"Housewifely" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stature, And the blue petticoat's ample plaits, that down from her bosom Hangs in abundant folds about her neatly shaped ankles, She without question it is; come, therefore, and let us discover Whether she honest and virtuous be, a housewifely maiden." ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... across them, Made him their battle-ground, and won and lost kingdoms upon him. Airily to and fro, and out of one room to another Passed his cousin, and busied herself with things of the household, Nonchalant, debonair, blithe, with bewitching housewifely importance, Laying the cloth for the supper, and bringing the meal from the kitchen; Fairer than ever she seemed, and more than ever she mocked him, Coming behind his chair, and clasping her fingers together Over his eyes in a girlish caprice, and crying, "Who is it?" Vexed his despair ...
— Poems • William D. Howells
... Homestead. She even looked surprised, in her quiet way, at Mrs. Curtis's proffers of assistance in the et ceteras, and gratefully answered for Coombe's doing the right thing, without troubling herself further. Mrs. Curtis was less easy in her mind, her housewifely soul questioned the efficiency of her niece's establishment, and she was moreover persuaded that Lord Keith must be bent on inspecting his brother's choice, while even Rachel felt as if the toils of fate ...
— The Clever Woman of the Family • Charlotte M. Yonge
... scented a fact. 'But what does she lecture you about? The dinner?' she asked, with an irrelevant recollection of Drake's impression of Clarice as one little adapted for housewifely duties, and not rightly to ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... this room sometimes?" she asked, with a barely perceptible sniff the merest contraction of her housewifely nostrils. ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... highest grace and gift of God to have an honest, a God-fearing, housewifely consort, &c. But God thrusteth many into the state of matrimony before they be aware ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... where there'd ha' been victual for us all then," observed Mrs. Palfrey, regarding the matter in a housewifely light. ...
— Brother Jacob • George Eliot
... with housewifely alarm, as the suddenness of the whole thing flashed over her, "Marcia is not ready. She has no ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... spectacles on her nose, a large couvre-pied over her knees, and the Whinborough newspaper on her lap. The neighbourhood of this last enabled her to make an intermittent pretence of reading; but in reality the energies of her housewifely mind were taken up with quite other things. The vicar's wife was plunged in a housekeeping experiment of absorbing interest. All her solid preparations for the evening were over, and in her own mind she decided that with them there was no possible fault to be found. The cook, ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... him, because we do—as is the fashion of that pliant and imitative class. And now Dash and May follow us every where, and are going with us now to the Shaw, or rather to the cottage by the Shaw, to bespeak milk and butter of our little dairy-woman, Hannah Bint—a housewifely occupation, to which we owe some of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 336 Saturday, October 18, 1828 • Various
... housewifely instincts to do what she could, and, glancing through the door, she saw a man standing by the ...
— Desert Conquest - or, Precious Waters • A. M. Chisholm
... a wife and two pleasant children in reasonable comfort at Balham. Mrs. DABCHICK could not be accused by her best friends of over-refinement, but everybody agreed that she was just the homely, comfortable, housewifely person who would always make DABCHICK happy, and be a good and careful mother to his children. Often in the old days when I came down to Balham and took pot-luck with DABCHICK, while Mrs. DABCHICK beamed serenity and middle-class ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, July 11, 1891 • Various
... with her father. Even when he went away, and her mother was called to devote her skill and energy to Soldiers' Aid Societies, Beth went faithfully on by herself and did the best she could. She was a housewifely little creature, and helped Hannah keep home neat and comfortable for the workers, never thinking of any reward but to be loved. Long, quiet days she spent, not lonely nor idle, for her little world was peopled with imaginary friends, and she was by nature a busy bee. There were ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... he will take my finger and the ring in this way, and deck it out with a housewifely touch and a tenderness of expression about his mouth, as sailors do: kiss it, perhaps, with a simple air, as if we were children playing an idle game, and not at the very height of observation and envy by a great crowd saying, "Ah! they are ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... for their women's refreshment of tea. It was about the only servile act which they were required to do for themselves, while they were the servants of others, and they all enjoyed doing it with true housewifely relish. Annie, especially, was an adept at such tea-making, and would propound her theories and circulate specimens of her performance among her companions who profited by her skill, with a glee not far ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... should be said now; but I felt more agitated than was my wont. These feelings, not according with my housewifely condition, upset me. I looked at him; he began to walk about, taking up a book, which he leaned his head over, and whose covers he bent back ...
— The Morgesons • Elizabeth Stoddard
... have mentioned washing, I would ask some good housewifely gentlewoman, if servant-maids wearing printed linens, cottons, and other things of that nature, which require frequent washing, do not, by enhancing the article of soap, add more to housekeeping than the generality of people would imagine? And yet these wretches cry ...
— Everybody's Business is Nobody's Business • Daniel Defoe
... prince-bishops along the Rhine, should be gravely and generally accepted by Frenchmen themselves, or at least by the Parisians of literature and the boulevards, as the national cuisine of France. The charming daughter of my host at St.-Quentin knew better; and she received with a graceful, housewifely satisfaction the neatly-turned compliments which one of the guests was old-fashioned and sensible enough to pay her upon ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... boarding-place; but as soon as he mentioned his name, the keepers, male and female, suddenly discovered that they had no rooms. Night was near, and his courage was beginning to fail him, when he at last found a thrifty gentlewoman who gave far more attention to her housewifely cares than to the current news. She readily received the well-dressed stranger, and showed him to his room. Haldane did not hide his name from her, for he resolved to spend the night in the street before dropping a name which now seemed to turn ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe
... third morning we gasped when she appeared out-of-doors, carrying a little household ladder, a pail of steaming water and sundry voluminous white cloths. She reared the little ladder against the side of the house mounted it cautiously, and began to wash windows: with housewifely thoroughness. Her stout figure was swathed in a grey sweater and on her head was a battered felt hat—the sort of window-washing costume that has been worn by women from time immemorial. We noticed that she used ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... Then Robin's housewifely soul took refuge in house-cleaning, and she scrubbed and arranged and re-arranged, while Adam repaired or invented furniture, until inside and out their little domain was as perfect as they ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith
... down, after a careful scrutiny of the polished surface of the mahogany, pulled out a drawer filled to brimming over with linen of various kinds and uses, and began to dive among these with careful housewifely hands to discover their tale. Simultaneously, as she remembered afterwards, there came from the hill leading down from the direction of the station, the sound of a ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... center of the table stood a corpulent Wedgwood pitcher, filled with geraniums and roses, to which the girl's fingers wandered lovingly from time to time, in the effort to coax each blossom into the position in which it would make the bravest show. On one corner, near the waiter, stood a housewifely little basket of keys, through the handle of which was thrust a ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... dust, they averred, was all the more disagreeable, because it could not well be other than dead men's almost intangible atoms, resurrected from the adjoining graveyard. As for the cobwebs, they were no signs of housewifely neglect on the part of crusty Hannah, the handmaiden; but the Doctor's scientific material, carefully encouraged and preserved, each filmy thread more valuable to him than so much golden wire. Of all barbarous haunts in Christendom or ...
— Doctor Grimshawe's Secret - A Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the stream, as though after the dreary stripping of the decorations used in some Watteau festival, moss-roses in loosened garlands. Elsewhere a corner seemed to be reserved for the commoner kinds of lily; of a neat pink or white like rocket-flowers, washed clean like porcelain, with housewifely care; while, a little farther again, were others, pressed close together in a floating garden-bed, as though pansies had flown out of a garden like butterflies and were hovering with blue and burnished wings over the transparent shadowiness of this watery border; this skiey ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... chargeable to anybody for my food, victuals, and lodgings. If you are willing to let me board here and do odd stitches for the children when they tear their aprons and rub out the knees of their trowsers—just to keep me out of mischief, you understand!—I promise to be as little officious in housewifely concerns as it is ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... very handsomely and to the purpose, always with decency and good manners, and was neither too backward to speak when requisite, nor impertinently forward when it was not her business; very handy and housewifely, and an excellent manager; fit, indeed, to have been governess to the whole island; and she knew very well how to behave ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... your idealistic habits of thought immoderately. I found her a pretty and interesting girl, and it is not unlikely that she may make a good wife for such a man as Mr. Grail—himself, clearly, quite enough of an idealist to dispense with the more solid housewifely virtues in his life-mate. But I add this, Walter: It certainly would not be advisable to fill her head too suddenly with a kind of thought to which she has hitherto been a stranger. If I had influence with Mr. Grail, I should hint to him that he is going to marry a very young ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... content to be merely a visitor; she took a housewifely care of the workshop, resolutely straightening out its chronic disorder at unexpected moments, and fighting the white dust that settled upon everything. The green-paper shade, which did not roll up very well, at the west window was of her devising. An empty camphor vial on Richard's ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... searched through the preserve-closet for dainties to tempt an unhappy woman's appetite, meanwhile rejoicing with housewifely pride in her well-stocked shelves. That evening, while Alden read the paper, she planned a feast for the next night, and mended, with fairy-like stitches, the fichu of real lace that she usually wore with her lavender ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... in her brow, she studied the face of this new companion who acted so strangely, and he, equally mystified, looked around the cave. A pile of nuts in a corner indicated her housewifely thrift and forethought. A bed of dry moss with an evenly packed elevation at the end—which could be nothing but a pillow—showed plainly the manner in which she had preserved the velvety softness of her skin. Tinted shells and strips of faded calico, arranged ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... landlord's daughter before him with the warming-pan. She had spread open the sheets of his bed and was applying the old-fashioned contrivance for the prevention of rheumatism, but it was evident her mind was not on this commendable housewifely task, for she sighed softly and ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... was empty, with no mommie fussing about, worrying over little things, gently garrulous. If mommie had come back well, she would have asked Phoebe about everything in the house and out of it. There would have been a housewifely accounting going on at this minute. Phoebe would be apologetic over those grimy windows, instead of merely sympathetic over the sorrow in the house. Billy Louise wondered wherein she lacked. For the life of her she could not feel that ...
— The Ranch at the Wolverine • B. M. Bower
... needed to remain single in Stokebridge longer than she chose, for so noteworthy were they for their housewifely qualities that the young pitmen of the villages round thought themselves fortunate indeed if they could get a wife from Stokebridge. Bill Cummings, Fred Wood, and several others of Jack's boy friends, were viewers ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... papers sprawled and spilled over desk, table and the top of a big black safe. Algernon attached himself to a grimy magazine, having first jotted down Miss Ainsworth's gift in his ever-present note-book. Catherine, looking about her, soon found herself unable to restrain her housewifely fingers. She was busily sweeping the dust off the big table with a dilapidated feather duster, and putting the papers into trim piles when the door opened and Judge Arthur, little and weazened ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... "I suppose you didn't notice the drawers," he added, at her look of inquiry. He went into her room, and pushing aside the valance of the lower berth showed four deep drawers below the bed; the charming snugness of the arrangement brought a light of housewifely joy to the ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... only walk round the garden of a Sunday morning, his shirt-collar is as limp as no starch at all," continued Mrs. Dewy, her countenance lapsing parenthetically into a housewifely expression of ...
— Under the Greenwood Tree • Thomas Hardy
... I am a little puzzled about Fred. He has written me a great deal lately about a certain Fraeulein Teresa, the daughter of one of his professors, who takes such excellent care of her younger brothers and sisters, and who is such a wonderfully economical, housewifely little body—just a new edition of Werther's Charlotte. I do not think that he really likes her," she continued after musing a little: "he just holds her up as a model for me to copy. I shouldn't wonder if she was only imaginary, to make me feel how far I come short ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 86, February, 1875 • Various
... day the girl is playing forfeits with her laughing friends, the next day she is missed from the circle. She has been summoned to a conference with the shadchan (marriage broker), who has been for months past advertising her housewifely talents, her piety, her good looks, and her marriage portion, among families with marriageable sons. Her parents are pleased with the son-in-law proposed by the shadchan, and now, at the last, the girl is brought in, to be examined and ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... instead of Shakespeare's; and instance, for chief ideal types of human beauty and faith, the simple mother's and wife's heart of Andromache; the divine, yet rejected wisdom of Cassandra; the playful kindness and simple princess-life of happy Nausicaa; the housewifely calm of that of Penelope, with its watch upon the sea; the ever patient, fearless, hopelessly devoted piety of the sister and daughter, in Antigone; the bowing down of Iphigenia, lamb-like and silent; and, finally, the expectation of the resurrection, ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... Countess was a greater favour to such a household as that of Bridgefield than it would be to a cottage of the present day; Richard was hurrying downstairs, and Susan only tarried to throw off the housewifely apron in which she had been compounding a cooling drink for the poor old lady, and to wash her hands, while Humfrey, rushing up to her, exclaimed "Mother, mother, is it ...
— Unknown to History - A Story of the Captivity of Mary of Scotland • Charlotte M. Yonge
... answered Kittie complacently, and turning her broom right end up, in a spasm of housewifely care. "You better go to work and do yours over; that's in ...
— Six Girls - A Home Story • Fannie Belle Irving
... a blazing fire. An old clock ticked sturdily in one corner. The floor was scrubbed as white as snow, and on a shelf above the shining stove was an array of gleaming copper pans that gladdened Peggy's housewifely heart. ...
— The Girl Aviators' Sky Cruise • Margaret Burnham
... ill humor with the daft dealings of the world he lived in, Dickie Blue left the soggy road and sad drizzle of the night for the warm, yellow light of Peggy Lacey's kitchen, where pretty Peggy, alone in the housewifely operation, was stowing the clean dishes away. Yet his course was shaped—his reflections were determined; and whatever Peggy Lacey might think to the contrary, as he was no better, after all, than a great, blundering, obstinate ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... a woman to help her wash—a Mrs. Pritchard who cheerfully walked two miles each way—but the temptation to bleach the household linens on the lawn in the hot sunshine appealed powerfully to the housewifely instincts of Winnie, and Mrs. Willis declared that she washed everything she came to, regardless of its state of cleanliness. Certainly one would have thought that her normal wash of light summer dresses for three girls ...
— Rainbow Hill • Josephine Lawrence
... my grandmother take the antique knocker between her fingers, noting with housewifely approval that it had recently been polished. I have seldom passed a more uncomfortable time of waiting, than that between the resounding clatter of grandmother's knocking reverberating through the empty house, and the patter of ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... scruple in delivering to Aldonza the message and token, when he overtook her on the stairs of the house at Chelsea, carrying up a lapful of roses to the still-room, where Dame Alice More was rejoicing in setting her step-daughters to housewifely tasks. ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte M. Yonge
... that Eros Bela was proud of these housewifely qualities in his only sister, and that he loved to make a display of them before his fiancee whose own mother was so sadly lacking ...
— A Bride of the Plains • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... plumed crests of the valley quail. In this pattern she had made cooking pots in the golden spring of her wedding year, when the quail went up two and two to their resting places about the foot of Oppapago. In this fashion she made them when, after pillage, it was possible to reinstate the housewifely crafts. Quail ran then in the Black Rock by hundreds,—so you will still find them in fortunate years,—and in the famine time the women cut their long hair to make snares when the flocks came morning and ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... romance inwoven with the composition of Mirpah Madgin was a very slender one. In so far she belied her own beauty. For a young woman she was strangely practical, and that in a curiously unfeminine way. She was her father's managing clerk and alter ego. The housewifely acts of sewing and cooking she held in utter distaste. For domestic management in any of its forms she had no faculty, unless it were for that portion of it which necessitated a watchful eye upon the purse-strings. Such ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 6, June, 1891 • Various
... for me, if not your secret," she said, gratefully, and was again putting things where, from housewifely experience, she knew ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... sisters who wash, With housewifely mothers or wives, Who "do up" your linen, and don't "put it out," You lead endurable lives! Wash—Starch—Iron! That may mean home dampness and dirt; But at least your collars won't chafe your neck, And you'll boast a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, January 7, 1893 • Various
... housewifely tasks, leaving Bostil thoughtfully stroking the hound and watching the fire. Presently Lucy returned—a different Lucy—one that did not rouse his rider's pride, but thrilled his father's heart. She had been a slim, lithe, supple, disheveled boy, breathing the wild spirit ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... than those of a tiny yacht. These boats, which form neat rooms with matted seats by day, turn into beds at night, and the children have separate "rooms." The men go on shore during the day and do laborer's work, but the women seldom land, are devoted to "housewifely" duties, and besides are to be seen at all hours of day and night flying over the water, plying for hire at the landings, and ferrying goods and passengers, as strong as men, and clean, comely, and pleasant-looking; one at the stern and one ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... Rainham that chance had sent her, in the person of the girl whose coming she had sullenly resented, a very useful buffer against any period of domestic stress. Aunt Margaret had trained Cecilia thoroughly in all housewifely virtues, and her half-French education had given her much that was lacking in the stodgy damsels of Mrs. Rainham's acquaintance. She was quick and courteous and willing; responding, moreover, to the lash of the tongue—after her ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... and make light of the fact that we have loaded ourselves down with such heavy burdens, and take comfort in the thought that one of the women whom Jesus loved was in the same condemnation; but we forget that her anxious housewifely cares were for Jesus. Dare we ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... peace in which you live, the comforts that surround you, the decency of your habitation, when you see your wives, your sisters, and your daughters contributing so materially by the brightness of their appearance, the softness, of their manners, their housewifely qualities, to the pleasantness and cheerfulness of your domestic lives, contrasting as all these do so strikingly with your former surroundings, you will remember that it is to Mr. Duncan you owe this blessed initiation into your new life. By a faithful adherence to his principles and ...
— Metlakahtla and the North Pacific Mission • Eugene Stock
... the tepee where it pleased their fancy to bed. Save for the distant tinkle of the bell on the burro, and the stirring of the sheep, the herder might have been alone in the universe. When he had set his dishes and food back in the paniers and covered them with a piece of "tarp," in housewifely orderliness, he opened the black case and took out the violin with a care that amounted to tenderness. The first stroke of the bow bespoke the trained hand. He did not sit, but knelt in the sand with his face to the west as he played like some pagan sun-worshiper, his expression rapt, ...
— The Fighting Shepherdess • Caroline Lockhart
... and somebody suffers. Leave the parlor undusted, and callers are sure to come. Wear a stocking with a hole in it, you will find it necessary to take your boot off before night. There is the greatest need among girls of a more entire consecration to certain humble, homely, housewifely duties. The wearing torment of discontent with unassuming work arises not from lack of ambition, but from scorn of what one has to do. I sometimes think this reaching out after the unattainable is worse for a girl than ...
— Hold Up Your Heads, Girls! • Annie H. Ryder
... thoroughness, and one-tenth as many breakages as will the average servant. And when the dishes are washed and the table is spread for the next meal with pure linen, glistening glass and shining silver—who dares say that the glow of housewifely pride and satisfaction does not more than compensate for the little time and trouble expended to produce ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... and clean, with a cluttered kind of cleanliness that bespeaks many housewifely tasks under way. There were mixing bowls, and saucepans, and a kettle or so, and from the oven there came the sounds of sputtering and hissing. About the room there hung the divinely delectable scent of freshly baked cookies. Emma McChesney saw herself in ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... nice in a way, but do you know, Perkins, I sometimes just wish there were some rooms to dust or something, but you and the maids keep everything so clean," and Anne sighed a sigh that came from the depths of her housewifely soul. ...
— Judy • Temple Bailey
... that pleasant pastime known as "pottering." The instinct to drive nails, put up shelves, and to improve generally his local habitation is as firmly seated in the masculine nature as housewifely characteristics are ingrained in the feminine soul. Never before having had a home of his own, Harlan was ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... garden to one's room, while the garden obliges one to make it a visit in order to enjoy the beauty in it. With the window-box the upstair room can be made as pleasant as those below, and the woman in the kitchen can enjoy the companionship of flowers while she busies herself with her housewifely duties, if she does not care to make herself a back-yard garden such as I have spoken of in a preceding chapter. And the humble home that has no room for flowers outside its walls, the homes in the congested city, away up, up, up above the soil ...
— Amateur Gardencraft - A Book for the Home-Maker and Garden Lover • Eben E. Rexford
... dropped on her chest, slept in the peace of her housewifely mind, and dreamed of her vegetable garden on the banks of the Loire, where singing-societies came ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... began to talk in the soft light and had forgotten almost that another guest was expected. Margaret hoped fervently that he would not come. She had never looked more lovely than on this afternoon, and she busied herself with the preparations for tea with a housewifely grace that added a peculiar delicacy to her comeliness. The dignity which encompassed the perfection of her beauty was delightfully softened, so that you were reminded of those sweet domestic saints who lighten here and there the passionate records ...
— The Magician • Somerset Maugham
... early age both girls and boys were sent to dame-schools, where, if girls were not taught much book-learning, they were carefully instructed in all housewifely arts. They learned to cook; and to spin and weave and knit, not only for home wear but for the shops; even little children could spin coarse tow string and knit coarse socks for shop-keepers. Fine knitting was well paid for, and was a matter of much pride to the knitter, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... In that one a prince of England has sent to ask her in marriage; and her father, little liking to part with her, sends for her to his room to ask her what she would do. He sits, moody and sorrowful; she, standing before him in a plain housewifely dress, talks quietly, going on with ...
— Saint Ursula - Story of Ursula and Dream of Ursula • John Ruskin
... to shore; one or two women from the islands, filling the moments with swift, declamatory speech until the gondola of Giambattista or of Jacopo should close the colloquy; an older peasant, tranquilly kneeling to the Madonna of the traghetto, amid the clatter, while steaming greasy odors from her housewifely basket of Venetian dainties mount slowly, like some travesty of incense, and cloud the humble shrine. Two or three comers swell the group from the recesses of the dark little shop behind, for no other reason than that ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... dining-room, where Julie, housewifely girl that she was, brewed golden coffee and made toast with no aid from ...
— The Come Back • Carolyn Wells
... immediate present to think of, and while Jean thawed his hands at the fire and Sara Lee was taking housewifely stock of her ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... her chair, she brushed away her tears, and coming to the table with a little housewifely eagerness would not let me wait upon myself, but carved and poured for me, and then sat down opposite me and covered her ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... instructors, and how languidly and dully is that power employed by the mission! Too much concern to make the natives pious, a design in which they all confess defeat, is, I suppose, the explanation of their miserable system. But they might see in the girls' school at Tai-o-hae, under the brisk, housewifely sisters, a different picture of efficiency, and a scene of neatness, airiness, and spirited and mirthful occupation that should shame them into cheerier methods. The sisters themselves lament their failure. ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... dark figure in a distant prison. This it was that saddened the souls of the two children with a gloom which no sunshine could dispel. When on Fridays Ephraim returned, fatigued and weary from his work, to the home over which Viola presided with such pathetic housewifely care, no smile of welcome was on her face, no greeting on his. Ephraim, 't is true, told his sister where he had been, and what he had done, but in the simplest words there vibrated that tone of unutterable sadness which has its constant dwelling-place ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... close of the meal, upon Mrs. Throop's housewifely invitation, they all took seats in the "front room" and Helen quite forgot that she was a prisoner, and the ranger almost returned to boyhood as he faced the marble-topped table, the cabinet organ, and the enlarged family portraits ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... not say to her thrice how he found her. In a variant, the hero, going out shooting, meets with a hare, which, when hard pressed by the dogs, turns into a woman. She promises to wed him on his entering into three vows, namely, not to ask his king to a feast without first letting her know (a most housewifely proviso), not to cast up to her in any company that he found her in the form of a hare, and not to leave her in the company of only one man. Both these are West Highland tales; and in the manner of the taboo they closely resemble that ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... Thanksgivin' dinners can't be drove, and it does take a sight of victuals to fill all these hungry stomicks," said the good woman, as she gave a vigorous stir to the great kettle of cider apple-sauce, and cast a glance of housewifely pride at the fine array of pies set forth on the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... ne Sophie Nichols, an old school-fellow, and Sophie had sent down an invitation to her to come and spend a week and look for herself, and she had done so; save that two days had sufficed instead of a week. Glen-Ridge had taken her fancy, Mr. Lines had met her housewifely idea of a good house-keeper, and she had selected the rooms and agreed on terms, and left nothing for me to do except to ratify the bargain by a letter, which I did the day after her return. And ...
— Laicus - The experiences of a Layman in a Country Parish • Lyman Abbott
... did when they all came scrambling down the stairs a little later. Such a Christmas had never been known in the Joseph household before. Maggie clasped her doll with shining eyes, Mollie looked at the workbasket that her housewifely little heart had always longed for, studious Jimmy beamed over the books, and Ted and Hal whooped with delight over the skates. And as for the big box of good things, why, everybody appreciated that. That Christmas was one to date ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1902 to 1903 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... good-looking, plump, and calm woman, who was wholly convinced of the justice of the Cadets' cause, was now sitting quietly on the sofa in the Svetilovitch drawing-room, and expounding truths. Notwithstanding her Constitutional Democratic convictions, she was a real priest's spouse, a housewifely, loquacious, timorous creature. ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... that since she comes back to us and plainer living. She reads well and is not slow in figures. I shall see that she is instructed in all housewifely ways, but it is ill making headway when the tide ...
— A Little Girl in Old Philadelphia • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... Servants are cheap and numerous, as they are uncleanly and untrustworthy, and the Venetians prefer to keep them [Footnote: A clerk or employe with a salary of fifty cents a day keeps a maid-servant, that his wife may fulfill to society the important duty of doing nothing.] rather than take part in housewifely duties; and, since they must lavish upon dress and show, to suffer from cold and hunger in their fireless houses and at their meagre boards. In this way the young girls, kept imprisoned from the world, instead of learning ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... marvellous information about the unfortunate Princess' having dressed herself in mourning at the death of Robespierre. These legislators remind me of one of Swift's female attendants, who, in spite of the literary taste he endeavoured to inspire her with, never could be divested of her original housewifely propensities, but would quit the most curious anecdote, as he expresses it, "to go seek an old rag in a closet." Their projects for the revival of their navy seldom go farther than a transposal in the stripes of ...
— A Residence in France During the Years 1792, 1793, 1794 and 1795, • An English Lady
... had finished her preparations she summoned Marcus upstairs, and with an air of housewifely pride showed him all the arrangements she ...
— Doctor Luttrell's First Patient • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... Shop but must be displaced, and the whole agreeable Architecture disordered; so that I can compare em to nothing but to the Night-Goblins that take a Pleasure to over-turn the Disposition of Plates and Dishes in the Kitchens of your housewifely Maids. Well, after all this Racket and Clutter, this is too dear, that is their Aversion; another thing is charming, but not wanted: The Ladies are cured of the Spleen, but I am not a Shilling the better for it. Lord! what signifies ...
— The Spectator, Volume 2. • Addison and Steele
... it will be safer in your charge," said her friend. "I am a careless sort of person in ordinary things; while you, for all you dwell so high above the world, have certain little housewifely ways of accuracy and order. The packet is of some slight importance; and yet, it may be, I shall not ask you for it again. In a week or two, you know, I am leaving Rome. You, setting at defiance the malarial fever, mean to stay here and haunt your beloved galleries through ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume I. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Kitty some glasses and Marjorie some napkins and forks, for she was of a housewifely nature, ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... however, was very kind to the poor girl, Sister Avice especially so, and Grisell soon forgot her disfigurement when she ceased to suffer from it. She had begun to learn reading, writing, and a little Latin, besides spinning, stitchery, and a few housewifely arts, in the Countess of Salisbury's household, for every lady was supposed to be educated in these arts, and great establishments were schools for the damsels there bred up. It was the same with convent life, and ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge |
