therefore, is forced to have a maid of her own, ridiculous as it sounds, that two maids for two ladies should be necessary! Sometimes this ...
— Etiquette • Emily Post
... meanness. When she was alone, her table was of a Spartan austerity; she exacted a great deal from her servants, and paid them as small wages as she could. After that she did not mind lavishing money upon them in kindness. A seamstress whom she had once employed fell sick, and Miss Kingsbury sent her to the Bahamas and kept her there till she was well, and then made her a guest in her house till the girl could get back her work. She watched her ...
— A Modern Instance • William Dean Howells
... the fancy that with the morrow will begin the actual scrubbing and window-washing. You do not mind ripping up an old gown while John reads to you under the evening lamp, but you are positively cross in the reflection that you must sew all of to-morrow with the seamstress who is to ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... at the door and Mimi, a little seamstress, who lives on the same floor, appears and asks Rudolph to give her a match to light her candle. As she is about to go out, she falls in a faint. Rudolph gives her wine and restores her to consciousness. She tells him that she suffers from consumption. Rudolph is struck by her beauty ...
— La Boheme • Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica
... the chess-players and the singers, waited in a state of bliss to be summoned to the sewing-room. Only that morning it had been discovered that there was enough pink chiffon left, after the bridesmaids' gowns were completed, to make her a dress, and the seamstress was at work upon it now. So it was a gay, rose-colored world to Mary this morning, despite the leaden skies and pouring rain outside. Not only was she to have a dress, the material for which had actually ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... surprising sum of one hundred pounds, the singular self-denial and whole-hearted giving exhibited making this a peculiarly sacred offering and a token of God's favour. There was a felt significance in His choice of a poor sickly seamstress as His instrument for laying the foundations for this great work. He who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will, passing by the rich, mighty, and noble somethings of this world, chose again the poor, weak, base, despised ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... not dancers, and had not countenances that consorted with impropriety. Their faces had merely the conventional Yankee sharpness and wanness of feature, and such difference of air and character as should say for one and another, shop-girl, shoe-binder, seamstress; and it seemed an absurdity and an injustice to refer to them in any way the disclosures of the ruthlessly scant drapery. A grotesque fancy would sport with their identity: "Did not this or that one write poetry for her ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... any more to sew for—" began the seamstress despairingly, but Miss Abigail would not listen, bundling her out of the garden gate and sending her trotting home, cheered unreasonably by the old woman's jovial blustering, "No such kind of talk ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... legal method of execution. But in the end the condemned man found his executioner in the form of a slender girl of seventeen, Madeline Provence, who, to accomplish her purpose, served two years in his palace as a seamstress to the household. She died in solitary confinement after horrible and prolonged torture; but to-day she stands in imperishable bronze in the Pantheon of Brotherhood in ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... snowy white, and precious stones and gold of Arabia. In seven weeks all was prepared, both apparel and also arms and armour; and there was nothing that was either over-long or over-short, or that could be surpassed for comeliness. Great thanks did the warriors give to each fair seamstress, and to Kriemhild the beautiful the greatest thanks ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... dead than alive. I might be mistaken or I might not, but in neither case was it fitting for Armande-Louise-Marie de Chaulieu to play the spy. I had sunk to the level of the gutter, by the side of courtesans, opera-dancers, mere creatures of instinct; even the vulgar shop-girl or humble seamstress might look down ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac
... foot for securing a worthy public memorial of Darwin. Subscriptions flowed in abundantly, and came from all countries of Europe, the United States, the British Colonies, and Brazil. Sweden sent the astonishing number of 2296 subscriptions; persons of all ranks contributed, from a bishop to a seamstress. Over L4,000 in all was subscribed, and it was resolved, in the first place, to procure the best possible statue. This work was entrusted to Mr. Boehm, R.A., with admirable results. Permission was obtained to place ...
— Life of Charles Darwin • G. T. (George Thomas) Bettany
... good, I guess. It was when I was a baby. He was very restless, they say. I suppose I got my runaway nature from him. But I've outgrown that. Anyway, he left my mother with three children. My little brother died. My mother was a seamstress in a little town out West—an awful hole it was. I was a tiny little girl when they took me to my mother's funeral. I remember that, but I can't remember her. That was my first death. And now this! I've lost a mother and father twice. That hasn't ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... the two places of which he claims the monopoly. He would sell his creed for less. Miriam is dying to ask him what he has done with the Confederate uniform he sported before the Yankees came. His son says they are all Union men over there, and will "lemonate" (illuminate) to-night. A starving seamstress opposite has stuck six tallow candles in her window; better put them in ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... a prosecuting attorney, according to his idea, had to be invested with a social significance, according to the manner of those lawyers who became famous. True, among his hearers were three women; a seamstress, a cook and Simon's sister, also a driver, but that made no difference. Those celebrities also began on a small scale. The prosecutor made it a rule to view the situation from the eminence of his position, i. e., to penetrate into the ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... August night the little dark-eyed seamstress sits and enjoys her ice at the same tin-topped table at the Gambrinus where the foreign Princess has sat in April. In winter Florence is a city of the wealthy; in summer it is given over entirely to the populace. So great is ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... the neighborhood. I do believe you have made more calls in those two vile, ill-smelling alleys behind our house than ever you have in Chestnut Street, though you know everybody is half dying to see you; and now, to crown all, you must give this choice little bijou to a seamstress girl, when one of your most intimate friends, in your own class, would value it so highly. What in the world can people in ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... at the shadow cast by her own figure of a gin bottle; an undertaker, in his garb of woe wrung from the pockets of widows and orphans, casts the appropriate shadow of a crocodile; a red-nosed old hospital nurse of a tea-pot; a worn-out seamstress of a skeleton; a mischievous street boy of a monkey; an angry wife sitting up for a truant husband of an extinguisher; a tall, conceited-looking parson, with a long coat, of a pump; while a sweep, with his "machine," to his mortal ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... young girls, some of whom count only twelve short summers. With Hamlet, I exclaim, 'Oh, horrible! most horrible!' I lived in a house in which there was a girl, Annie C., not seventeen, and she attended in a restaurant. I once said to her, 'Why do you not take the situation of a seamstress, or a nurse in a gentleman's family?' She turned upon me in the most insolent way, saying, 'Me be a servant! That will do very well for Irish, or Dutch, or English girls, but I am an American, and feel ...
— Public School Education • Michael Mueller
... and Teen stitched away for dear life at a coarse garment, which appeared to be a canvas jacket. A whole pile of the same lay on the unoccupied bed, and Gladys vaguely wondered whether the same fingers must reduce the number, but she did not presume to ask. She did not feel drawn to the melancholy seamstress, whose thin lips had a hard, ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... of that neglected state into which the pariahs of society fall and on which the inexperienced so cheerfully comment. Neglected by her own set, shunned by the respectable, her fortune quite gone, she was nevertheless determined that she would not be a back-street seamstress or a pensioner upon the bounty of quondam friends. By insensible degrees came first unhallowed relationships through friendship and passing passion, then a curious intermediate state between the high world ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... seamstress first. She wouldn't tell a thing, and I said, calmly, 'I know Julie paid you to keep your mouth shut, but if you don't tell, the law'll make you!' That scared her. and she owned up that Julie was to see her 'bout a week ago and give her fifty dollars not to tell anything ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... down to his work. From time to time he lifted his head and looked out. The seamstress, who had just moved into Pipman's old den, and who was working away at her snoring machine, looked longingly at him. Of course she must be lonely; perhaps there was nowhere where ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... boots, slippers, stockings, or any of the costly, flimsy, all but unlaunderable underwear she affected, became not quite perfect, she put it aside against that vague day when she should have leisure or inclination for superintending a seamstress. Within two hours of her decision she had a seamstress in the house, and they and her mother were at work. There was no necessity to bother about new dresses. She would soon be putting off black, and she could get in Paris what she would ...
— The Second Generation • David Graham Phillips
... lived in Belgium a young girl named Louise Lateau who had the stigmata. We have the most positive proof of it, as you may see in the accounts of her life now published. Her wounds caused her great pain and bled every Friday for many years. She was a delicate seamstress, and lived with her mother and sisters in almost continual poverty. She had always been remarkable for her true piety, patience in suffering, and charity to the sick. I mention this young girl because she lived in our own time, and is the latest person ...
— Baltimore Catechism No. 4 (of 4) - An Explanation Of The Baltimore Catechism of Christian Doctrine • Thomas L. Kinkead
... had carried Baby down stairs to feed him. She heard no sound but the murmur of the sewing-machine in the next room, where Jane Kennedy, the seamstress, was working. She felt drowsy and sleepy. Slowly her head sank down among the cushions of the lounge, and ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... with things to tell me, and wanted me to know about her teaching some of the blind girls to sew, which she takes great pride in, threading the needle, and making her pupils pick out their work if it is not done nicely. She is a good seamstress herself, does fancy work, and can run a sewing machine. Next, she caught hold of my hand and led me up two flights of stairs to her room to shew me her things; but the first movement was to take me to the window, where ...
— Anecdotes & Incidents of the Deaf and Dumb • W. R. Roe
... something towards improving what they call the "conditions" of their workers; but a worker might have his conditions as carefully arranged as a racehorse has, and still have no more personal property than a racehorse. If you take an average poor seamstress or factory girl, you will find that the power of chastising her through her property has very considerable limits; it is almost as hard for the employer of labour to tax her for punishment as it is for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to tax her for revenue. The next most obvious thing ...
— Utopia of Usurers and other Essays • G. K. Chesterton
... The seamstress was now summoned, and the orders were given for Priscilla's dress, to be made to fit Daisy. It was very amusing, the strait-cut brown gown, the plain broad vandyke of white muslin, and etceteras that Mrs. ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... at home to-morrow. The seamstress will be cutting your new frock, and you must be here to try it on when ...
— Marjorie's New Friend • Carolyn Wells
... uniforms. One of the soldiers reached into his haversack and pulled out a uniform and gave it to me. 'Have your mammy make a suit out of it,' he said. Another soldier gave me a uniform and my mother was a seamstress in the home of the Drennons and she made me two suits ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves. - Texas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... noisy whir of sewing-machines in Madame Levaney's large dressmaking establishment. Cicely Leeds's head ached as she bent over the ruffles she was hemming. She was the youngest seamstress in the room, and wore her hair hanging ...
— Cicely and Other Stories • Annie Fellows Johnston
... beginning, which led to the dancing-master's continuing his instruction after his release, emboldened the poor child to try again. She watched and waited months for a seamstress. In the fulness of time a milliner came in, and to her she ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... lower front chamber, and immediately ushered her companion into the room. It was large and elegant, and in exquisite order. One really beautiful girl was driving a sewing-machine before a window with the industry of a seamstress. Another was engaged in trimming a tiny pair of satin boots with beads of every color. She was short, small, and swarthy, her chief beauty being a languishing pair of black eyes. A third lay at full length on a small bed in an alcove, reading ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... until he swallowed the whole business, and he said he guessed he didn't want any more. He is so sensitive about his teeth that he would eat a leather apron if anybody told him he couldn't. When the doctor said Pa's digestion was bad, I told him if he could let Pa swallow a seamstress or a sewing machine, to sew up the cloth, he would get well, and the Doc. says I am going to be the death of Pa some day. But I thought I should split when Pa wanted a drink of water. I asked him if he would druther have mineral water, and he said he guessed it would take the strongest ...
— Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa - 1883 • George W. Peck
... running of the house, and after that sweet lady's death she had been its manager in all regards. In the simple economies of the house she had indeed been all things for these past few years—housekeeper, cook, housemaid, even seamstress, for in addition to being a poetess with a cook-stove she was a wizard ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb |
