"Slattern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... under the shaded lamp G.J. could study the marvellous articulation of the arms at the bare shoulders. The close atmosphere was drenched with femininity. The two women, one so stylish and the other by contrast piquantly a heavy slattern, hid nothing whatever from him, bestowing on him with perfect tranquillity the right to be there and to watch at his ease every mysterious transaction.... The most convincing proof that Christine was authentically young! And G.J. had ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... make me so," said Margaret, "or I should let you alone, and leave you a slattern. We should both hate it so! No, don't make me your mistress, Ethel dear—let me be your sister and play-fellow still, as ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... flourished, and there was a new furniture factory at the edge of the freight yards. Hereabouts a lot of supremely ugly flats had gone up, two families to each floor and three stories high; and in J.W.'s eyes the rubbish and disorder and generally slattern appearance of the region was no great addition to ...
— John Wesley, Jr. - The Story of an Experiment • Dan B. Brummitt
... there been nothing more to contend with than the ordinary verbal persecution. But late in the afternoon, when he had grown weary from the strain of the day, his special tormentor, a burly Irishman, took occasion, in passing, to push him rudely against a pert and slattern girl, who also was foremost in the tacit league of petty annoyance. She acted as if the contact of Haldane's person was a purposed insult, and resented it by a sharp slap of ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... Simonne, his mistress and household drudge, entered the room. She was fully twenty years younger than himself, and under the slattern appearance which life in that house had imposed upon her there were vestiges of ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... feeble, or out of tune, until people are in danger of crying out that the melody itself is detestable. It may be that some of Mr. Tryan's hearers had gained a religious vocabulary rather than religious experience; that here and there a weaver's wife, who, a few months before, had been simply a silly slattern, was converted into that more complex nuisance, a silly and sanctimonious slattern; that the old Adam, with the pertinacity of middle age, continued to tell fibs behind the counter, notwithstanding the new Adam's addiction ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... Negligence of it implies an indifference about pleasing Neither retail nor receive scandal willingly Never quit a subject till you are thoroughly master of it Never seem wiser, nor more learned, than the people you are with Never slattern away one minute in idleness Never to speak of yourself at all Not one minute of the day in which you do nothing at all Not to admire anything too much Oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings Out of livery; which ...
— Widger's Quotations from Chesterfield's Letters to his Son • David Widger
... ain't," said the woman, tartly. I recall her dimly, a slattern creature in a loose gown and bare feet, wife of the storekeeper and wagoner, with a swarm of urchins about her. They were all very natural to me thus. And I remember a battle with one of these urchins in the briers, an affair which did ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... teacher of dishonesty. Is it largely a matter of sham and pretense for the sake of social glory? Does it prefer a cheap veneer to a slowly acquired genuine article? Is the front appearance that of a dandy while the backyard looks like a slattern? Is the home striving for more than it deserves? Is it trying to get more out of life than it puts in? Evading taxes, avoiding duties, a community parasite, does it commend to children the arts of social cheating ...
— Religious Education in the Family • Henry F. Cope
... again and looked at Billy. She was very fat, and the red of her face deepened to purple unevenly about the sides of her nose. Her eyes were bright and black. She had opened a button or two at the top of her dress, and her general appearance, from her grey hair to her slattern heels, was disordered. Her cap had fallen off on to the ground, and Mr. Blee noticed that her parting was as a broad turnpike road much tramped upon by Time. The room smelt stuffy beyond its wont and reeked not only of spirits but tobacco. This Billy ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... the first breath and the last, how vast is the moral suffering and disease occasioned by incompetent mothers and nurses! Commit a child to the care of a worthless ignorant woman, and no culture in after-life will remedy the evil you have done. Let the mother be idle, vicious, and a slattern; let her home be pervaded by cavilling, petulance, and discontent, and it will become a dwelling of misery—a place to fly from, rather than to fly to; and the children whose misfortune it is to be brought up there, will be morally dwarfed and deformed—the ...
— Character • Samuel Smiles
... about books, and the pernickety little player was chary about lending his splendidly bound rarities to his quondam preceptor. Our sympathies in this matter are entirely with Garrick; Johnson was one of the best men that ever lived, but not to lend books to. Like Lady Slattern, he had a 'most observant thumb.' But Garrick had no real cause for complaint. Johnson may have soiled his folios and sneered at his trade, but in life Johnson loved Garrick, and in death embalmed his memory in a sentence which can only die with the English language: ...
— Obiter Dicta - Second Series • Augustine Birrell
... in conspicuous characters on a piece of pasteboard the word "Slattern," and bound it like a phylactery round Helen's large, mild, intelligent, and benign-looking forehead. She wore it till evening, patient, unresentful, regarding it as a deserved punishment. The moment Miss Scatcherd ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... surprise the Stranger greets her with a request for a favor. "Give me a drink," he says. Christ was thirsty. He wanted a draught from Jacob's well. But far more He wanted a draught from this woman's heart. She was a slattern, an outcast. She was lower, in the estimation of the average Jew, than a street dog. Yet this weary Christ desired the gift of her burnt out and impoverished affections. So He ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... a beauty, you know, a little on the wane, and wanting to be elaborately made up and curled and powdered and painted, and all that. She's a little of a slattern underneath the surface, you know, and doesn't bear to be taken unawares—mustn't be seen for at least an hour or two after she has got out of bed. All the more ...
— The Galaxy, Volume 23, No. 2, February, 1877 • Various
... all failure, turning to the Lord of the silent stars, of whose punctual thought it is, that "not one faileth." The heavens, with their everlasting faithfulness, look down on no sadder contradiction, than the sluggard and the slattern in their prayers. ...
— Daily Strength for Daily Needs • Mary W. Tileston
... most economical administration of every dollar devoted to housekeeping. She studied cooking in the best schools the city afforded. She meant to show her Knight a thing or two in this line when the time came. His wife would not be an ignorant slattern, the victim of incompetent servants. No servant could fool her. She would know the business of the house down to its ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... but ignorant and uncleanly slattern who sought with "lodgings to let" to keep the souls of herself and family in their bodies, gave him as much attention as the demands of a numerous brood of little slatterns and a drunken husband would permit, and sighed with real sorrow as she admitted that the "poor gentleman" ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... last made her appearance, at once a slattern and a coquette; much emaciated, but still carrying the remains of beauty. She made twenty apologies for being seen in such odious dishabille, but hoped to be excused, as she had stayed out all night at the gardens with the countess, who was excessively fond of the horns. "And, indeed, ...
— English Satires • Various
... yesterday—they always do break out bad about Easter. My pleasure club," she explained, turning to me—"my pleasure club, 'The Moonlight Maids,' give a ball to-night." Which fact likewise explained the curl-papers as well as the slattern shirt-waist, donned to save the evening bodice worn to the factory that morning and now tucked away in a big box ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... him," Lady Anne said graciously. She did not object to the honest pride in Walter Gray. He was probably a superior man for his station, being Mary's father. As for that poor slattern, Lady Anne had lived too long in the world to be amazed by the marriages men made, either in her own exalted circle or in those ...
— Mary Gray • Katharine Tynan
... was she But dressing, patching, repartee; 40 And, just as humour rose or fell, By turns a slattern or a belle; 'Tis true she dress'd with modern grace, Half naked at a ball or race; But when at home, at board or bed, 45 Five greasy nightcaps wrapp'd her head. Could so much beauty condescend To be a dull domestic friend? Could any curtain-lectures bring To ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Oliver Goldsmith • Oliver Goldsmith
... by the way, make me feel rather shoddy and slattern. I intend to swing in a little stronger for personal adornment, as soon as we get things going again. When a woman gives up, in that respect, she's surely a goner. And I may be a hard-handed and slabsided prairie huzzy, but there was a time when I stood beside the big palms by the ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... living vexation and drain. It didn't use up your vitality and suck up your brain power and make a slattern and a drudge of you as having five children in seven years has of little Mrs. Finn. It's all very well to talk of obeying when you aren't asked to obey—or, at least, when you aren't required to do anything difficult. But good Tim Finn, I'll warrant, tells his Mary when she may ...
— The Precipice • Elia Wilkinson Peattie
... long In tattered cloak of army pattern, And Galatea joined the throng,— A blowsy apple-vending slattern; While old Silenus staggered out From some new-fangled lunch-house handy, And bade the piper, with a shout, To strike ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... though anxious for concealment. The Doctor, having retired into his study, was not to be disturbed; but the stranger was urgent for admission, while Lettice Gostwich, Dee's help-at-all-work, a pert ungracious slattern, was fully resolved not to permit his access ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... and Wednesdays, she hoped to help in some house with the cleaning, or in some slattern's abode with the weekly wash, for, as all know, there are some such sluts that the washing gets put off from day to day, till Saturday finds it still cluttering the washhouse instead of being brought in clean and sweet from ...
— The White Riband - A Young Female's Folly • Fryniwyd Tennyson Jesse
... apartment which was but yesterday the theater of his great happiness. She was alone; for Bess must play the housewife, and was at that moment addressing a slattern maid upon the sin of dust in some far-off, lofty corridor of the premises. Richard swept Dorothy with a gray glance like a flashlight. Her face was troubled, but full of fortitude, and she was very white about the mouth. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... not meaner, employments, which will qualify her to be a good mistress of a family, a good wife, and a good mother; for what can be more disgraceful to a woman than either, through negligence of dress, to be found a learned slattern; or, through ignorance of household-management, to be known to be a ...
— Clarissa Harlowe, Volume 9 (of 9) - The History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... of grace 1750, and old Mother Corrigan sat outside her door in Slattern Alley, smoking her short black pipe with a relish; and't was a good day with her, for she had told his fortune that morning for Squire Tyrconnel, on his way to fight a duel in the Phcenix Park with Lawyer Daly; and when it was finished, says ...
— The Ladies - A Shining Constellation of Wit and Beauty • E. Barrington
... And just look at that fool Akoulna. Wasn't the girl a regular untidy slattern, and just look at her now! Where has it all come from? Yes, he has fitted her out. She's grown so smart, so puffed up, just like a bubble that's ready to burst. And, though she's a fool, she's got it into her head. "I'm the mistress," she says; "the house is mine; it's me father wanted him to ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... bright intelligence; not being vicious of temper, she necessarily felt herself submitting to domination, and darkly surmised that the rule might in some way be for her good. All the sluggard and the slattern in her, all the obstinacy of lifelong habits, hung back from the new things which Miss Rodney was forcing upon her acceptance, but she was no longer moved by active resentment. To be told that she cooked badly had long ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... told young Gordon I wouldn't sanction, "The Woman spouting politics, the Man returning to a slattern's home." ...
— The Master of Mrs. Chilvers • Jerome K. Jerome
... Irish people, Welsh people, and Scotch people there; all with their little store of coarse food and shabby clothes; and nearly all with their families of children. There were children of all ages; from the baby at the breast, to the slattern-girl who was as much a grown woman as her mother. Every kind of domestic suffering that is bred in poverty, illness, banishment, sorrow, and long travel in bad weather, was crammed into the little space; ...
— Life And Adventures Of Martin Chuzzlewit • Charles Dickens
... he had not married a farm at all. He had married a woman—a thin-jawed, elderly slattern, whose sole beauty was her farm. How her jaws worked! The processions and congregations of words that fell and dribbled and slid out of them! Those jaws were never quiet, and in spite of all he did not say anything. There was not anything to say, but much to do from ...
— Here are Ladies • James Stephens
... dared molest him. Remembering the priest's daughter, he was fain, and went to Mitri's house to ask for water. The girl herself appeared in answer to his call, but, seeing who it was, ran back in terror, crying: "O mother, help! It is the Brutestant." Whereat a slattern dame came forth instead of her, and filled his can for him, ...
— The Valley of the Kings • Marmaduke Pickthall
... the Eating-House had put her horse away—where, she did not know; and her meals had been brought to her by a middle-aged slattern, whose probing, suspicion-laden glances had been full of mocking significance. She had heard the woman speak of her to other female employees of the place—and once she had overheard the woman refer to her as ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... mother and daughter, they make the pair. It's a nice thing to go to church just to leer at the men. Dare to say it isn't true, little slattern! I'll dress you in a sack, just to disgust you, you and your priests. I don't want you to be taught anything worse than you know already. Mon Dieu! Just listen to me, both ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... after dark with that gawky country sweetheart has given her the fever that her betters have been having since the Avon come over bank. A wet autumn is more to be feared than Gammer's witches. Poor luck it is the lubberfolk aren't after the girl in truth; a slattern maid she is, her hearth unswept and house-door always open and the cream ever a-chill. The brownie-folk, I promise you, Will, pinch black ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... mistress; passed For Custom's doughtiest iconoclast; And pored forth love in paeans of glad song—! Look at him now! In solemn robes and wraps, A two-legged drama on his own collapse! And she, the limp-skirt slattern, with the shoes Heel-trodden, that squeak and clatter in her traces, This is the winged maid who was his Muse And escort to the kingdom of the graces! Of all that fire this puff of smoke's the end! Sic transit ...
— Love's Comedy • Henrik Ibsen
... cleanliness may be said to be the foster-mother of love. Beauty, indeed, most commonly produces that passion in the mind, but cleanliness preserves it. An indifferent face and person, kept in perpetual neatness, hath won many a heart from a pretty slattern. Age itself is not unamiable, while it is preserved clean and unsullied: like a piece of metal constantly kept smooth and bright, we look on it with more pleasure than on a new vessel that is cankered ...
— The Young Gentleman and Lady's Monitor, and English Teacher's Assistant • John Hamilton Moore
... as old carousal, and with eyes A hard, hot blue; her hair a frowsy flame, Bold, dowdy-bosomed, from her widow-frame She leans, her mouth all insult and all lies. Or slattern-slippered and in sluttish gown, With ribald mirth and words too vile to name, A new Doll Tearsheet, glorying in her shame, Armed with her Falstaff now she takes the town. The flaring lights of alley-way saloons, The ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... the stately farmhouse beauty of thirty years ago, was a stooping, haggard, broken-down wreck—not a slattern, but an overworked drudge, with a face fitter for seventy than for fifty years old, and a ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... how beautiful! Oh, mamma, how good you are! Mamma, I promise you I'll never be a slattern. Here is more cotton than I can use up in a great while—every number, I do think; and needles, oh, the needles! what a parcel of them! and, mamma! what a lovely scissors! Did you choose it, mamma, or did ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... women whom I met in towns, this farmer's wife was a slattern. She cared neither about her own appearance nor the look of her house. She did not wash her children. But she worked. The land was well tilled and her cattle well tended. There was no sign of neglect in the fields. ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... having three women working in her laundry, but afterward sinking with her husband, as was inevitable, to the degradation of her surroundings. He, gradually conquered by alcohol, brought by it to madness and death; she herself perverted, become a slattern, her moral ruin completed by the return of Lantier, living in the tranquil ignominy of a household of three, thenceforward the wretched victim of want, her accomplice, to which she at last succumbed, dying one ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... with a roar of laughter and approval, and a number of slattern women showing the effects of strong ale in their faces stepped boldly ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... their children, and to serve their husbands with decently cooked food; and in which the husbands spend their evenings and their wages at home, treating their wives as rational beings, reading aloud, or engaged in cheerful conversation, and compare their homes with those of the drunkard and the slattern, it would seem impossible for any reasonable human being to hesitate in his or her choice between them. It is in your power, my friends, each and all, which of these homes shall be yours. I have thought that some active amusement is necessary, and have arranged, after consultation with your vicar ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... grey slattern of a woman, Pattering along in her loose-heel'd clogs, Pushed the brass-barr'd door of a public-house; The spring went hard against her; hand and knee Shoved their weak best. As the door poised ajar, Hullabaloo of talking men burst out, A pouring babble of inflamed palaver, And overriding ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... me about that slattern! I'd like to get my hands on her, that's all. I'd give that crittur a piece o' my mind! You'd like to be promoted into her class, would you? To go sportin' all night with the fellows? Just to be thinkin' o' that makes me feel that I'd like to beat you so you can't hardly stand up.—Now papa's ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... fellows. He stood for a moment or two, in the grey, miserable street discordant with the wailings of babies and the clamour of futile little girls, who, after the manner of women, had no idea of political crisis, and the shrill objurgations of slattern mothers and the raucous cries of an idealist vendor of hyacinths, and, cocked hat on head and wooden sword in hand, he looked at his fawning army. Then came the touch of genius that was often to characterize his actions in after years. ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... The "naturalistic" writers are deceived in thinking that they represent life as it really is. If their thesis were true, the human race would have dwindled to extinction long ago. Surely a photograph of a slattern in the gutter is no more natural than a picture of Rosalind in the Forest of Arden; and no accuracy of imitated actuality can make ...
— A Manual of the Art of Fiction • Clayton Hamilton
... its club so that it now hung sluttishly over her ear. She longed, as she had never longed before, to confront him in all her beauty; to be able to say to him, 'Choose where you will, can you buy form or face like this?' Instead she stood before him, prisoned in this shapeless dress, a slattern, a drab, a thing whereat ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... John there dwelt his sister Peg, Once a wild lass as ever shook a leg When the blithe bagpipe blew—but, soberer now, She DOUCELY span her flax and milk'd her cow. And whereas erst she was a needy slattern, Nor now of wealth or cleanliness a pattern, Yet once a month her house was partly swept, And once a week a plenteous board she kept. And, whereas, eke, the vixen used her claws And teeth of yore, on slender provocation. She now was grown amenable to laws, A ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... again with that hussy Cadine," she said. "Oh, it's no use to deny it! I saw you together this morning in the tripe market, watching men breaking the sheep's heads. I can't understand what attraction a good-looking young fellow like you can find in such a slipshod slattern as Cadine. Now then, go and tell Monsieur Gavard that he had better come at once, ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... make a home for her where she could be his own, and for ever. All the vehement passion of his Highland nature was concentrated upon the accomplishing of this purpose. That he should ever have come to love Mandy Haley, the overworked slattern on her father's Ontario farm, while a thing of wonder, was not the chief wonder to him. His wonder now was that he should ever have been so besottedly dull of wit and so stupidly unseeing as to allow the ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... thy pencil and slate, Master Thomas! Well, ten times, as I said, took I back the gown for the trimmings; and was she content after all? I warrant you no, or my ears did not pay for it. She wished, she said, that the slattern sempstress had not touched the gown, for nought had she done but botched it. Now what think you had the sempstress done ...
— The Hunchback • James Sheridan Knowles
... her labor were wearing on her soul. She had seen this girl out of the shop—in fact, only the day before—and no one would have known her for the same person. When her light hair was curled, and she was prettily dressed, she was quite a beauty. In the shop she was a slattern, and seemed to go down under ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... eternal pursuit of the still flying goal of perfection? Is it possible that the hero and the martyr and the saint, whose experience is laden with painful sacrifices for humanity, are mistaken? and that the slattern and the voluptuary and the sluggard, whose course is one of base self indulgence, are correct? Is it credible that, with no justifying explanation hereafter, it should be ordained that the more gifted and disinterested ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... shouting profanity in every disgusting term; some, overcome with debauchery, were insensible to shame, and men and women, rushing from house to house, gathered a crowd to meet us as we landed. One tremendous slattern shouted, as she saw us come on shore: "There are the show-folks; now we'll have fun!" If Mrs. Farren—the daughter of Russell—still lives, I will say to her that this was her advent to Natchez. Up that hill, through mire and rain, I bore her in ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... slattern, indifferent, lazy, smoldering with passion,—dangerous. The sensuous quality of her beauty had never been more apparent than it was in the soiled cheap mountebank fineries which she had worn for so many performances of the part in Europe. And this beauty, of course, did ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... her still in the living-room, combing her hair, for she had something of the slattern in her nature, and there was no need ...
— Where Angels Fear to Tread • E. M. Forster
... halted long In tattered cloak of army pattern, And Galatea joined the throng,— A blowsy, apple-vending slattern; While old Silenus staggered out From some new-fangled lunch-house handy, And bade the piper, with a shout, To ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... she painted Dan Hewlett and his household in no flattering colours. Molly was a slattern, and Dan was a thief, and the children ate up Judith's dainties, and they all preyed upon her. It was a perfectly horrid life for a good, well-trained, high-principled person to lead. In fact, she poured out ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... travel with her companion (some shabby lady of quality), her birds, and poodles, and the favourite savant for the time being. In another would be her female secretary and her waiting-women; who, in spite of their care, never could make their mistress look much better than a slattern. Sir Charles Lyndon had his own chariot, and the domestics of the establishment would follow ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... and the plant has been endowed with the sobriquet, "John Silver Pin, fair without and foul within." In the Eastern counties of England any article of finery brought out only occasionally, and worn with ostentation by a person otherwise a slattern, is called "Joan Silver Pin." After this sense the appellation has been applied to the Scarlet Poppy. Its showy flower is so attractive to the eye, whilst its inner juice is noxious, and stains the hands of those who thoughtlessly crush it with ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... and squalid than they were going away; but he thought their average less apathetic than that of the saloon passengers, as he leaned over the rail and looked down at them. Some one had brought out an electric battery, and the lumpish boys and slattern girls were shouting and laughing as they writhed with the current. A young mother seated flat on the deck, with her bare feet stuck out, inattentively nursed her babe, while she laughed and shouted with the rest; a man with his head tied in a shawl walked about ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of wheels, the wife, a coarse ill-dressed slattern, came out to see what could bring strangers to such an out-o'-the-way place at that late hour. "Puir Jeanie! I can weel imagine the fluttering o' her heart when she spier'd of the woman for ane Willie Robertson, and asked if ...
— Roughing it in the Bush • Susanna Moodie
... thing, as you call it, to find such a mother in the bargain! Now I might have discovered a slattern, or a scold, or a woman of bad character; or one that never went to church; or even one that swore and drank; for, begging your pardon, Miss Lucy, just such creatur's are to be met with; whereas, instead of any of these disagreeable recommendations, I've fallen in with an A. No. 1. ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... to natural vanity, on the score of beauty, she was a good deal troubled with purse-pride, which, with a foolish susceptibility of flattery, was a leading feature in her disposition. In addition to this, she was an inveterate and incurable slattern, though a gay and lively one; and we need scarcely say that whatever she did in the shape of benevolence or charity, in most instances owed its origin to the influences of the weaknesses she was known ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... is a rather handsome pampered slattern, well fed and in the prime of life. She has nothing to carry, and has a stout stick ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... But she has lost her looks of late, With change of times and change of air. Ah slattern, she neglects her hair, Her gown, her shoes. She keeps no state As once when her pure feet ...
— Later Poems • Alice Meynell
... was a preoccupation with permanency. Jerrybuilding, architectural mode since the first falsefront was erected over the first smalltown store, practically disappeared. The skyscrapers were no longer steel skeletons with thin facings of stone hung upon them like a slattern's apron, while the practice of daubing mud on chickenwire hastily laid over paper was discontinued. Everyone wanted to build for all time, even though the Grass might seize upon their effort next week. ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... black are the eyes that I bring ye, O brave in your jewels, and dainty. But a draggle-tail, dirty-foot slattern Would dub me ill-favoured and sallow. Nay, many a maiden has loved me, Thou may of the glittering armlet: For I've tricks of the tongue to beguile them And ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... closer and rocked it against her shrunken breast a second and older woman appeared in the doorway, a witch-faced slattern who inquired in a ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... approached, a gipsy girl, with a pair of fine roguish eyes, came up, and, as usual, offered to tell our fortunes. I could not but admire a certain degree of slattern elegance about the baggage. Her long black silken hair was curiously plaited in numerous small braids, and negligently put up in a picturesque style that a painter might have been proud to have devised. ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving
... certain dull-eyed, frowzy-headed women seemed to push purposely against her grandfather, and one of them swore at Lydia for taking up all the sidewalk with her bundles. There were such dull eyes and slattern heads at the open windows of the shabby houses; and there were gaunt, bold-faced young girls who strolled up and down the pavements, bonnetless and hatless, and chatted into the windows, and joked with other ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... out than to stay in," she said to herself as she remembered that this hour would be her one chance of taking air and exercise unobserved. She heard the main door of the house open and, looking over the banister, saw a slattern with bucket and mop passing into some back passage. She went lightly down and out into the fresh ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... shameless slattern a lesson," replied his wife, giving him such a shove that he nearly kissed the ground. Then she again turned to ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... dingy cap, with its faded ribbons, awry upon her unkempt hair; eyes hookless, holes buttonless, upon her shabby gown; a boot-lace trailing on the ground. When we clergy visit Mrs. Dowdy's home, or the residence of her sister, Mrs. Slattern, and find that, though it is towards evening, they have not tidied either self or house, we know why the children are unhealthy and untaught, and why the husband prefers the warmth and cleanliness of "The Manor Arms" to his own miserable hut. As a house-keeper, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... dismayed. He selected a corner-table by instinct and smote upon the surface with the flat of his hand. It made a report like the spat of a forty-five; heavy footsteps approached, a door flung open, and a cross-eyed slattern stood in the opening. At the sight of Buck Daniels sitting with his hands on his hips and his sombrero pushed back to a good-natured distance on his head the lady puffed ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... found that Helen had been having her troubles, too. Mrs. Finn had disappointed her and sent a frowsy female, who exuded vile whisky and the unpleasant odors of a slattern. ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... always sounding the praises of economy? Why profess a taste for reading, when I loathe the sight of a sober volume? Why force myself up to a pitch of neatness, when my wardrobe would, by a single glance, prove me a slattern? ...
— The Young Maiden • A. B. (Artemas Bowers) Muzzey |
