"Darning" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in the parlour. Her work (one of my own stockings she was darning) lay idle in her lap, and in her eyes were the unshed tears which are the greatest suffering of women. I sat down beside her and called her name. She did not seem ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... respect she proved perfection. She was honest, she was quick, she was clean; she loved darning my socks and ironing my handkerchiefs; she never sulked, she never smashed, her hair never wisped (a thing I loathe in housemaids). In one point only she failed, failed more completely than any servant I have ever known. She would not make ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 30, 1917 • Various
... of life, what a needle-woman! And the darning and mending for the children, it really gets quite beyond me now, Caudle. Now with mother at my hand, there wouldn't be a stitch wanted in ...
— Mrs. Caudle's Curtain Lectures • Douglas Jerrold
... square mesh—The darning leaf, green, follows the lines of the stuff; outlined with yellow, veined with pink and white; stem, yellow, its foliation pink, outlined with white, and ribbed with blue and white. Italian. 17th century. (V. & ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... a basket of sewing with her which she set upon the table. Then she took from it a bundle of socks and stockings and began to overhaul them with a view to darning. Seth watched the slight figure bending over its work, and the bright eyes peering through the black-rimmed glasses which hooked over her ears. His look was one of deep affection. Surely Nature had made a mistake in not making them mother ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... lifted it about an inch nearer to the nose of the peering giantess. This movement made the old lady see where it was, and, her finger popping into it, it vanished from the eyes of Tricksey-Wee, buried in the folds of a white stocking, like a cloud in the sky, which Mrs. Giant was busy darning. For it was Saturday night, and her husband would wear nothing but ...
— Adela Cathcart, Vol. 3 • George MacDonald
... cousin mine! That she might the live-long day Undermine the snuffer-tray, Tickle still my hooked nose, Startle me from calm repose With her pretty persecution; Throw the tongs against my shins, Run me through and through with pins, Like a pierced cushion; Would she only say she'd love me, Darning-needles should not move me; But, reclining back, I'd say, "Dearest! there's the snuffer-tray; Pinch, O pinch those legs of mine! Cork me, ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... and darning was after they had all gone to bed. Then, as she expressed it, she had a breathing time for herself; and she occupied it in making new things for them, and putting double pieces on the knees, for they were all most ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... she had been told it, that Miss Sandys was about to bestow on her a present with which her Christian name was to be connected. Miss Sandys' eyes had failed through long looking over lessons, and she no longer did any handiwork, save coarse knitting, hemming, and darning. But she had a fuller purse than her companion, and shops, even metropolitan shops, were to be reached ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... divined the secret soul of bird and beast and inanimate things. His hens and ducks and donkeys speak as hens and ducks and donkeys would speak if they could speak. Their temperaments and characters are scrupulously respected. Even shirt-collars, gingerbread men, darning-needles, flowers, and sunbeams, he endowed with physiognomies and speech, fairly consistent with their ruling characteristics. This personification, especially of inanimate objects, may at first appear arbitrary; but it is part of the beautiful consistency of Andersen's genius ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... week on which she always mended the clothes, and Mr. Muller had fallen into the habit of reading to her while she did so. But to-day the Reformatory rose before her a prison, the gates of which were about to close on her. The heap of stockings, the touch of the darning cotton, the sound of Mr. Muller's droning voice, were maddening to her: every moment she made a tangle in her thread, looking down at Maria under the Bourbon rose, and the attentive face bent over her. Where should she go? What should she do? Had the world nothing ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... water supply depended on a rickety windwheel. It was with a dark foreboding that she returned to the kitchen and turned on one of the taps. For perhaps three seconds a stream of the dimension of a darning-needle emerged, then with a sad gurgle the tap relapsed into a stolid inaction. There is no stolidity so utter as that of ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... the evening," Ellen answered. "Father's going to pop me some corn to trim it with; aren't you, father? Mother, why don't you get you a good big darning needle ...
— Christmas - A Story • Zona Gale
... to find that her visitors were merely a small girl in a gingham dress, a copper man that would only go when wound up, and a yellow hen that was sitting contentedly in Langwidere's best work-basket, where there was a china egg used for darning stockings. (It may surprise you to learn that a princess ever does such a common thing as darn stockings. But, if you will stop to think, you will realize that a princess is sure to wear holes in her stockings, the same as other people; only it isn't considered quite ...
— Ozma of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... lady rabbit laugh, for she spent lots of time, let me tell you, darning the holes in her little bunny boy's ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... one end of which projects over the stream, I watch a dragon-fly, or darning needle, float over the water, his flight so swift my eyes can hardly follow it. At last it stops in front of me, perfectly poised for a second, but with wings in rapid motion, then darts away to perform its acrobatic ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... ornaments, rings, brooches, ferronnieres, smelling-bottles, and was always, we thought, very smartly dressed: though old Mrs. Lynx hinted that her gowns and her mother's were turned over and over again, and that her eyes were almost put out by darning stockings. ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... lace, on a cushion, at which she realizes about a dollar a week; Christine, the eldest girl, who still goes to school, was crocheting a baby's hood,—she does a good deal of work for Mrs. Burnett's fancy-store, and yet is a very smart scholar; Amelie, the next one, was darning the stockings; the boy, who comes third, was out-doors, tidying up the chicken-house; and the two little girls were in the corner, cutting and sewing patchwork, with a doll in the cradle between them. ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... would be sensible that this confession extended by probability in the hearer's thoughts to the having incurred indignities of this horrible kind. Haumette clearly thinks it more dignified for Joanna to have been darning the stockings of her horny-hoofed father, M. D'Arc, than keeping sheep, lest she might then be suspected of having ever done something worse. But, luckily, there was no danger of that: Joanna never was in service; and my opinion is that her father should have mended his own ...
— The English Mail-Coach and Joan of Arc • Thomas de Quincey
... him over her spectacles from the stocking she was darning; the china egg gleamed through the frayed place. "What notion have you got ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... threw herself into an easy chair, drawn up to the glowing stove with careful forethought by the old lady. Mrs. Abbot reseated herself in the straight-backed chair she usually affected. She carefully put her book on one side and took up some darning, assiduously inserting the needle but without further attempt at work. It was something to fix her attention on whilst talking. Old Mrs. Abbot always liked to be able to occupy her hands when talking seriously. And Jacky's face told ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the Heb. patriarchs (Gen. xxxvii. 29-34); but here it is the mark of strong excitement. The hand is placed within the collar and a strong pull tears the light stuff all down the breast. Economical men do this in a way which makes darning easy. ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... The girls get their full share of industrial training at Tougaloo. They have daily instruction in some branch of household duty, ranging from dish-washing to canning and preserving. Sewing is taught from the plain darning and mending to fitting and dressmaking according to the latest fashion plates. It has come to be well understood that the Mississippi lady of a house who gets one of the trained students from Tougaloo ...
— The American Missionary, Volume XLII. No. 7. July 1888 • Various
... side lawn. She stopped at the kitchen door, handed in the cress, exchanged a few laughing words with the cook, and then presented herself at the door of the summerhouse. Inside, his books and papers spread over a worktable, sat Donald Whiting. One side of him his mother was busy darning his socks; on the other his sister Louise was working with embroidery silk and small squares of gaily colored linen. Linda entered with exactly the same self-possession that characterized her at home. She shook hands with Mrs. Whiting, Mary Louise, and Donald, and then ...
— Her Father's Daughter • Gene Stratton-Porter
... looked down upon a slit she had been darning up in her apron, in expectation every moment that my uncle Toby would go on; but having no talents for amplification, and Love, moreover, of all others, being a subject of which he was the least a master, when he had told Mrs. Wadman once that he loved her, he let it alone, and ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IV (of X)—Great Britain and Ireland II • Various
... ill at ease that morning, and did think it rather hard that she should not have had time to recover from her last illness. She acknowledged to herself that she was very weak, that it was hard to drag the darning-needle through that worn stocking, and, oh dear! the holes were so many and so big that week, and there were such quantities of other things to be done, clothes mended and made for the children, besides household matters to be seen to generally; why wasn't she strong? That was the only ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... new clothes!" Filomena would snap at him, when his toes came through his shoes and the rents in his jacket-sleeves had spread beyond darning. "These you are wearing are my Giannozzo's, as you well know, and every rag on your back is mine, if there were any law for poor folk, for not a copper of pay for your keep or a stitch of clothing for your body have we had these two years come Assumption—. What's ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... sitting-room, the sour-faced governess was darning a hole in a small stocking. She was as close as possible to the green-tile stove, and she was looking very unpleasant; for the egg-shaped darner only slipped through the hole, which was a large one. With an irritable ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... some other gentlemen of the profession of journalism. But his pleasure was followed by quick mortification. What should he wear? Still holding the open note in his hand, he looked down ruefully at his clothes—his only ones. For all their brushing and darning they were unmistakably shabby—utterly unfit to grace a dinner-party. Nearly all of the hundred dollars which had seemed such a fortune had already been spent to pay bills incurred during his illness and to buy provisions for the bare little home ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... you sit up at this hour of the night darning your stockings?" said mother, sharply; "don't you ...
— The New Pun Book • Thomas A. Brown and Thomas Joseph Carey
... with an inward conviction that her sister's leaving Messrs Baines, Jones & Co. was her fault in the first instance, and she made a mental resolution to be more careful in the future what she said. However, Stella met her with no reproachful looks, but was calmly darning a tablecloth as if she had not just thrown up thirty-five shillings, or rather two pounds, a week, which meant a good deal to them at the ...
— A City Schoolgirl - And Her Friends • May Baldwin
... wire, oars, clothes lines, blankets, pewter pots, stockings and broken bottles. He prepared a club with a stocking and a bottle inside upon the best East End model. He swung it round his head once, broke an outhouse window with a flying fragment of glass, and ruined the stocking beyond all darning. He developed a subtle scheme with the cellar flap as a sort of pitfall, but he rejected it finally because (A) it might entrap the plump woman, and (B) he had no use whatever for Uncle Jim in the cellar. He determined to wire the garden that evening, ...
— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells
... with some men. And Clementine and I, we could not have concealed it much longer. In fact, the truth was crying out everywhere, in the children, in the house, in our own persons, in our faces. The darning did not provide a superfluity, I ...
— Balcony Stories • Grace E. King
... are made of steel wire. In a needle-factory there are hundreds of coils of wire. Some of the wire is thick enough for darning-needles; some very ...
— Chambers's Elementary Science Readers - Book I • Various
... take but a minute more if you will let me alone," was all the mother said as Phillida released the work, and the elaborate darning went on. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... of the exhibit of every American school was the darning and patching. We hear a good deal about people not learning to sew properly nowadays, since the sewing-machine has come into such common use, but the patches and darns shown by the twelve-year-old pupils of our public ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1. No. 23, April 15, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... dwelling. A clatter of overshoes broke this silence; widow Clemens stood in the kitchen door. On her high forehead, above her gray eyebrows, shone the glass eyes of her spectacles; her left hand was covered with a man's sock which she was darning. She stood in the door and looked at Kranitski, bent, grown old, buried in gloomy silence, and shook her head. Then, as quietly as ever was possible for her, she approached the long-chair, sat on a stool which ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)
... in a whisper. "I buyed it last week with twopence-halfpenny; you remember the day I went with Mrs. Sutton to town. She said it was a very useful thing, for Hilda will want to mend Jasper's socks, and if she hasn't darning-cotton handy ...
— A Young Mutineer • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... many visitors and friends, it was in a quiet way and on a moderate scale. The small regard he had for personal dignity may be inferred from the fact, that to the last he continued the practice, which he had learnt when a working mason, of darning his own stockings.*[9] ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... the wet clothes and, cautiously leaving the scullery, crossed the passage to the parlour, where Mrs. Wheeler, a confirmed invalid, was lying on a ramshackle sofa, darning socks. Mr. Wheeler coughed to attract her attention, and with an apologetic expression of visage held up a small, pink garment of the knickerbocker species, and ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... effemination and of viraginity are displayed in early childhood. We are told that a boy with these tendencies prefers the society of little girls to that of boys, that he likes to play with dolls, and to help his mother in her housework. He takes naturally to cooking, sewing, and darning; and becomes clever in the selection of feminine dress, so that he can help his sisters in the choice of their clothes. Contrariwise, the girl who is destined in later life to display the characteristics of viraginity will be found frequenting the playground ...
— The Sexual Life of the Child • Albert Moll
... herself in the division of the cabin which was intended to be used as a sitting and dining room in bad weather, and applied herself to some sewing and darning, which had been reserved for just such a day as this. Mr. Archibald, in a water-proof suit, tried fishing for half an hour or so, but finding it both unpleasant and unprofitable, he joined his wife, made himself as comfortable as possible on two chairs, and began ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... her back near the register. The twins were sitting on the floor near her, hearing each other conjugate Latin verbs. And Prudence, with her darning basket, was earnestly trying to solve a domestic problem,—how to get three pairs of wearable stockings out of eleven hosiery remnants. So Fairy found them as she came ...
— Prudence of the Parsonage • Ethel Hueston
... commanded by the Suy Dams, and the Van Dams,—incontinent hard swearers, as their names betoken. They were terrible looking fellows, clad in broad-skirted gaberdines, of that curious colored cloth called thunder and lightning,—and bore as a standard three devil's darning-needles, volant, ...
— Washington Irving • Charles Dudley Warner
... to be, till the departure of King James VI. for England. Previously to this period, the Abbey and Palace had suffered from fire, and they have since undergone such revolutions, that, as in the celebrated case of Sir John Cutler's stockings, which, in the course of darning, changed nearly their whole substance, it is now scarcely possible to distinguish what is really ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 17, - Issue 479, March 5, 1831 • Various
... having formed this astute conviction, walked out of the dining-room, and went down to her snug sitting-room, where, sitting down by the fire, she fell to darning a table-cloth while she thought things over. She had arrived at a conclusion that would have astonished her master, and she chanced to want more cotton, and rose to get it from her work-box. And among the reels and hanks of tape she ...
— A Bachelor's Dream • Mrs. Hungerford
... and I used to stand about at the door, as if I had just returned from a ride; and when fellows came in, with a nut loose or something, I'd begin talking with them while Bertie tightened it. Then, when THEY weren't looking, I'd dab the business end of a darning-needle, so, just plump into their tires; and of course, as soon as they went off, they were back again in a minute to get a puncture mended! I call ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... the dragon fly a darning needle, and say it sews up people's ears when they lie on the grass. This is not true. It does not sew up anything. It has nothing to ...
— The Insect Folk • Margaret Warner Morley
... fortunately found her friend alone in the "settin'-room," darning away at a perfect stack of socks, as she creaked comfortably to and fro in ...
— Work: A Story of Experience • Louisa May Alcott
... can find it, but I am not sure about that,' However, he removed the lid from a glass case containing several lively little creatures just about as large as a fresh-water eel at the age at which it is known to the small boy who tries to catch it in his hands as the 'darning needle.' After groping about in the sand at the bottom of the case he found the specimen required and handed it over to Mr. Bartlett, who held it in his hand and allowed it to make savage darts at his fingers. 'You see,' ...
— The Confessions of a Caricaturist, Vol 2 (of 2) • Harry Furniss
... dinner, and all the time after, I devote to writing, sewing, knitting, etc., and if I included darning, repairs, alterations, etc., my list would be tremendous, for I get through with a great deal of sewing. Somewhere in the day, I find half an hour, or more, to spend at the piano. Before sunset I dress, and am ...
— A Confederate Girl's Diary • Sarah Morgan Dawson
... with twenty-four hours' supplies. Beyond the maze of "points" is moored the strangest of all rolling-stock, the grey-coated armoured-train, within whose iron walls are domesticated two amphibious petty officers darning their socks. ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... from a meeting of the Temperance Legion extremely drunk. He went to the bed, piled himself loosely atop of it and forgot his identity. About the middle of the night, his wife, who was sitting up darning stockings, heard a voice from the profoundest depths ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... goes out through the vestibule door, followed by Johnny. Mrs Tarleton sits down at the worktable and takes out her darning materials and one of her husband's socks. Hypatia is at the other side of the table, on her mother's right. They chat ...
— Misalliance • George Bernard Shaw
... something to do then, sewing, or darning, or something. I simply could not lie still doing nothing. I am too excited. Haven't you some stockings that need mending? We always have a ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... a witch in a dark cavern, sat a little old woman mending one of the two pairs of stockings wherewith Peter Goldthwaite kept his toes from being frost-bitten. As the feet were ragged past all darning, she had cut pieces out of a cast-off flannel petticoat to make new soles. Tabitha Porter was an old maid upward of sixty years of age, fifty-five of which she had sat in that same chimney-corner, such being the length of time ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... thi tung I'll smoor (smother) thee wi' this stockin'. Thaa'rt as soft as when thaa were a lad;' and the old woman held up the article of clothing that she was darning in her hand, and shook it in a threatening manner ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... not the home life of which Andrew had dreamed—not even the reincarnation of Madame Flint sitting by the round table darning socks by the light of the shaded lamp. Elodie ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... fingers bandaged, it is subtly different from the chafing-dish days, and the crisp chops, generously black with charcoal, are not as good as her rarebits used to be. The memory of the silk and fine linen also fades somewhat, in the presence of darning which contains hard lumps and patches which ...
— The Spinster Book • Myrtle Reed
... was at the Hopes'. They found Mrs. Hope darning stockings on the back piazza which commanded a view of the mountain range. She always claimed the entire credit of Clover's match, declaring that if she had not matronized her out to the Valley and introduced her and Geoff ...
— In the High Valley - Being the fifth and last volume of the Katy Did series • Susan Coolidge
... unwise to try to make any display at all, but all felt paid for the attempt. In the girls' department we found work of all grades of sewing, dresses, waists, aprons and other articles of wearing apparel, also darning, matching, buttonholes, quilting, etc. Each article was marked with the name of the girl and grade, and many were the exclamations of commendation from those who visited the rooms where the display was made. Works deserving special mention are buttonholes made by Martha Howard of the seventh ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 48, No. 7, July, 1894 • Various
... the wives of the farmers and shoemakers and blacksmiths everywhere. It is not Mrs. Stowe, or Mrs. Howe, or Miss Stevenson, or Miss Dix, alone, who is to save the country, but the thousands upon thousands who are at this moment darning stockings, tending babies, sweeping floors. It is to them I speak. It is they whom I wish to get hold of; for in their hands lies slumbering the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... having been done by men, has given us the strictly masculine viewpoint. The tragedy of the "willing slave, the living sacrifice," naturally does not strike a man as it does a woman. A man loves to come home and find his wife or his mother darning his socks. He likes to believe that she does it joyously. It is traditionally correct, and home would not be home without it. No man wants to stay at home too long, but he likes to find his women folks sitting around when he comes home. The stationary female and the wide-ranging ...
— In Times Like These • Nellie L. McClung
... was, however, in the house, seated beside the sitting-room table, on which stood a kerosene lamp with a singularly ugly shade. She was darning stockings. She held the stocking in her left hand, and drew the thread through regularly. Her mouth was tightly closed, which was indicative both of decision of character and pain. Her countenance looked sallower than ever. She looked up at her husband ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... beautiful darning, miss? It is the finest darning I ever met with—not to say it was lace." Mrs. Betts spoke more seriously, as she held up to view a pair of filmy Lille thread stockings which had ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... the meadows were still yellow; only here and there on the sunny leas was there any appearance of green. But if you lay down upon the earth you could see a multitude of little shoots—some thick, others as thin as green darning-needles—which thrust their heads cautiously up through the mould. But the north wind swept so coldly over them that they turned yellow at the tips, and looked as if they would like to creep ...
— Tales of Two Countries • Alexander Kielland
... thoughtfully that noon, a procedure so contrary to his usual actions that his mother asked him if he felt well. He nodded abstractedly, went upstairs to the big, sunny sewing room, searched the family needlecase for a long stiff darning needle and extracted several rubber bands from the red cardboard box on the library table. Then he sauntered off to wait in the school yard for assembly bell, with the air of a military strategist who has planned a well-laid campaign and is ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... arithmetic-book soared to the ceiling and came down with a bang while Gracie herself pivoted, not ungracefully, on her toes till sheer giddiness and exhaustion put an end to her rhapsody. Then she staggered to Avery who was darning the family stockings by the window and flung ecstatic arms ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... in it, isn't there?" said Ray. "You'll sit at home, and how your blood will boil! What keeps you women alive? Darning stockings, I suppose. There's only one thing I dread: 't would be hard to read of other men's glory, and I lying flat on my back. Would you make me cookies ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... sat in a rocking chair by the sitting room window, darning socks. She rocked violently and sent her long needle vigorously back and forth over her gourd, and it took only a very casual glance to see that she was wrought up over something. William sat on the other side of ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... who in the kitchen sat Darning by the fire, Guileless of what he would be at, Sang sweet as wind ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume II. • Walter de la Mare
... poor little gnat Go toiling along on his nose broad and flat Towards the Rhine, pleasant Rhine; "Aha, tiny friend, I should hate to offend, But your stockings need darning"—which same did he mend, All for wine, ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... crucial moment when the budding author was supposedly to be racked with the throes of composition; but seemingly there were no throes. Other girls could wield the darning or crochet or knitting needle, and send the tatting shuttle through loops of the finest cotton; hemstitch, oversew, braid hair in thirteen strands, but the pencil was never obedient in their fingers, and the pen and ...
— New Chronicles of Rebecca • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... ten thousand blessings—thou cook of fat beef and dainty greens!—thou manufacturer of warm Shetland hose, and comfortable surtouts!—thou old housewife darning thy decayed stockings with thy ancient spectacles on thy aged nose!—lead me, hand me in thy clutching palsied fist, up those heights, and through those thickets, hitherto inaccessible, and impervious to my anxious, weary feet:—not those Parnassian ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... attempt an apologue," she said, indignantly. "Upon my word, I think you would insinuate that philanthropy, when forced to manifest itself through embezzlement, is a less womanly employment than the darning of stockings!" ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell
... Needleworks viz: point, Brussels, Dresden Gold, Silver, and silk Embroidery of every kind. Tambour Feather, India & Darning, Spriggings with a Variety of Open-work to each. Tapestry plain, lined, and drawn. Catgut, black & white, with a number of beautiful Stitches. Diaper and Plain Darnings. French Quiltings, Knitting, Various Sorts of marking ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... will be trouble, as I have said. The thing, simple as it is, would be too unaccustomed to comprehend. And then a real article in a real cyclopaedia by a real writer is Information with a big "I." My little knowledge about making quince jelly, or darning stockings, or driving an auto, or my thoughts about the intellectual differences between Dickens and Thackeray, or my personal theories of conduct, or my reasons for preferring hot-water heat to steam—these are all too trivial to mention; is it possible ...
— A Librarian's Open Shelf • Arthur E. Bostwick
... Use a darning or crewel needle, and a very long thread, or you will have to be continually taking fresh. This work is sometimes done with crewel wool, and in rather a different way, see Fig. 4; but it is not so neat ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... for a little above the camp. The moonlight destroyed nothing. The moor accepted everything. Tom Gage cries aloud so long as his tombstone endures. The Roman skeletons are in safe keeping. Betty Flanders's darning needles are safe too and her garnet brooch. And sometimes at midday, in the sunshine, the moor seems to hoard these little treasures, like a nurse. But at midnight when no one speaks or gallops, and the thorn tree is perfectly still, it would be foolish ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... one afternoon when I was darning stockings by the dining-room table, and the disobedient orphan showed him straight in on the domestic scene. I hurriedly hitched round my chair and drew the casement curtains, making an excuse of "too much sun," ...
— The Lady of the Basement Flat • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... heard of it all he was very angry. "Is this how you serve me, child? To fight battles for me? I suppose I should return the compliment by darning your stockings. I had things to say to this woman, many things to learn. You have bungled my plans and ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... sound about darning; it can, however, be made good use of in embroidery as well as in plain needlework. There are two rather different kinds in use; in both the stitch is a running one and done in much the same way that a thin place ...
— Embroidery and Tapestry Weaving • Grace Christie
... went Belle and Timmy, Miss Carter and Big Hong. Back came Little Hong with the car. Silence held the ranch; the waning winter light fell on Timmy, busy with blocks; on Belle darning; on Miss Carter reading a light novel. The fire blazed, sank to quivering blue, leaped with a sucking noise about a fresh log, and sank again. At four the lamps were lighted, the two women fussed amicably together over Timothy's supper. Later, ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... marketing done, Mrs. Nancy sat herself down in her porch to darn her stockings. She had formed the habit, for Willie's sake, of doing all the work possible out in the air and sunshine, and she still clung to all the habits that were associated with him. Her weekly darning was a trifling piece of work, for every hole which ventured to make its appearance in those little gray stockings was ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... sense; but, like Shakspeare, he had no Greek. On the other hand, Dacier had nothing but Greek. A certain abbe, at that time, amused all Paris with his caricatures of this Madame Dacier, 'who,' said he, 'ought to be cooking her husband's dinner, and darning his stockings, instead of skirmishing and tilting with Grecian spears; for, be it known that, after all her not cooking and her not darning, she is as poor a scholar as her injured husband is a good one.' And there the abbe was ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey—Vol. 1 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey
... water when they plunged into the swirling world which shut out the tent they had called home. And the wind that took his breath had a curious, piercing quality that hurt, as Uncle Bill had said, like breathing darning needles. "The White Death!" Literally it was that. Panting and quickly exhausted, as he "wallered snow to his neck," T. Victor Sprudell began seriously to doubt if he ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... Passing from the kitchen the care of the different rooms of the house is taken up—the chambers, the sitting-room and the storeroom; instructions are given for making "blue Monday" less blue; the arts of starching and ironing are discussed; and a chapter is given to the mending and darning basket. Other portions of the book are devoted to "Company Days," "Shopping," "Sickness in the House," "Making the best of Things," and "Helps that are Helps," the servant-girl question forming the subject of the closing chapter. The volume is ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... her dear but most contrary mother would glance up from her book or her darning and ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... "A devil's darning needle? What is that, Senhor Tim?" inquired Pedro, passing him a cup of hot coffee. When the liquid—and the "skeeter"—had passed into Tim's stomach he enlightened ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... By a little stove inside the van sat a figure red from head to heels—the man who had been Thomasin's friend. He was darning a stocking, which was red like the rest of him. Moreover, as he darned he smoked a pipe, the stem and bowl of ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... raffia from one side of the seat to the other in close lines until the space is covered one way. Then reverse the action and work from front to back, weaving in and out among the cross threads exactly as you do in darning. Be careful to keep the thread even, to prevent sagging. When the seat is woven whip the edge all around with raffia ...
— Construction Work for Rural and Elementary Schools • Virginia McGaw
... were seated in the cool, shaded living-room with their mending. It was an intensely warm afternoon and several degrees cooler inside the house than on the porch. Winnie insisted on helping with the darning—she would have felt hurt had she been denied the task of mating and sorting and mending the stockings and socks for the family each week—and she took pride in assisting Mrs. Willis to keep Doctor Hugh's belongings in ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... you wished to consult a certain book on geology, in which subject the library was rich, owing to the scientific tastes of Squire Pritchett, you were told by the librarian for the day, as she looked up from her darning with a friendly smile, that it was in the "Uncle Tom's Cabin section." The Shakespeare set, honorably worn and dog's-eared, dated back to the unnamed mass coming from early days before things were so well systematized, and was said to be in the "Old Times ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... lady of the house is pretending to be darning a pair of stockings, which she has taken up to keep her fingers busy; but every now and then, she lets the work drop from her hands on to her knees, and looks round the room, as if listening and waiting for some one who ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... would never let go of for an instant. These slight favors gradually brought Martinez into the family, making his relations with sina Tona more and more intimate. He got his meals now at the tavern, and spent most of his time there; and the mistress finally had the pleasure of darning his stockings and sewing the buttons on his underwear. Poor sinor Martines! What would happen to a fine young man like him without a woman around? He would get to be as shabby and disreputable as a stray cat. And, frankly, no decent lady ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... inspection. No wonder that she looked grave over the rents and holes and threadbare places, sure as she was that, however shabby they had become, they must in some way or other be made to serve for a long time yet. It looked like a hopeless task, the attempt to transform by darning and turning, by patching and eking, the poor remnants of last winter's frocks and petticoats into garments suitable ...
— Christie Redfern's Troubles • Margaret Robertson
... darning stockings, and she threaded her needle and snipped off the yarn before she answered, "No, thank you, Becky. Mother couldn't do without me, and I hate going to school. I can read and write and cipher as well as anybody now, and ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... obeyed, and Mr. Travers—who was by no means a good hand at darning socks—shivered as he trod lightly over a stone floor. Then, following the instructions of Mr. Benn, he made his way to ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... I'll tell you the rest. We'll start in together, up there, and—we'll keep the sewing-machine for home use. You see my socks 'll sure need darning." ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... must often wish they understood something about the preparation of food. The girls who go to the Lette-Haus are taught the whole art of housekeeping, from the proper way to scour a pan or scrub a floor to fine laundry work and darning, and even how to set and serve a table. An intelligent girl who had been right through the courses at the Lette-Haus could train an inexperienced servant, because she would understand exactly how things ought to be done, how much time they ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... wardrobe showed her that her surmise was accurate: there was at least a month's hard mending to be done before that wardrobe would contain garments really worthy of the name of underclothing. She decided to begin by darning his socks, for she chanced to have some black darning wool in her workbox. She brought three pairs of them into the studio, and began to darn. Nature had been generous, even lavish, to Hilary Vance in the matter of feet; and his socks were enormous. So were the holes in them. But their ...
— Happy Pollyooly - The Rich Little Poor Girl • Edgar Jepson
... a long pause. Saunners sat looking into the fire, sighing now and then, and clearing his throat as if he were ready to begin again. When he turned toward her, Allison took to her stocking-darning. She longed to ask him a question—but she dared not do it, even if she could have uttered the words. ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... Her darning-needle quilted the yawning heel of Tommy Sutton's sock with precision and celerity, and she ruminated silently upon the vicissitudes and failures of mortal life until she was interrupted by Mrs. ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... in no mood to listen to anything about airships after that; and Dot took her first lesson in darning, there and then. The old lady and the little girl came down to dinner that evening in a rather sober frame of mind, for the occasion had been wearing ...
— The Corner House Girls Growing Up - What Happened First, What Came Next. And How It Ended • Grace Brooks Hill
... would be worth while to pass a week or a month among the plain, average people of Stratford. What is the relative importance in human well-being of the emendations of the text of Hamlet and the patching of the old trousers and the darning of the old stockings which task the needles of the hard-working households that fight the battle of life in these narrow streets and alleys? I ask the question; ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... they had gathered round the kitchen fire as being the most agreeable place. The children were long gone to bed; the rest of the family had at length followed them; Elizabeth and Mrs. Landholm alone kept their place. The one was darning some desperate-looking socks; the other, as usual, deep in a book. They had been very still and busy for a long time; and then as Elizabeth looked up for a moment and glanced at the stocking- covered hand of her neighbour, Mrs. Landholm ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... through the low archway, and in a room beyond, very simply furnished, sat a young girl engaged in darning a pair of pink stockings. She was a beautiful girl of about seventeen years of age, not fat like all the rest of the Pinkies but slender and well formed according to our own ideas of beauty. Her complexion was not a decided pink, but a soft, rosy tint ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... the side the guests were to pass to the sixth room, where there were nuns engaged in household duties, mending the linen, darning the stockings, and so on. One was working a sewing-machine, and in the alcove ...
— Castellinaria - and Other Sicilian Diversions • Henry Festing Jones
... Susan, who was darning—seated on the one chair—yes, it had once been a chair—did not look up or speak. Etta put on her hat—slowly. Then, with a stealthy glance at Susan, she moved slidingly toward the door. As she reached it Susan's hands dropped to her lap; so tense were Etta's ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... Cringle, gent., pulling the stroke oar, with old Moses Yerk as coxswain;—and as the Dragon-flies were all red, so we were all sea-green, boat, oars, trousers, shirts, and night-caps. The strain was between the Devil's Darning Needle and our boat, the Watersprite, which was making capital play, for although we had not the bottom of the topmen, yet we had more blood, so to speak, and we had already beaten them, in their last gig, all to sticks. But the Dragon-fly was a new ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 579 - Volume 20, No. 579, December 8, 1832 • Various
... fighting man or of the colossal deeds that were being done daily and nightly on the several fronts. No, they all talked of their own war-work. Overworked they were, (p. 068) breaking up—some at munitions; some at shoemaking classes; others darning socks—and they were all suffering terribly from air raids. In fact, to put it in a few words, they were well in the middle of the world war; they were just the same as the fighting man in France or ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen
... my son," said the old man, and taking a long darning needle, he put a knob of sealing-wax on the ...
— Household Stories by the Brothers Grimm • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... as near as possible to the required size, was carefully rubbed down upon a brick, and then had an eye laboriously worked through it with a bit of wire or something else available for the purpose. The needles were about the size of ordinary darning needles, and answered the ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... day, and get acquainted. Don't you remember the two handsome young men whom we saw five years ago in Douglas' store, and how they winked at each other when grandma ran down their goods and said there were not any darning needles fit to use ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... pour forth the language of the great song-masters, they grin at my insanity—they hold me incapable of reason, and declare their ideas of what that is, by asking who knows most of the dairy, the cabbage-patch, the spinning-wheel, the darning-needle—who can best wash Polly's or Patty's face and comb its head—can chop up sausage-meat the finest—make the lightest paste, and more economically dispense the sugar in serving up the tea! and these ...
— Charlemont • W. Gilmore Simms
... to find the girls sewing and Mrs. Staton darning stockings. Mr. Staton had been reading his ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... your last wild pet, eh, Robert?" said Colonel Cummings, as they entered. He backed up to his stove and surveyed Squaw Charley good-naturedly. "Let me see, now: You've run the scale from a devil's darning-needle to a baby wolf. Next thing, I suppose, you'll be introducing us to a ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... Nightingale, nor of the host of women who have been walking worthily in her footsteps, but of nameless saints of more retired and private state,—domestic saints, who have tended children not their own through whooping-cough and measles, and borne the unruly whims of fretful invalids,—stocking-darning, shirt-making saints,—saints who wore no visible garment of hair-cloth, bound themselves with no belts of spikes and nails, yet in their inmost souls were marked and seared with the red cross of a life-long self-sacrifice,—saints ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... woman was sitting by the table, darning socks; and at the opposite side of the lamp sat a full-grown girl, in holiday attire, with her elbows on the table and her fingers in her hair, reading some illustrated journal; while a little boy, squatted behind the girl's chair, was attaching a possum's ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... see that you don't lose your heart before you know it. It's an awful thing for a woman, Miss Ivy, to get a notion after a man who hasn't got a notion after her. Men go out and work and delve and drive, and forget; but there a'n't much in darning stockings and making pillow-cases to take a woman's thought off her troubles, and sometimes they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... the nursery, and Jean, very wide awake, demands a needle and thread, as she wants to sew a dress for Topsy. I tie a piece of thread into a large darning-needle and supply her with my handkerchief, which she proceeds to sew into a tight ball. I return ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... it, I may as well say that every girl who went to Nimpo's party had a long and serious task of darning the ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, October 1878, No. 12 • Various
... else, that she looked—as you saw only her neck and shoulders emerging from the enormous circle in which the rest of her was buried—like an intrepid aeronaut who has fallen by some accident through a hole in the balloon, and you were lost in calculations of the length of darning-needle that would be needed to reach to the vera superficies. Now if I invent, I like to have the honour of the invention entirely to myself; and I found it impracticable to extract a heroine from seven or eight spring ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 364, February 1846 • Various
... Hermione was darning one of Spike's much-mended socks, while Mrs. Trapes sat drinking tea. "Meanin' jest what is wonderful, my dear, and—since when?" ...
— The Definite Object - A Romance of New York • Jeffery Farnol
... a widow, and was usually to be found seated by the fire, knitting a sock, or darning one, or mending some portion of ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... sat upstairs darning, or making husking-gloves, I read "The Swiss Family Robinson" aloud to her, and I felt that the Swiss family had no advantages over us in the way of an adventurous life. I was convinced that man's strongest antagonist is the cold. I admired the cheerful zest with which grandmother ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... as their watch was over, the two midshipmen went below, where they found Mrs Rumbelow seated on a chest, busily employed in darning her husband's stockings, or in some other feminine occupation, as was her wont: Mrs Rumbelow's ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... time, then," said Mrs. Posset, threading her darning-needle, and taking up one of Nibble's stockings, which was in such a condition as might have made a darning-machine turn pale, "there were three little girls, and their names were Orange and Lemon and Hold-your-tongue. And they all lived together in a little red ...
— Five Mice in a Mouse-trap - by the Man in the Moon. • Laura E. Richards
... woman's burdens, but had sat and talked with the men in the bar room, not even caring for the baby, yet the law gives him the right to every dollar she earns, and when she needs two cents to buy a darning needle she has to ask him and explain ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... relative positions brought out the best and the least romantic part of a woman's love—the subtle maternity of it. There is a fine romance in carrying our lady's kerchief in an inner pocket, but there is something higher and greater and much more durable in the darning of a sock; for within the handkerchief there is chiefly gratified vanity, while within the sock there is one of those small infantile boots which have but little meaning ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... dressing-sacks; winter hoods that ought to have been put up in camphor long ago; aprons hung up by the trimming; a calico dress that yawned mournfully out of a twelve-inch tear in the skirt; a pile of stockings that had waited long, and were likely to wait longer, for darning; some rubber-boots ...
— Gypsy Breynton • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... well adapted for darning on square netting. In that case the netting may be done in Brooks' Knitting Cord, No. 60, and the darning in Embroidery Cotton, No. 70. The centre only can be done thus—a netted border ...
— The Ladies' Work-Book - Containing Instructions In Knitting, Crochet, Point-Lace, etc. • Unknown
... he said. "The ultimatum has been reached, at last, in the possessor of a pretty face and a broken fiddle! and dreams for the restoration of the race are to end in a broken-down hovel by the sea, in darning the Cradlebow's socks, and dressing the clams for dinner, while the bucolic George Olver and the versatile Harvey, and all the rest of the awkward, moon-gazing crew, take turns in sitting on the door-step, and dilating on the weather! Ravishing idyll but it lacks substantiality. ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... mother was almost as fond of Ernest as he was himself. When the two boys were going to high school, Ernest often came over in the evening to study with Claude, and while they worked at the long kitchen table Mrs. Wheeler brought her darning and sat near them, helping them with their Latin and algebra. Even old Mahailey was enlightened by their ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather |
